I rocked my childhood or how my childhood affects my writing

At least, in my mind I rocked it.
I mean, look at these toys!
I loved playing house and school and I loved my Fisher Price toys.

These were favorite toys when I was little. They got a lot of use, not only from me but my siblings too. I remember making words on the schoolhouse with the magnetic letters when I was first starting to spell.
We also had the house. Sometimes, we created the house outside with rocks and flowers, and used the furniture and Little people.

My mom used to have these fuzzy bunnies as decor. 

I loved to pet them when I needed to calm down.

Stickers! I loved the googly eyes and the Scratch n' Sniff stickers. The smells bring back memories of junior high days. Which may or may not have been tumultuous and ugly. But all was well when friends shared stickers.

NOTES!

I passed so many notes in the my years from elementary to high school. We even folded them this way. We retold our day with stick figures or made up very important quizzes like this:

-->

Do you like:

Mike 

Chase ☑

Grant 

Are you mad at me:

Yes 

No 

Maybe ☑

Do any of you remember these cassettes? My friends and I made tons of mixed tapes together. I still have some. Hubby and I still have a whole drawer of cassettes! Huh. I don't think we have anything to play them.

I'm a little bit country! 

An I'm a little bit rock n' roll!

Here's the last and the most iconic childhood memory for me: Donny and Marie Osmond! I watched them on TV. I listened to them on the radio, bought purple socks and I. had. the. action figures. Donny got to kiss a lot of my Barbies, just sayin'.

***

I find that a lot of my experiences and friends and family come out a bit in my writing. They surface unexpectedly and I'm usually surprised why and how. Seeing that multicolored cassette in this post kinda makes me want to write and 80's themed book.

For years after I graduated from junior high, I dreamed about that school. The things that happened there shaped me in more ways than I think. I could draw a map of that school. I wish I could have walked it and taken pictures before it was torn down. Maybe I'll do a story set in junior high. I'll have to find my photo albums and year books.

So what I'm saying is that our experiences shape the stories we write or what we want to write. It's okay to write what we know. It's okay to write reality based on our experiences. We need to hear other's memories and stories. No one can say we know or we don't understand because we do, according to our experiences.

Don't be afraid to write what you know. Or maybe, be very afraid. And write from there...
There's just not enough time to write them all.