Every year, every day, every second, we’re all getting older. Sorry for the painful reminder, but on stressful days imagine if we could turn back the clock to when we were 2 or 6 or even 10? Imagine if we could go back to a time worry free and without any stress or obligations. If there was a button that could do that I am sure I would have pressed it a long, long time ago and I have a sneaky suspicion you may have too.

So I decided to hit the rewind button and flashback to my favorite childhood memory. For the first fifteen years of my life I went to Belmar, NJ to spend time with my Dad’s side of the family at my Grandma and Grandpa’s house. This was located one block from the beach. To give you some background on my story, I come from a very competitive family by nature.  I was 7 at the time and had just finished watching my family play a competitive game of beach volleyball. I was not allowed to play because I was not at the level the rest of my family was and no one wanted a kid messing around on the court. (Irony: It is ten years later and I will be playing volleyball next year in college) Anyway, the game had just finished and the once sunny sky began to fill with large, puffy mean looking clouds. Some people in my large family decided to go back to the house and shower, others decided to wait and see if the clouds would pass over. I was part of the small waiting-the-storm-out group.The once light-gray clouds began turning a dark gray and my family decided it was time for everyone to pack up. As we began walking back to the boardwalk, large gusts of wind began picking up and it made it difficult to see. Sand was blowing everywhere and the rain began to downpour. Just as my family and I reached the boards, trying to mentally prepare for the dreadful walk home, my Grandpa’s car pulled up ready to drive everyone. Phones were not nearly as big as this time. No one had called him or texted him to come save us from this crazy and sudden storm. No weather app had told him there was a 80 percent chance of rain. The guy who sat on the porch in his rocking chair every day waiting for us to return home had just seen the mean clouds and took it upon himself to come save the day.

Here are some classmates’ (and one teacher’s) memories:

Hunter Coppola: “So I was in second grade and I would always spend the summer with all of my cousins at my grandma’s house which is located on a lake and every year the community would have a huge celebration and at night we would have this thing called Dancing under the Stars and all of my cousins would run into the beach while music was playing in the background and we played Red Rover until my older brother had to carry me back to the house cause i passed out from all the ice cream and candy I ate.”

Zack Balogh: “I was in the sixth grade and I played baseball for the Pirates. The way the Verona rec league works is that all teams go by two years. (fifth and sixth grade are together and seventh and eighth grade are together) Certain sixth graders that were good were allowed to be called up to play in the seventh-eighth league. I got called up to the Pirates seventh-eighth team where I would throw someone out at first from center field. I even hit triples and scored some winning runs. Eventually everyone stopped calling me by my name and started calling me “The call up kid” because I always performed well and my team rarely lost when I got called up.”

Mary Wallace: “My uncle who passed away used to hide a dollar in a chestnut on Christmas and the kids would crack them all open with the nutcrackers until we found the one with the dollar and we could never figure out how he got it in there and we thought it was magic”.

Sinclaire Infusino: “My mom bought me a princess costume from Costco and I loved it so much I wouldn’t take it off for like 5 months.”

Meg Evans: “When I went on vacation with my family to Sanibel Island in Florida and we went on this boat ride with this guy named Captain Dave and we were on this tiny boat going fishing and all these dolphins came right next to the boat and were swimming around us.”

Mr. Thai: “My family and I all traveled to Switzerland to visit my father’s side of the family. On the vacation, we went to Paris to do some sightseeing. There was a street performer in one of the main squares who wanted volunteers to participate in his act. My sister and I were forced to go by my mom. My sister did fine but I was a hot mess and left running and crying back to my mom after the performance was over. After that humiliating ordeal, I remember going to the Eiffel Tower and eating my sorrows away with some delicious French fries. I thought it was the greatest thing ever to have ‘authentic’ fries.”