What did you do when you where 8?

[NSEP]

Random ramble time!

Mozart wrote this when he was 8 years old, makes me wonder, what did you do when you were 8 years old?

 

[ARS]

Uuuh... Kinda hard to remember, but I can still recall my memory during that time. I was traveling around the city with my family to visit naval base and get an up-close experience of entering WW2 submarine that has been converted into museum ship in the city (man, I visit that site again nearly 20 yrs later)

[Guest]

Nothing but playing orbiter 2010.

[Guest]

Spent most of my days either at my friends' houses or playing offline flash games and NFSU2 (completed it with a Civic) on the computer.

That computer was really, really old, it had a 15gb (or 30gb I can't remember) hard drive and a single core Celeron processor. No external graphics card. Only a CD and floppy disk reader and some questionable USB ports.

Also you'd get shocked if you touched the tower's metallic parts. Fun!

Edited December 24, 2017 by Guest

[PakledHostage]

7 minutes ago, Aperture Science said:

That computer was really, really old, it had a 15gb (or 30gb I can't remember) hard drive and a single core Celeron processor. No external graphics card. Only a CD and floppy disk reader and some questionable USB ports.

Much like in Mozart's day, nobody had a personal computer when I was eight years old...

[Guest]

1 minute ago, PakledHostage said:

Much like in Mozart's day, nobody had a personal computer when I was eight years old...

Yeah, almost nobody had it back in the day, mostly rich kids had it.

The computer I had was from my dad's store, he stopped using the internet there as it wasn't popular enough back then (2000s), so he gave it to me when I was 6 or so. I only started really using it after a cousin of mine gave a CD with about 300 flash games in it (got me addicted lol), and then I went to a lan house next to where I lived and copied a NFSU2 install with a pen drive over to my computer. Had no internet back then.

Edited December 24, 2017 by Guest

[LordFerret]

When I was 8 years old, I began study on the violin. TVs were still mostly black and white. Seat belts in cars were not yet mandatory. We saluted and pledged allegiance to the flag at the beginning of each school day, which was then followed by a moment of silence for prayer... funny, nobody at the time had any need or desire to protest that. Boys wore slacks and shoes and a button-down dress shirt to school, and girls a dress. Boys knew they were different than girls, and girls knew they were different than boys... and we were happy for it, but somehow that line got muddied. Men and women always wore hats. People worried about polio. We had duck and cover air raid drills at school, and on Saturday afternoons the air raid sirens would go off for one full minute at noon.

[Ultimate Steve]

Oof... Second or first grade? I literally cannot remember anything specific. I had yet to discover my passion for space at that point, and I was probably towards the end of my train phase (I was obsessed with trains) and potentially going through my very short spy phase.

I actually think I might have some of my writing assignments buried somewhere in my bottomless filing cabinet...

[Piatzin]

12 hours ago, NSEP said:

Mozart wrote this when he was 8 years old, makes me wonder, what did you do when you were 8 years old?

.............

Are you trying to give me an existential crisis?

The most impressive thing I remember doing is climbing the kitchen counter to find cookies lol

[NSEP]

I remember playing a game from the Lego Website on my Dads Computer. That day changed me life, never stopped loving computers ever since. Like @dundun92 i also played a ton of Orbiter. I did not know how it worked, but when i was 8, i finally found out that you have to Roll and Pitch instead of Yawing to steer a plane. I felt like i invented the wheel.

2 hours ago, Ultimate Steve said:

I had yet to discover my passion for space at that point, and I was probably towards the end of my train phase (I was obsessed with trains)

I was obsessed with trains too. I remember my first train ride, i went to a museum with my dad, but we only stayed 15 minutes because the Dinosaur skeletons where apparently not as interesting as the train ride! Sometimes we went to my aunts house wich was near the train tracks, and when a train passed by i always shouted The Train! The Train!. 

When i was 8 i just started playing orbiter, so i was interested in space at the time. Once my dad showed my a picture of the shuttle/soyuz launchpad shortly after launch with flames still in sight, that is how i think i became interested in spaceflight. I also remember my dad telling me about the shuttles last flights when i was older.

[cubinator]

I had been solving Rubik's Cube for about a year, and averaged 50 seconds. I might have gotten my first 4x4 and 5x5 around that time, I'm not sure. I was into entomology, and knew more about arthropods than any of my peers, on top of my already extensive knowledge of astronomy. During winter, when it was clear at night I would go outside and lay in the snow looking up at the stars, planets, and Moon. I watched the Space Shuttle launches, and I wanted to ride one. I knew that NASA was planning to venture out to Mars, but two years away from Earth was too long for me; the farthest I would go was the Moon. (Now my standards are quite a bit broader - if somebody can offer me less than a year in transit to Jupiter or Saturn, I'll probably take it )

[Guest]

8 hours ago, NSEP said:

I remember playing a game from the Lego Website on my Dads Computer. That day changed me life, never stopped loving computers ever since. Like @dundun92 i also played a ton of Orbiter. I did not know how it worked, but when i was 8, i finally found out that you have to Roll and Pitch instead of Yawing to steer a plane. I felt like i invented the wheel.

I was obsessed with trains too. I remember my first train ride, i went to a museum with my dad, but we only stayed 15 minutes because the Dinosaur skeletons where apparently not as interesting as the train ride! Sometimes we went to my aunts house wich was near the train tracks, and when a train passed by i always shouted The Train! The Train!. 

