Childhood

It's strange. It took me years, and I mean years to NOT have dreams about my childhood home in Canada. The odd thing is, it wasn't even the last home I had been in. It was maybe the 2nd last home until I moved to the US. And then I had dreams about this home for about 5 years after that. What's that about?

I think maybe that's when I may have had the best times as a kid. I lived in Ladner, BC. As I look back, it was a great place for a kid to grow up. Plenty of places to play at, the climate was great, school was so close I could ride my bike there every day. Ladner was a small fishing community. We had a dock where small trawlers would port in. And because of the great public transport system, as a 13 year old I would bus with my friends to Richmond and sometimes the city itself. Yes, it was so safe that parents let 13 year old kids bus out to other towns for the whole day. It was great.

I lived in a home on Ceder Tree Lane. Not sure why I remember that street so well. If I rode my bike down 47A Avenue to the east I would hit the elementary school. My friends all lived within bike or walking range, and we would just play all day during the summers. Looking back, it seemed like magic.

There used to be a small corner store that had some arcade machines. We'd spend hours on a hot day sitting on their sidewalk drinking Slushies and buying suger sticks. It was also my first introduction to the video game. My first game of Donkey Kong was there, as was Kung Fu and a totally awesome StarTrek game. Oh and my favorite candy of all time, the "Fun Dip". This candy would come in 3 compartments, each containing a sugery flavor. You would get this dip stick that was also made of suger. You'd suck on the stick, dip it in the powdery suger flavor, suck and repeat the process until totally hyped on suger.

Anyways, if you want to see this house that wouldn't leave my dreams, go to google maps- http://maps.google.com/. Then go to the satellite view. In the entry field for Search Map, put in this set of co-ordinates- 49.089029,-123.070787

You'll drop right onto my best childhood years.