AMANDA
Date one was such a success! I really think that was the best card we could have drawn out of the deck, at least for me. I am very immature and child-like, so reverting back to my childhood activities was a blast. When we first drew the card, I was trying to think of things I always wanted to do when I was little, but the only thing I could think of was 'Glamour Shots', where people would go and get dressed up in outfits, get their hair done all funky, and then get their portrait taken. I have ALWAYS wanted to do that since I was little. The nearest location turned out to be in Louisville, Kentucky, so it was quickly removed from the list. For some reason, I couldn't get my mind off of trying to think of things that I have always wanted to do, but once I started thinking back to what I used to do when I was little, the list started growing fast. Justin and I decided to make a list of things we both used to do, and then do them all together. This was the best way to do it because we got to relive our childhood together. We both did new things that we have never done before, and also shared in some of the same memories from our childhoods.
I started our date off with one of my childhood staples: a miracle whip and cheese sandwich on white bread for lunch. I'm not sure where this invention came from, but I used to eat this on a
weekly basis. I don't think there was a better way to start my day. Once we had all our supplies that we needed for the day, we headed to Dairy Queen for one of Justin's favorite things as a child. I ordered two Dilly Bars from the drive-thru, something I had never tried before. Those things are amazing!!!! I'm pretty sure we both ate them up in less than five minutes. As for our next adventure, I'm thinking only half the people that read this will actually know what it is when I say it. We knew at some point we were going to have to make one of these, and after the ice cream, we were incredibly thirsty. We headed to the gas station to make ourselves a 'suicide'. This was something that we both used to do as children, and it was really fun doing it together. In case you don't know, a 'suicide' is when you make a fountain drink with every single option availabl
e at the machine. We loaded up a cup full of every soft drink and lemonade option there was, with the exception of tea. We both hate tea, but I always used to include just a splash of tea in mine so that is was a TRUE 'suicide', but Justin refused. I remember going to Chuck E. Cheese as a child and making a 'suicide' every single time. My favorite part of the date came next: SIDEWALK CHALK!!! We headed to the park for the next few activities and found a good place for some artistic expression. As a child, I was constantly using sidewalk chalk outside. We always had drywall in our basement and my dad would give my sister and me a small piece to go draw with outside. One of my favorite things to do with sidewalk chalk was to draw a house layout and play 'house'. I used to draw a big giant square and then fill the square with my furniture. I would draw a couch, a chair, a table, sometimes even a kitchen and bedroom.
So, naturally, this was the first thing I decided to draw with my chalk. I could have played with the sidewalk chalk for another hour or so, but we had a lot on our list and not that much time to do it, so we had to move on. The next thing on our list was something Justin had added: Kicking trees. When he first added this to the list, I was picturing him as a child going around just kicking trees with his feet. What a weirdo! However, once
he showed me what kicking trees was, I realized I used to do that as a child as well, and even still do it today on walls when I'm feeling goofy. Kicking trees is hard to explain...maybe Justin will be able to do it better, but basically you run at a tree, jump up, kick it while you are in mid-air, and push off the tree. Understand? If not, the picture might help. Kicking trees is actually pretty tiring...this activity only lasted about two minutes before we were both winded. Next, we played catch, which was pretty fun, but we play catch every once in awhile in present-day, so it wasn't as 'reminiscent' as the other things on the list. On our way out of the park, I decided to add something to our list last minute. I used to go to that park as a child all the time when my dad played in a softball league, so we stopped at the playground area and played some. I even got Justin to go down the slide with me! We decided to wrap things up at the park and head back to the house to finish off the rest of the list. When we got back to the house, it was about time for an afternoon snack, so I fixed myself something called a 'snack plate'. My sister and I used to have this baby sitter who watched us one New Year's Eve. Close to midnight, she went into the kitchen and told us she was going to make us a 'snack plate' and came back with the most marvelous snack inventions. There were pickles, Ritz crackers with ranch dressing, and other things that I can't remember but were surely delicious. I fixed myself a 'snack plate' of Ritz and ranch with pickles. Yum! Reliving childhood foods 
and snacks is one of the best things, and if I can convince anyone to do one thing from their childhood, it would be to eat something you used to eat when you were little. Something about it brightens your day. Or maybe I'm just obsessed with food. Once I was full and had talked myself out of wanting to take an afternoon nap, we went outside for some bubble-blowing action. Does anybody else out there remember the flavored bubbles? There were grape and cherry flavors and they were the best things ever! They would taste like soap if you drank them straight from the bottle (yes, I tried), but if you did it the way you 
