growing up

One of my personal favorite memories from childhood—which was upper lower class, at best— is the afternoon that my mother and I were traipsing through a woodsy area to have a picnic. And by picnic, I mean a couple of servings of grilled cheeses and potato chips.

It began to rain, so we set up shop quickly and covered ourselves with a clear plastic tarp, which was soon covered in snails. Because of her ingenuity, I experienced something that felt straight out of a fairy tale, something I will cherish forever.

My story, however personal, is not all that unique. Parents everywhere are not letting financial obstacles prevent them from adding a bit of magic into their kid’s lives. And the truth is, many important core memories just like this one don’t really require that much money at all. What they ask for is a parent's presence.

I've loved snails and rain ever since. Photo credit: Canva

What a lovely reminder in an age where parents are pressured to buy more and more lavish things in order to prove…well, we’re really not sure what there is to prove here. But society sure makes us feel the need to prove something, doesn't it?

In a since-deleted Reddit post, someone recalled that their own parents couldn’t afford baseball game tickets and created their own makeshift stadium at home (complete with little paper tickets) and in the process created something much more impactful than going to a game.

This inspired a whole slew of adults sharing equally magical childhood memories that came from their parent’s creativity, not from money. There were also a few parents themselves who shared the money-free ways they added whimsy.

Here are some of our favorites:

1. Unicorn Walks

“My mom told me that unicorns only come out at dusk. So naturally, I wanted to go out for walks to search for unicorns almost every day. It was decades before I realized that my single mother just wanted to go out for walks with me and that was her way of convincing me to go outside.”

2. Fairy Hunts

“Told them any time they saw glitter out in nature it was because a fairy had been there. If they were lucky it might still be there but they had to look for us bc grown-ups couldn't see them anymore. I would sneakily drop glitter near the knobby roots of trees, puddles in stones, or anyplace that seemed ‘magical’ as we walked for them to find. They happily walked and searched for fairies and enjoyed nature and still as teenagers will say something is the ‘perfect fairy spot.’”

3. Magic Rocks

“I had a geology phase when I was a kid. Used to go outside in the back yard and on walks with the parents looking for semi precious stones…with my magnifying glasses and a book to identify them. I found a lot of cool stuff…It was literally decades later when I realized you don't just ‘find’ things like quartz, amethyst, topaz, whatever lying around in the suburbs. My parents had bought a bag of random assorted stones and hid them around the yard and neighborhood for me to find, to encourage my hobby.We were pretty broke, so the ~$20-$50 they spent on that went a really long way.”

It's actually really easy to create magic. Photo credit: Canva

4. Wintertime Wolf Patrol

“We did something we called wolf patrol with our kids. Through the winter when we had less outdoor time we would give them [flashlights] and they’d creep around the garden with them for about 10 minutes before going up for bathtime/bedtime. It seemed to help them to have some fresh air before bedtime.”

5. Magic Mardis Gras Tube

“During Mardi Gras my wife would let her daughter and step son watch the parades on tv. While they watched she would sit behind them and occasionally throw candy or whatever up around them and they thought it was coming out of the tv. They told the kids it was a magic tube in the TV that allowed this to happen only during Mardi Gras so they didn’t always expect it to happen.”

6. Senior Baseball

“I didn't grow up particularly poor but we did have one summer where we were broke and my dad would take me to watch senior baseball down at the park.These guys in their 50s all playing ball once a week at an intensity level someplace between a beer league and Game 7 of the World Series absolutely loved having a kid there cheering them on like they were big leaguers.I knew all their names, knew how they'd been doing at bat because I kept score. Someplace at my parents house there's a signed ball from everybody on that team.”

7. Camping During Power Outages

“I didn’t realize my family was poor until a lot later in my life because my mom made things like our power getting shut off magical. Our power got shut off once so we ‘went camping.’ We got our sleeping bags and lit candles. We used some tea lights to roast weenies and played board games. I had to have been like four, maybe five, and I didn’t learn until I was like 16 that it was because the power was out. I just remember it as a fun night with my mom and brothers.”

" I just remember it as a fun night with my mom and brothers.”Photo credit: Canva

8. Toilet Paper Ninja Turtle

“My dad used to make nunchucks out of string and toilet paper tubes, and then cut eye masks out of old red t-shirts so that I could be [Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’] Rafael on Saturday mornings while cartoons were on. At that point I didn’t even know poor was a thing, so I just thought it was bad ass that I had a Rafael costume. There’s some beauty in not knowing there are options besides being poor.”

9. Disney Riddle Easter Egg Hunt

“One Easter in the early 90s my younger brothers and I woke up excited to see the haul the Easter bunny had left us .We went to the living room -nothing :(.Needless to say we thought we were bad and he didn’t come. Then on top of our TV set in a vase we saw a little baggie with 3 foiled eggs in it with a small computer printed out slip with a riddle on it. We lived on an acreage and this was our ‘Easter egg hunt.’ My parents wrote Disney riddles that took us on an adventure all around the property! They stayed up all night printing and coming up with these 12+ riddles out and placing them all over the property just to surprise us that morning.One of my best childhood memories! They were always magic!”

Everybody knows the hunts is more fun than the eggs. Photo credit: Canva

10. Bathtub Ball Pit

“I was a large child in the '80s, 99th percentile for both height and weight at six years old. Because of this, I was not allowed in any ball pits at Chuck E. Cheese…One day in particular, I was attending a birthday party…[and I ] had to sit there on the sidelines as my friends got to have fun… I told my mom about it afterwards and she could tell how disappointed and sad I was…Later that week…bath time rolled around and my mom got me as usual, but that night she covered my eyes with her hands as she steered me into the bathroom. When she let me look, I was greeted with my very own ball pit. She had gotten a bag of water balloons and had blown them all up so that I had a floating ball pool in the tub. It was so pretty with all the bright colors AND it involved water (I would have lived in water if I had the ability), so it was the most amazing thing to six-year-old me. She turned a point of sadness and exclusion into one of my most cherished memories.”

Honestly an at home ball pit is probably wayyyy more hygienic anyway. Photo credit: Canva

11. Handmade Treasure Map

“My dad drew a treasure map using our apartment complex roads and we went on this adventure with my little binoculars and his old school digital camera to find the ‘treasure.’ I picked up a lot of flowers growing on the road along the way and seeing new things to add to my treasure collection. I still remember it as a core memory of my childhood and genuinely thought it was a magical treasure quest in the moment 🥲. I will be carrying on this activity when I have kids in the future for sure.”

Creating amazing memories doesn’t need to be lavish. So often, kids respond more when we meet them at their level, using nothing but love and pure imagination.