Page created 27 Mar 2003 by OutsideInfluence
I thought we needed a place to post funny, interesting, or amazing stories about our childhood, or even just about the children in our lives. Our childhood shapes who we are, so it's intriguing to share such things.
my brother
I thought this was going to be a discussion of the virtues of the corndog.
I also remember thinking that elemeno was one letter. Same with the letter "double" (right before the second U).
I totally thought the same thing.
let's "make a make-out," as Jacob would say.
i wore a bonnet and nothing else until i was six.
When I was five I got upset with my kindergarten teacher for forbidding me to read in the classroom (because it was making the other children feel bad). So I painted on the wall. Then she got upset with me for exercising my artistic talents. So during morning recess the next day, I took off my shoes and stepped in mud. (Back in the days of three recesses per day!) Then I took my sock off and put it inside of her peanut butter sandwich, so during lunch she took a bite of my big ole muddy sock. Then my parents got called and I got to go home. The way my mother tells this tale, it's hysterically embarassing.This was the first of two schools I was to be expelled from before my parents sent me to a g&t Catholic school for a few years, until we moved.
Needless to say, they're all thrilled I have a strong willed, creatively naughty, child myself now.
my 3 year old cousin, jonathan, apparently overheard his mother and my mother discussing my getting fired a couple weeks ago. he was quite confused and sad, because he thought that i was consumed in flame and went to heaven because i was late to work. he asked his mom (my aunt) about it, saying 'how come jeremy got fired? when daddy was late, he didn't die.' he was relieved to see me last sunday, where i heard the tale for the first time.
When I was in 3rd grade there was a day where I was being particularly talkative. Considering that I was the shyest kid in the class, I wonder how I came to that assumption. In any case, at the end of the day a note was pinned to my back by my teacher. She gave me specific instructions to give the note to my mother. I figured it was a bad note so I reached around as best I could and ripped the note off my back and threw it into the gutter. The next day, my teacher asked me if my permission slip to the zoo had been signed. I didn't get to go to the zoo that year.A couple of years later, I was in a private Christian school that had about 72 students ranging from grades 1 to 10. This time I was sure to get my permission slip signed. Although, while at the zoo I stepped away from my group a bit to get a beverage, and they were gone. The direction they were headed was a four way intersection -- No sign of them. I saw another group from my school near the vending machines and joined up with them. By the time we boarded the bus home, many of my classmates claimed that their whole trip was ruined because they had to search for me rather than get ice cream, and other such fun activities. Some of the "big kids" even stayed behind to look for me. To this day when I go back there, I can hear them calling out my name.
I can't tell you what I was mad about but I got so mad in school that I took my scissors out of my cardboard pencil box and cut my bangs off (lucky for me the rest of my hair was intricately braided out of reach that day). I can remember holding them in my fingers, so very blond back then and so very fine, and thinking that I was going to get in big trouble for doing it. I hid the bangs in my pencilbox- my mother discovered them there when she came to pick me up because the teacher called her...
thanks. that story made me laugh. I needed that.
in my rocky grade-school years, i had my fair share of notes to mom and dad, mostly about some form of trouble i had gotten into. in 3rd grade, i was given a note to bring home to my parents. i didn't open it, but i didn't give it to them either. still being a bit naive about the workings of parents and teachers, i didn't put it together that no repercussions from this deceptive maneuver probably meant that i wasn't exactly clear on what the note contained.
apparently, it was a letter informing my parents that the school was pulling kids out of classes and forming an entire class of 'gifted' students, instead of spending one day a week with 'gifted' kids from other schools. and they wanted me.
my parents did eventually find out about it, and i got to join the gifted class. but i also got in trouble for not giving them the note. grrr.
When my little sister was in 2nd grade, the 'picture lady' came in to teach them about michelangelo. She had them design christmas cards laying while laying on their backs, cards taped to the bottom of the desk. Following Michelangelo's other techniques, she created a nativity scene of the holy family totally in the buff. When my mom opened that card on Christmas morning, much hilarity ensued, i think we all giggled through church that mnoring. I love little kids.
So I was giving blood at a high school yesterday... it was official with red cross people, don't worry. Anyway, the kids were handing out refreshments and making sure people weren't passing out and the such. When you give blood they usually give you something that tells you don't give blood again until such and such date which is always 56 days from the day your giving blood on. Now, I have a hard time with dates and math, but I'm pretty sure there are a lot more days than 56 between yesterday and August 2nd.
My blood was rejected on Friday. this is the third time in a row that I've tried to give blood and been rejected. Rejection #1= low iron. Rejection #2= low blood pressure. Rejection #3= irregular pulse. Now, I have successfully given blood as many times as I've been rejected, but I am starting to think that their is a conspiracy on the part of blood drive workers to mess with my head. I think that they have pictures of me at Blood Drives across the country with instructions for rejecting me in varied creative ways....
