For those of us who have transitioned from the follies of youth to the responsibilties of maturity, have you ever decided to re-experience certain of your youthful follies and if so, which follies?

This isn’t quite what you had in mind, but in my youth, I used to do flips off the diving board, jumps off the ice, and bicycle 90 miles a day.

When I try to dive now, my heels get jammed from the pounding; when I try to jump off the ice, I fell on my hip and creamed my hip bone (it still hurts three weeks later), and when I try to ride fifty miles, I bonk at 35.

But I keep trying to relive those days, and to think of myself as young and capable. As you say, the quality of those experiences has not improved, but I sure as hell appreciate them more!

I’m retired (and have been a while) and just bought a Triumph motorcycle to relive my mis-spent youth.

I used to be a very skilled biker/skater and part time model in my teens, then things changed and I switched that in a very early age to what now my life is…
One morning I thought I was getting old and nothing that used to make me happy (walking around the park shirtless with a red bull can and a cig, doing tricks and getting all the attention from the girls around) was there, so I decided to get my bike and take it for a ride, loaded all the limp bizkit/korn/p.o.d./mi:2 songs i could find in my ipod and hit the road… The result, a 4 hour visit to the emergency room (I guess I’m not that young anymore)...

@Cardinal there’s the saying that the trouble with youth is that it’s wasted on the young..so true, no?

@daloon my tack may have been different but your tack is right in line. i was something of a jock in my youth. ran track, played football. now, i ride my bike, use my gym and elliptical. can’t endure as well as i used to, but it’s still both helpful and enjoyable! thanks for the different perspective

I can’t think of any I have given up. I still do what I want, when I want. I am a modern day hippie. I was never into the mind altering drugs or self destructive behavior of many.

@yarnlady dang…i knew many an original hippie and none would have been as judgmental or denied themselves the pleasures! :)

@avalmez I am the loving, nurturing side. I don’t judge nor deny myself pleasure. I take pleasure in nature. Self-destructive is as it does, and natural consequences need no judge.

@yarnlady be it as you say, not everyone agrees with your perspective, not just of love and nurture, but self-destruction and natural consequences. who is to say that self-emulation is loving and nurturing or self destruction? and there are many folks who have been destroyed by the love and nurture of others…adherents to varioius religions, e.g. my question was posted for entertainment purposes, not as a philosophical quandary. in any case, i respect where you are coming from and love humanity of every kind, including hippies of every era! pas!

um, and i meant self immolation

I know your topic wasn’t the sixties but it raised some thoughts. I was hardly a child of the sixties(born in ‘67 like Kurt Cobain) but was in grade schools in the seventies and early ‘80’s.
The benefits of the 60’s was equal rights, civil rights and a more authentic approach to sexuality. The downside was a generation who elevated drug use to epidemic proportions probably peaking in late seventies before shifting to cocaine in the ‘80’s. That’s not to say there weren’t many that effectively navigated through the landmines of addiction and had fun. I just wasn’t one of them. As an addicted drug user in my youth, I can’t idealize it personally nor endorse it through looking back with rose colored glasses. I wish I was one who could imbibe with a drink or a drug in nostalgia, but for me “one is too many and a thousand never enough.”

I reexperience my youth by hooking up with a few guys I met or knew back then. Good times, good times.

@TitsMcGhee you got the spirit of the q baby…thanks!

@SeventhSense i hear what you’re writing. an alternative perspective that i understand and appreciate

@avalmez: I try, I try :D GAing it wouldn’t hurt either! :P

I still play video games at 42 years old. Is that a return to a youthful folly or a continuation of a lifelong form of entertainment?

Not yet. However, I do look forward to someday re-living an old weekend ritual; a joint, a book, a bottle of amber beer, a bubble bath. It’s not much, but it was something from a time I miss quite a bit.

I am still friends with two women with whom I came of age in the 60s. We have done it all, from drug infused weekends (or weeks ON END) in the 60s to Fiddlers Conventions in the 70s to the disco-centered self-absorption of the 80s and beyond. Last year as we all approach 60, the three of us took a road trip from SC to Sedona AZ and Las Vegas. Many good times were had and many more relived in those three weeks on the road with my girls!

I like your story and relate. I will schrrommm….with same good best friends or lover on occasion, and I’m over 50. Sometimes you just can’t shake away the 60 ‘s and 70 ;s and the grateful dead concerts, I understand.

In revisiting the question I guess I just have no experiences from my youth I want to revisit. Most I want to forget. Sounds like a bummer I guess but true.
I wish I had some good ones.