Quotes About Youth

Three of my childhood dreams went unfulfilled. I never saw a no-hitter, never saw a triple play, and never caught a ball that had been hit into the stands. But I did see the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a World Series game when I was 10.

I started out wanting to be a fireman and would cry if my mother tried to take off my 'Emergency 51' hat, so she had to wait until I fell asleep. Then it was on to another cap: I wanted to play first base for the Yankees.

People talked a lot about this upcoming talent on the Yankees and it was something that you kind of saw coming. These kids were so hungry and I believe that's why they became so successful. They worked very hard and they were so hungry, and I think that leads to wins.

There are times when I feel like I'm a traveling minister. I'm trying to go out and get kids to pick-up yard sale instruments and change the world.

I am able to say that I was very much liked at the school. I even had quite some ascendancy over my comrades, and as soon as I appeared in the school yard, I was surrounded by young friends, most of them bigger than I, but who were quite willing to give the appearance of disciples; they would have defended me furiously if necessary.

Of course, in our grade school, in those days, there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess.

You know, when I was a young boy I used to play baseball in my back yard or in the street with my brothers or the neighborhood kids. We used broken bats and plastic golf balls and played for hours and hours.

I'm healthy enough to still skate, so I gotta go because growing up I didn't have - I mean, I grew up in Montana so... there was kind of a little half-pipe in my yard, and that was the extent of the skate terrain in Montana. So I've got to go out and make up for lost time.

I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me.

I loved every minute of my childhood - sunbathing on the fire escape, digging for buried treasure in the back yard, pulling alewives out of the sand... Then it was all taken away from me. I came back every summer to visit my father until I was 18, but I was always the outsider.

I wasn't one of those kids who stole Richard Pryor records. I wasn't a comedy-nerd kid. I had no concept of stand-up. Actually, the only inkling of stand-up I had was I read one of Paul Reiser's books when I was, like, 12. I found it at a yard sale, and I carried it around with me for six years.

I always had two or three jobs at the same time. I started doing yard work when I was 7 or 8. When I was 13, I got my first state job doing road construction. Between working, sports and school, I hardly ever had free time.

By the time I was twelve, I had started my own theater company and was doing plays in the backyard and the front yard and all over the neighborhood, so, you know, I was definitely a lifer even back when I was 10.

We always had so many kids in our family, running around the yard, sweaty little kids jumping in and out of the pool, the front door and back doors swinging open and shut, all of the parents getting pissed off telling us to stay outside.

The children of the 1980s were the last before a lot of things changed. We were the last generation not to have cell phones, not to have video games, not to have parents who worried if we strayed from the yard.

I had a very nice life. I was a very good kid. I had nice friends. I played in the school yard. I was nice to my parents; they were nice to me. They were loving parents - they were always there.

One day, when we were coming back from school, we saw this big cloud of smoke coming up, and all these fire-trucks in the yard. The garage was burning down. I was 14, and we'd lost everything.

My very first job was selling pop off the back of a wagon. Then I went to work in a timber yard to save up for my bass amp and joined The Smiths.

I had brothers and sisters and did chores and had to pick up the dog crap in the yard and mow the lawn and do all the normal things that kids have to do.

I grew up playing with boys in the yard and my brother in the backyard and boys in the schoolyard.

Growing up in a small town of two thousand people, there wasn't too many ways to get in trouble. But I found some. We got caught stealing green plums from this old lady's yard.

We didn't have much money and my mom scrounged up $15 and bought us a surf board at a yard sale.

Our father got us into skating and built us many ramps around our yard.

I was a mamma's boy. She had me at 15, so we were close enough in age where we could play basketball against each other. We used to play one-on-one and race in the yard all the time.