When i was 8 i just started playing orbiter, so i was interested in space at the time. Once my dad showed my a picture of the shuttle/soyuz launchpad shortly after launch with flames still in sight, that is how i think i became interested in spaceflight. I also remember my dad telling me about the shuttles last flights when i was older.

Same with me in KSP also... in the .20 days, I never could build airplanes. I never knew to roll, as when you are using rockets (most of which never reached orbit. Had no idea what a gravity turn was) you mainly yaw...

[TheKosanianMethod]

When I was 8? I believe that was the year I went to the BSA's 100th year Jamboree. My cousin, who was from Boston, came with me and my mother. It was pushing 95°F every day, and even the southerner (me) was having trouble in the heat. It was still really cool, and I also remember playing with my cousin at my house. 

[razark]

On 12/24/2017 at 3:59 AM, Earthlinger said:

Are you trying to give me an existential crisis?

Look at it this way:
Sure, Mozart did this at age 8, but by the time he was my age, he hadn't done anything for six years!

[qzgy]

36 minutes ago, razark said:

Look at it this way:
Sure, Mozart did this at age 8, but by the time he was my age, he hadn't done anything for six years!

Hmm. I don't know what age you are, but I can say that he actually did do something post death - Sat in a hole in the ground and decomposed!

Also - to add to what I was doing when I was eight - I Have no idea! Like Ferret, the pledge of allegiance was a thing I had to do everyday (but not anymore!). Uhhh, I might have learned soldering also at that age (and also of course burned myself). I do remember before that being interested in flight simulators on a ancient piece of technology - a CRT monitor. I might have learned some violin and piano as well.

[RoadRunnerAerospace]

Well, i vividly remember the last shuttle landing, the teacher put it on the ooooooold classroom tv, i really think that is what got me into space. 

I also remember those projectors, with the clear plastic, it sounds stupid at this age (it was only 7 years ago!), but when i see one, i get a massive nostalgia hit.

Other than that, i really have no other memorys for the past ~10 years of my life

[0111narwhalz]

I don't know, I probably drew some very triangular cars and played with my chickens. Read books continuously as well. I think that was back when I enjoyed school. 

[Nuke]

i went to a mental institution. yay!

[Just Jim]

8 years old?

OK, it was 1970, and I was in 2nd grade... and it was the year I started wearing glasses, and the nerd in me was really starting to show. Oh, I also suffered a major concussion that year when I collided head first with a girl in the school playground.  

Edited December 26, 2017 by Just Jim

[adsii1970]

8 years old? My dad was stationed at Fort Hood, Texas and I went to Harker Heights Elementary. Just coming from Hawaii where the Department of Defense schools were ran by a Japanese-born American (which I later learned from folks when a teen), I had went through Kindergarten and first grade. When I started the second grade year in Texas, we discovered the school was behind what I had learned in first grade. The school wanted to put me in third grade, parents wanted me with children my own age.

I discovered the original Star Trek television series. A local television station played it on Sunday morning (being a Jew, didn't go to church on Sunday morning. ). Also joined Cub Scouts and learned the fun of backyard astronomy...

I was also fascinated by most means of transportation, and for the most part, still am. Began model railroading as a hobby, started putting plastic model kits together, and reading everything about transportation and space I could put my hands on.

 

34 minutes ago, Just Jim said:

I also suffered a major concussion that year when I collided head first with a girl in the school playground.

This explains a lot!

Edited December 26, 2017 by adsii1970

[NSEP]

5 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

This explains a lot!

[GoSlash27]

1979...

 

8 years earlier, but pretty much the same stuff as these kids.

Best,
-Slashy

[XB-70A]

I will never forget, it was on July 14, 2000 at the Guipavas airport in Brest. The Concorde F-BTSC came here for the national day and my uncle, my father and I stayed at the fence for many hours, waiting for her to take-off. She left in a beautiful cracking noise with her afterburners on, leaving some yellow orange fumes and a high smell of unburned kerosene behind her. Such a beautiful and elegant bird. Then eleven days later she crashed after taking-off from LFRB...

It really marked me, like a day where an unique symbol of aviation history was broken.

[Cydonian Monk]

When I was eight I rode my bicycle into the back of a parked car (at speed, coming down a hill). Broke my wrist which never set right, never healed right, refractured 4 years later, and still hurts to this day. (Especially the day after sitting in the freezing cold Dallas rain for four hours watching a terrible football game.)

I also had to learn to write with my left hand, as the school insisted I had to fill in the standardized test bubbles myself. Which was odd, because just two years before they’d insisted I had to learn to be right handed despite not being so (most of the time). I still can’t tell left from right to this day, so don’t ever ask me directions. 

Edited December 28, 2017 by Cydonian Monk

[Just Jim]

50 minutes ago, Cydonian Monk said:

When I was eight I rode my bicycle into the back of a parked car (at speed, coming down a hill). Broke my wrist which never set right, never healed right, refractured 4 years later, and still hurts to this day. (Especially the day after sitting in the freezing cold Dallas rain for four hours watching a terrible football game.)

Ouch!!!  I think I was closer to twelve when it happened, but I snapped my left wrist really bad trying to jump my bicycle over 6 garbage cans... I actually nearly made it, but my rear tire hit the last can, and I went head-first right over the handlebars... and took it all in the left wrist... ker-snap!!!