A bit of nostalgia can be a great thing – many things which help shape our identities as Kiwis begin in childhood – from food, to culture, to traditions. Some of our favourites, particularly in the form make the occasional guest appearance now (K-Bar chocolate anyone?)
If you consider yourself a good Kiwi kid, have a look down this list (and please add any others you think of in the comments below).
In the food category
- Your own personal MallowPuff eating style – smashing them on your forehead/eating the top first/leaving the top until last/trying to bite them exactly in half.
- Cheerios and Fairy bread (go on, admit it, at kid’s parties, you often still sneak more than your fair share.
- Hot chips at the beach, complete with sand in the sauce (they taste different at the beach than anywhere else).
- 50c mixtures at the dairy – with your fingers crossed for lots of jet planes, jaffas and milk bottles.
- Marmite and chip sandwiches in your lunchbox.
- L&P
In the school category
- Skipping for fitness with one long rope.
- Elastics
- Sniffing Scented Markers.
- Covering your hand in PVA glue and letting it dry, so you could peel it off.
- Those bl**dy wooden vaults in PE
- “Ma is white, whero is red…”
- Writing words on an upside down calculator (extra points if you spelled more than ‘Hello’ or ‘Boobs.’
In the home category
- Prickles on the lawn but going barefoot anyway
- Goodnight Kiwi – what an achievement to stay up long enough to see him!
- Playing spotlight while Mum and Dad had people over to visit
- Holding a buttercup under someone’s chin to see if they like butter.
- No seatbelts in the backseat of the car
- Getting colour TV
In the beach category
- Bombs off a wharf
- Burning your feet at black sand beaches
- Bat down or beach cricket
- Coppertone sunscreen
- Zinc on noses or peeling noses
- Collecting pipis
In the sport category
- The All Blacks. Legends since ages ago.
- Getting up in the night to watch the FA Cup finals.
- Bullrush
- Swingball
- The Haka
- Running down sand dunes at full clip