were supposed to, and popped the bubbles on your tongue, they were deeelicious! I'm not sure they still exist anymore, and Justin never tried them when he was little. We stuck to the regular bubble sticks. It was actually so windy outside we didn't have to do much ourselves. At some point during the bubble-blowing, Justin came up with an idea of using a leaf blower to blow the bubbles. I have no clue where this idea came from and why we thought it would be such a good idea!!! But, we headed to the garage and gave it a try. It sort of worked and sort of failed....somewhere along the line, we stopped using the leaf blower to blow the bubbles for us and started holding it close up to our skin to make it wobble around in all directions. If you haven't ever done this...you should. It is HILARIOUS. The old lady across the street came outside and we realized probably how weird this activity was looking, and we snapped back to the real world. We went back inside to mark off another thing from the list. Justin said he had always wanted to shave when he was little, s
o that's what we did. He did try and convince me to actually shave my face, but I was afraid that a beard would actually grow back, I decided to just pretend. For some reason, it actually took a bit of convincing for him to quit bothering me about shaving my face for real. It was a weird experience...that's really all I can say about it. Weird. And cold. Next came the Nintendo. We couldn't go through a day of childhood without playing some classic Nintendo! Mario 3 is where it's at!! We only played through the first world, because again, we had a lot of stuff on the list and not much time remaining. We are pro's, so we were on to the next activity in now time (that's right). We tried playing 'boat', one of my favorite childhood games that I used to play with my cousins on our pull-out couch. My cousin, Jeffery, was always the captain. The rest of us would crawl around on the hide-a-bed and even go underneath the couch during a 'storm'. We would even have tons of stuffed animals on the boat as our passengers. We used to play boat for HOURS, but, long story short, it is definitely not as fun when you are an adult...our final activity was one of the best parts of the day: prank calls. Justin did the majority of the prank calls because I'm horrible at disguising my voice and coming up with things on the spot. But one thing I am good at is cracking up in the middle of it all. Let's just say every single one of our friends either got a weird call that day, or a weird voicemail to check later.Overall, this day was awesome. We agreed to do another summer session of Kid Day that will involve water balloons, sprinklers, and a SUPER SOAKER FIGHT!! It would have been great if we could have been kids all day long. Unfortunately, being a kid is only easy to do for a couple hours before the 'grown up' world wants you back.
JUSTIN
I can honestly say I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this date when I drew it from the deck. My childhood, though fun, wasn't constantly spent doing things other people would find amusing.
When I was young, I lived out in the middle of nowhere. None of my friends were within a 10 mile radius and the only people I had to play with were -- GIRLS -- YUCK! Being the only boy in the family made for a lot of time spent on my own just being outside. When "An Afternoon of Regression" was chosen, I didn't even know where to begin because essentially I was a loner as a child. But then I thought to myself "Why can't I include somebody else in my festivities?" It's not like they were all that hard to do and if I thought they were fun back then, maybe they still can be.
Now the beginning of the date (for me) I am very fond of. When I was a kid, my grandma would babysit us a lot. We would walk to Dairy Queen and she would buy us whatever we wanted. Most of the time, I would wind up with a Dilly bar. My grandma passed away in this past October, so it definitely brought back a flood of memories. I was happy to share this childhood experience with Amanda and to my surprise, she LOVED the Dilly bar. Can't get much better than that.
Next on the agenda were "suicides". Now I didn't share this with Amanda, but when I was growing up, suicides weren't just drinks mixed together. When I'd make suicides with my friends, we would just take whatever we could find in the fridge, mix it together, and either eat it or drink it without knowing what was in it. It was quite a disgus
ting activity to partake in and I didn't want her to get any ideas, so I didn't mention it to her. I did, however, mention that I used to go to Old Country Buffet (back when it existed) and make suicides there. It was my favorite thing to do at restaurants. When we made it to the gas station to create our concoction, I was so excited I forgot to put ice in. Though Amanda managed to get a few chunks in there, it made for an unpleasant drinking experience and I only had a few sips. I'm glad that we got to relive that with each other even though it had unexpected results.We soon arrived at Wessleman's Woods, a local park in Evansville, Indiana. Amanda REALLYYYY loved playing with sidewalk chalk as a child and I agreed even though I had never really done it. She knew exactly what she was doing with the chalk, knew what to draw, and knew what colors to use. I just started drawing random objects until they started to resemble daily things. Eventually, the image I was drawing revealed itself to be Jesus fishing. Don't ask me why because I do not know.
