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Memories of being a kid often involve enjoying quality time with your parents. Often really taking advantage of something that they do. Not everyone’s parents were ice cream parlor owners and getting spoiled with unlimited ice cream was not necessarily an option, or working for NASA and making sure their kids get to marvel at rocket launches; somehow, even then, little things such as bringing used printer paper to draw on remained engraved in one's memory as the most fun thing ever.

Scott Cunningham, @causalinf on Twitter, calling himself an economist working on a cure for baldness that involves linear regression and wine, asked “What perks did you enjoy as a kid bc of your parents' jobs?“ The community delivered: the post received over 11.8K quote hits alone and nearly 7K likes. Take a look at the best ones and vote for your favorite ones!

More info: Twitter

Bored Panda got in touch with the man behind the curious and wholesome question transporting everyone to their childhood. Scott, who is a professor in the economics department at Baylor University, is a compulsive consumer and producer of social media content, and has been basically his entire adult life. “I tweet at @causalinf and mostly interact with other economists and social scientists. I recently published a book called 'Causal Inference: the Mixtape' with Yale University Press and in my day job, write about the field of applied econometrics, particularly sex work, drug policy, and mental healthcare, as well as occasionally topics in crime and abortion policy. I have three kids and am married, one neurotic dog, and two little kittens.” He loves Ted Lasso, HBO, rap music, and laughing with friends and family.

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latefordinner527 avatar
Theater Kid
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

This is the best one so far. I love ice cream way too much for my own good.

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“That tweet shows how random the internet can be. I write stuff like that almost daily as a way to just engage with people on Twitter, never really giving any of it any thought. I am a very nostalgic person is all. I grew up in a small town in Mississippi called Brookhaven and just have nothing but extreme fondness for the childhood I had. And so as a result, I occasionally talk to people on Twitter about childhood. I love hearing other people’s stories, and love sharing stories of my own.”

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“The other day it occurred to me that as a kid, there’s all these little things you got from your parents you never really even had thought about before,” shared Scott. “Everyone has a story like it, even if not exactly it, and I was curious what my friends and others might share.” He also added that “People engage in work first to survive, second to accumulate wealth, and maybe then to provide various 'perks' to their kids. But perks occur anyway because we live in such close proximity to our parents' lives. And sometimes we experience spillovers from their jobs, even though parents weren’t necessarily choosing it.”

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Mimi M
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Super-wholesome. And time with a loving dad - the best perk of all.

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Samantha Ashley Kricker
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Me too my friend! Those were some good times. My dad flew for continental and retired in 2000

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Scott didn’t expect the tweet to go viral as he has been on Twitter for many years and nothing he has written before has gone totally crazy with likes and quote tweets. “This one was weird because it was this huge ratio of quote tweets to everything else caused not by anger, but by a desire to share similar though distinct stories about the gifts their parents inadvertently gave them as simply a function of growing up around them and their jobs. I never thought that was such a generally interesting thing, but it clearly is, probably because we aren’t always sharing those details with others. I actually don’t think I’d ever talked to anyone about those computer games and Coke machines before, not even to my wife, maybe not even to my parents, but man, was it special to me then and really even special to me still.” But the worst thing about Scott's success with his viral post is that he has no clue how to reproduce that. “They say in statistics 'with enough trials, anything that can happen will happen.' Meaning even rare probabilities will materialize with enough time and repeated effort. Well, I’ve tweeted way over 100,000 times, I bet, and one of them can go viral, theoretically, so eventually one did. I expect another one will when I hit 500,000!”

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Cooper Lemley
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2 years ago

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thereader19 avatar
TheReader19
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Nuff respect to your mum for doing what she needed to do to keep the roof over your heads

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Olli Glx
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I had one of those as a kid. They were black and white and every game came with a coloured plastic "sheet" to put over the monitor. Must admit I would have prefered the Atari console.

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LMS
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

OMG! I bought a Vectrex for my son! He loved it so much I had to make him take breaks from using it.

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Kristin Ingersoll
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That is a very familiar story! My dad was a prof. I used to draw on those computer cards all the tine. And half in-state tuition. Graduated with no student loans. So lucky.

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TheReader19
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Love this one, dream of travelling on the Orient Express; but with their prices it may only ever be a dream

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Ryan Deschanel
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"Here is the left kidney... here is a saphire... Here is the liver... Here is argillite...

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Xenon
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Had a bunch of that myself. Was a lot of fun.

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kennedy1209
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

My Dad was a civil engineer as well - But we got the cool stuff - He built transit systems. Got to test ride all of the trains before they were open. Go down and see the TBM's (tunnel boring machines) at work. freaking awesome.

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Theater Kid
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2 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I cannot think of anything that would be less of a benefit. But whatever floats your boat, I guess.

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