Hello THE WEEKEND community!

This is my first post in this community and it's a participation to this great Weekly Engagement Post Topic hosted by Hive account@galenkp

This week it's about Childhood Memories!

For my entry I selected the first option available in the WE80 post

🔹Option one 🔹
What happy or valued childhood moment is your go-to or the first you think of when reminiscing about the fun times you had as a child or youth. What was the moment, where did it happen, what happened in it and why is it so memorable?

One of the best memories of my childhood is simply the fact of being a child without any worries nor problems that we have in adult life that brings us stress and a flow of emotions that at times is difficult to manage!

^{I started reading a book called The Chimp Paradox - The Mind Management, Programme for Confidence, Success and Happiness! Let's see if it helps to manage the crazy monkey in my brain (the emotional side).}

I remember the great days where you could simply wake up, eat the breakfast that was already prepared for you by your parents and then jump on the magic PS1 to play some games, oh yes the PlayStation 1! Do you remember? When the gaming industry was still a baby and games were actually good 😂

Just look at how beautiful it looked...
so old school...
It reminds me of Windows 98 lol

^sauce

^{Because I am a nerd I had also the PS2, PS3 (still have it in my house in Italy), PS4 (still have it in my house in UK) and now the bigger brother of them all: the PS5 waiting for the good games to drop!
I'm no Xbox hater and that's why I also have an Xbox One 😂}

So what is my happy or valued childhood moment?

For how weird it may sound, for me the go-to moment that sometimes I reminisce is when I was a young kid, maybe 9 or 10, sitting on the floor in my room in front of my PS1 turned on, the disk inside it would be the first one of FFVIII, Final Fantasy VIII, and I remember that I would spend hours on the first area of the game, the beach, killing so many mobs not knowing what I was doing, I just remember having so much fun that my days would fly away! (I eventually advanced in the game and made it to Disk 3 out of 4, and eventually later in my adult life I finished the game, my illicit copy of the game died when I was about to go from Disc 3 to 4 so that's why I never actually finished it as a kid! And later in adult life the copies of the game I played were actually legit! lol)

One of the calmest and happiest memories of my life! Weird but yeah I'm a bit of a nerd 😂

^sauce

I would spend in that area a whole week before finally finding the first mission the game wants you to do, and because I was a stupid kid without a single clue about the mechanics of the game I remember struggling so much to clear that boss! In that particular FF the mobs would level up with you, so the more levels you grind the more they get strong...After coming back to the game after many years I did realise why I did struggle so much as a kid! That game is broken and you can actually clear it without even levelling up once!
The fist boss was Ifrit, the first Guardian Force you can beat and get on your team (you get 3 before the mission but they are just given to you and you don't actually fight them)

Why was it so memorable?

I don't really know, but as a young kid I remember that in the house it wasn't really the best situation with my parents arguing and screaming all the time and I was always left on my own doing my bits, so in the moment I entered the world of FFVIII I would just forget about whatever was going on in the house and I would become Squall Leonhart! I also remember having so much in common with that guy, not talking much, being an introvert, always on my own! Maybe I'm the way that I am now a bit thanks to Squall Leonhart 😂 Oh and before changing my profile pic to this Lioness NFT my previous picture was Squall 😎 I will always keep him in my heart, he was my best fucking friend when I was a kid 😅!

When did it happen?

As previously mentioned it happened in my room, on the floor, in front of that historic PS1, and from the first moment I turned that game on my life changed! I had goosebumps with the initial CGI scene, I was in love with the game without having even played it!

Thinking about it, here it would fit perfectly option 4 of this WE80:

🔹Option four🔹
Is there a moment in time, in your childhood, you would like to go back to and re-live again? Please tell us about the moment and why you'd like to live it again, why was it so special to you?

So in case I would have to think of a moment to re-live again this would be the one: The first time I turned on FFVIII on my PS1 in that room, on that TV, that day...

What happened in it?

I fell in love with the FF saga, FFVIII was only the first on the many FFs I played throughout my life (FFI-FFII-FFIII-FFIV-FFV-FFVI-FFVII-FFVIRemake-FFVIII-FFVIIIRemaster-FFIX-FFX-FFXII-FFXIII-FFXV - in bold the ones that I actually played until the end!)

Not only I fell in love with FF but I actually became a proper nerd and gamer, from that point in my life I would start playing games as an hobby that I still keep with me today that I am 28 yo! Gaming is for kids? Then I am one, fuck it 😂

I became a big fan of RPGs and especially JRPGs, I do play many games but I always come back to those and nothing beats a great RPG to distract you from the stress and chaos of the daily life!

^{I want to specify that FFVIII is my favourite FF only because of the fact that it was my first and you know, the first love is the one you will always remember and cherish the most! Gameplay-wise I prefer much more FF7 to FF8 for example, FFX one of the best IMHO, FF8 is great and everything, story is very cool, but the game itself is really bad 😂 maybe only 15 is worse than 8 😂 And I need to say that I had so much fun playing FFVII Remake, what a game...}

Some extra words about this great WE80 topic

I didn't want to drag this post too long but all the 5 options were great and I could write a whole post for each one of them 😂 Let's quickly go through them and see what I would have wrote for each! (I will be super quick 😎🙏)

🔹Option one 🔹
This is the one I selected so this whole post is about this one!


🔹Option two🔹
Ahaha I remember a day when I was in Poland at my grandma's workplace and I asked her for some juice, I asked "Succo" which in italian means juice, but "suko" means whore in polish so my grandma had to slap me following the directions of her colleagues at work, they thought I was calling here a whore but I was just a thirsty kid asking for some juice and didn't even know what was going on...lol...thinking about it now I see why she slapped me and it's just a funny and a bit "embarrassing" story to remember now!


🔹Option three🔹
Silly kids running around other people's properties, stealing fruits and vegetables from others people's gardens, climbing on trees to steal cherries, apricots, etc etc... ohhh boy so many memories for this one!


🔹Option four🔹
I gave a quick insight in this post about this option too. But for this one too there are so many good thoughts that come to mind!


🔹Option five🔹
Secret hideouts? So many, especially when I was in Poland at my grandparents, I used to go there every summer for few months when I was a kid! Hideouts in bushes and parks were the normality for us! It was great! I can say that I am one of the last kids that grew up getting dirty and cut all over because of the crazy things we used to do! No in the house or on the cell phone, outside in the nature! I miss those days so much! That was pure happiness...

So you can see that even if I'm a nerd and I went on the nerd route with this post I still had quite the childhood and I cherish so many of those memories!
I might have selected the nerd memory as my best but this does not mean that I did not love all of the other moments in my childhood! The times when I used to be in Poland every summer and do crazy things with my friends are some of the best memories I keep with me! This I will remember also if I will ever have a kid! I will not get tech too close to him, not until a certain age at least, first he/she will have to get dirty and experience some real life and nature, then if she/he will choose to become a nerd well what can I do? At least I will be able to say that I tried lol

^{A big IF here, I don't even know if I will ever have a kid, life's crazy and certainly I ain't ready now! 👀 Maybe I never will! lol But who ever is?
Life... I wonder... [cit.]}

Thanks for reading!

And I wanted to give a huge THANK YOU to Hive account@galenkp for this post!
Your WE posts are wonderful and bring so many good vibes and so much engagement on Hive!

Kudos for your work sir!

And I wanted to thank you again Hive account@galenkp because with this post you brought back so many memories of my childhood in a day in which otherwise it wouldn't have happened!

So THANK YOU 1000 times for this wonderful vibes you got out of me today!
My day is much better now, and all thanks to you! 🤗

^{I've set the payout of this post at 100% HP 😎}