Hailed in: Upper East Side
Hails from: Arizona
My town had a baseball league for kids, and pretty much all my friends were forced to be in that. It was kind of like Little League, only not well organized. You could skip a lot of games and even change teams if you wanted to be with your friends. It wasn’t bad, and I was a pretty good player, but it was really hot and it stopped being fun after the first couple of weeks. I think the adults were worried we’d destroy the town without something to do, but they weren’t ever sure what we should do. There was a roller-skating park, but no one went there. I was a pretty good roller-blader, though.
Hailed in: Chelsea
Hails from: San José
I always had jobs. My dad owned a store so he always put me to work stocking shelves or sweeping the floor. I guess it isn’t child labor if it’s your child. [Did you get paid?] I got $20 a week, which felt like a lot of money at the time. It actually wasn’t that bad. The store was within walking distance of our apartment and I’d only work a couple hours a day, depending on how busy things were, and they were never that busy during the weekday after the morning commute rush. Funny, I used to complain about that store a lot, but thinking about it now, it’s actually one of my fondest parts of childhood.
Hailed in: Hell’s Kitchen
Hails from: Queens
My family moved around a lot so what we did was based on where we were living. Sometimes we went and visited family because one of my aunts lived near a lake, one year we went to the Grand Canyon, which was awful because it was like a 10-hour drive and my sister and I wanted to kill each other. I went to a really crappy summer camp one year, and the only good thing was that I had my first kiss there. It was awful. I hate the outdoors so all the hiking and campfires were torture. I got so many mosquito bites.
Hailed in:Crown Heights
Hails from: Outside Nashville
The thing I really remember is that our neighbors had a pool, so a lot of the kids from my block would go there. The people who owned the house were really old, and they didn’t have kids. Or if they did, they were in college. It was a married couple, and the wife always liked having us around; she would bake us cookies and make lemonade. The husband was kind of a jerk, and sometimes he would make us leave if we were being loud. One year someone broke something, a window or something in the garden, and after that he barred us from going over. We all had to go to the public pool, which was gross. There was a kid section and you just knew everyone was peeing in it.