by Catalogs.com Info Guru Aurora LaJambre

Does your favorite time of year remind you of childhood? Spring will always be the best season for stomping in puddles.

What is autumn without flopping into a pile of leaves and digging through a plastic pumpkin filled with retro candy? Memories and nostalgia make us smile because they momentarily help us forget present hardships and instead fill us with comfort.

Here’s a top ten that may make you wish you had a time machine. Destination: yesteryear.

10. School

Tell a child or teen that one day they’ll look back wishing they could do school all over again, and you’ll receive an attitude-infused eye roll. The truth is, many adults would love to go back to a time when jobs and bills were non-existent. Every aspect of school, from spending all day with friends, to making crafts and sharpening pencils, strikes a soft spot. Take me with you.

9. Sports

Sports enthusiasts become surprisingly emotional people when they recall the glory days of their team. They can make statistics sound compelling when put in the context of a baseball star’s career. Diehard fans attend as many games as possible and can tell the play-by-play of historic games. Sports memorabilia like signed baseballs and jerseys are cherished for the memories they hold.

8. Games

Games play a huge role in a child’s emotional and intellectual development, but at the time they’re competitive fun, fun, fun. Retro video games like Pac-Man and Galaga may bring instant images of pixilated joy, or maybe you preferred board games like Candy Land!

7. Trains

Think you’re immune to the power of memories and nostalgia? Take a train to a familiar place, like your home town or alma mater. The hypnotizing motion of a train sets the mind wandering and you never know where it’ll take you. Perhaps to the first time you ever rode a train and assumed all the other passengers were off on an adventure.

6. A Relative’s Cooking

Ask a friend what her favorite food is and she may tell you a story of waking up to the smell of grandma’s nut bread baking in the oven. Notice how stories of food often have little to do with ingredients and technique and more to do with the person who cooked it with love. Memories and nostalgia are the best flavors, which is why so many cookbooks are filled with cherished family recipes.

5. Books

It’s hard to imagine readers in the future waxing nostalgic over e-books, but it’ll happen. For many of us, childhood magazines and books were the vehicles that took us to faraway lands with plucky friends like Anne Shirley and Max in his animal pajamas. In addition to the actual stories, books make us think of the places we read them and the kind adult who encouraged us to read.

4. Fashion

Without a fondness for the past, vintage clothes would just be old and out of style. Designers often pay homage to their own fashion heroes, perpetuating the cycle of re-imagined classics, also known as retro fashion. Another brand of reminiscent style can be seen on hipsters, who tend to dress as they did when they were ten.

3. Toys!

The word “Toys” makes you want to turn off the adult setting and indulge in a few hours of play time. If only our day-to-day were still filled with Hee-Man and Shee-Ra figures, LEGOs, transformers and match box cars.

2. Candy

Adults of today shared a certain friend in our childhood; he went by the name of Willy Wonka and even had a whole book about his chocolate factory. Anyone who says smell is the strongest sense hasn’t experienced chewing on their favorite candy for the first time in, oh, 10-20 years. Gummi Bears, Chupa Chups and neon rock candy, anyone?

1. Birthday Parties

Parents bend over backwards to throw their children memorable birthday parties because they remember how it felt to be the star for a day. What could be better than all of your friends coming over to eat cake, bat around a party piñata and sing to you? Nothing!