After posing for a few photos in Amanda's chalk house, we decided it was time to do one of my favorite activities when I was a kid: go walking in the woods.Of course, all the entrances into the woods nearby were closed for some reason and we couldn't make our way in. This disappointed me a bit, but we still went on a short walk down the bike path. I love walking every day so this was a fair replacement for the woods :).
I belive the next activity we had in line was also one of mine: kicking trees. Now I know that sounds stupid, but I don't really have a better way to describe it. Essentially you run up to a tree, jump, and then kick off the tree. You aren't really kicking a tree and breaking your toes. When I was little, I would pretend I was in the video game "Mortal Kombat" and I would kick off the trees in my front yard all the time (we had 3 acres, there was not much else to do). When I told Amanda about kicking trees, she looked at me like I was nuts, but during the actual re-enactment, she kicked more trees than I did! And she was CRAZY about it! She was all over the place.
Next we played catch, which is definitely a favorite pastime of mine, but I wouldn't say its something I missed from my childhood. It was just an opportunity to get some throws in with the old ball and chain. I actually was on a baseball team in middle school and I sucked terribly. I was SOOOO BADDD and I knew it. Our team went 0-13, so it couldn't have been ALL my fault. We rocked.
The next thing we decided to do was something Amanda had recently thrown in: talking on these weird phone pipe things and going down the slide. Apparently it was just like she remembered, except the things that she was saying to me, well, lets just say I'm pretty sure she didn't say them when she was young.
She's going to be embarrassed.
Then we each went down one slide and I almost got stuck.
Proof.
We decided to leave the park (but not before I kicked one last tree)
and made our way back to the house. Now I know for a fact that all kid's have blown bubbles at one time in their life and if they haven't they are deprived and sheltered (and its sad). We had a lot of fun seeing who could blow the most bubbles and who can blow the biggest ones.I know that using a leaf blower to blow bubbles is not something that I did as a child, but I needed to know what kind
of bubbles such a powerful force could create. And it completely..........underwhelmed me. It was really really windy that day so the leaf blower hardly did more than what the wind was doing itself. We did have fun seeing what our skin looked like with the leaf blower full power only inches away. It was an amazing sight. If you ever want to know what your body looks like when you are running in slow motion, take a leaf blower to your skin. It'll make you feel really bad about yourself haha.One of my favorite things to do when I was little was to pretend that I had enough hair on my face to shave. I wanted to be a real man like my step-dad.
I had also heard from a very reliable source (sisters) that shaving caused any hair you had on your face to grow faster and to come in darker. This excited me because I had wanted to grow a beard since I was like 5. I had to convince Amanda to shave with me because she was scared of the same "myth" about shaving your face, so we faked it on her. She shaved by turning the razor backwards and basically wiping the shaving cream off her face.
I know what you are thinking. I need to be shaving something else.I definitely forgot to "pre-shave" my face (I already had a beard and it really hurts to shave any hair on your face that is longer than an eighth of an inch with a razor) and about 20 minutes after we got done shaving, my face started to get real irritated (something that didn't happen when I was little). Nowadays, I hate shaving, but since it was something I loved to do when I was little I definitely had to include it on the list.
So fresh. So clean.The last few things on the agenda went by very fast. The real world came crashing back in and soon my lovely lady would be leaving me for work :( We played a few levels of Super Mario Bros. 3 and I obviously dominated. Amanda claimed there was lag because we were using an HDTV, but I knew there wasn't any because I had component cables (nerd talk). She died multiple times and I just ruled the game. She does have some skills though. :)
Next we played "boat" which was just absolutely terrible. We played for a total of two seconds. Not even exaggerating. We then played "lava" where we basically tried to avoid touching the floor at all cost. We both were victorious! We then made completely horrible prank phone calls without using *67 (just like the old days when we would get caught). I think only a few people answered and if they didn't, some got messages, some didn't. I think Amanda did one or two, but she was too giddy to get any real work done.
I would rate this date as a success, but everything we do together I find fun. I wasn't too worried about it. We are gonna do some more "kid" stuff in the summer time when it's hot. Until then, I am curious to see what our other dates might bring.
TOTAL COST OF DATE: $8