I used to be a donor in the UK but they will not take any offerings from me over here (Mad cows in Chicago? Moooooo!)
Apparently I'm a good bleeder. Good veins. Also, very high iron. I don't bruse... although I can think of encounters with blvd when I wish I did, just to be even. =]
I will take you down one of these days... (but it has been a really long time since I tried)
somehow, for some reason, i got stuck in a drainage pipe when i was a kid, don't ask me how i got there, but i did, i can't remember how i got out either, but i'm sure i did....i got stuck in a lot of things when i was a kid. It's kindof a let down now that i think about it.oh! oh! oh!
in second grade, we were playing this kind of relay race and what you did was run to this pile of clothes, put something on, run back and take it off, then the next person would put that on, run down and put another item on, so i ran down, put on a pair of shorts ran back took off my shorts, yeah, the extra pair of shorts and my shorts, hellooooooooooooooooooooo nurse!
I have always been fixated by sports and balls. And so:When i was young, Id always spend the day at my mom's jewelry store. I think i was about four or five when i decided that sticking things up my nose would be cool. I tried little beads and trinkets and anything spherical i could find. I got a pearl stuck in there and had to goto the hospital to get it removed. When I wasnt at the jewelry store, Id be home with my grandparents living below me, checking in often. Id always have channel 9 tuned in watching the afternoon cubs game. I was probably about five or so when I decided that i wanted to play a real baseball game (with my imaginary friends, Id imagine) in our living room. I got my balls and glove and plastic bat and started hitting the hell out of everything. The realism wasnt good enough, though, so I got a red permanent marker and made a baseball diamond with little squares for bases (pentagon for home plate), and drew straight lines to connect them. My mom was super pissed when she came home Later, when i was much more intelligent and mature, but still stupid, I decided that throwing a ball up into the air and catching it in my mouth would be a fun thing to do on a boring day. It was a little bronze ball from some dinky baseball game. After a few tosses, the ball got stuck in my throat. Couldnt breath for a good 15 seconds and was completely panicking. Ended up stuffing a pencil or something down my throat like a ramrod until it painfully went down. It scared my crapless.
That sounds about as stupid (no offense) as some of the things I did as a kid. One of the more memorable was this: I had seen the characters in Sesame Street, when they were shocked or afraid or whatever, fall straight backwards from the little puppet board, and it is implied they fall flat on their back. So one day, standing in my front yard in Denver, when the ground was still all hard and frozen from winter, I am standing upright and decide to fall flat back on my back to see what it was like. As you may have guessed, I hit my head so hard I passed out. When I came to, I was staring at the sky and in a tremendous amount of pain. I hurt for weeks after and the back of my head was all swollen up and bruised from the impact. I didn't even tell my parents because I felt so stupid.Years and years later, in Gehring's theater class (cool class that was), we had to do a trust exercise and fall backwards right into our partner's arms. Needless to say, I could only go a few inches each time without freaking out, which perplexed Kristin. No way would I have told her the real reason for this.
I also fell through a fish aqaurium when I was old enough to know better (I think I was 12) and had to get 15 stitches.
I remember that my parents would bring me to a lot of carnivals and state fairs when I was really little. This is probably why I picked ConeyIsland for my diner name. Anyways, in Marquette, MI, a small carnival would roll into town every May and I would beg my parents to drive by the fairgrounds to check out what rides were there. Major moments! It was like a giant toy store to me. I became fascinated with two rides in general: the Zipper, a mammoth piece of machinery that was made for extreme riders. And, the Roll-O-Plane, which I THOUGHT was more in my league.Every year, I didn't have the guts to ride the Roll-O-Plane. Until one year I kept telling myself on the way to the fair that "I gotta ride it" - "I can't be a sissy" - "I can do it". When we got there, I sat and watched the ride for a good 15 minutes...analyzing it's every move and tuning in to it's unusual spins. Then my Dad and I made our way to the gate of the ride. I barely made the height requirements. The next thing I know, I'm on the ride, eyes popping out of my head with a white knuckle grip. When the ride was over, I was completely speechless. On the ride home that night...you couldn't wipe the smile off my face.
Coney, I know exactly what you mean... I was the same way with Montezuma's Revenge at Knott's Berry Farm.And Cinnamongirl, I totally used to do that same muppet trick! I wonder if the muppets don't do that anymore for that very reason... haha. (I don't know if they do or don't do that trick anymore.)
When I was in Jr. High my friends and I would go to Knotts after 6 pm (it was really cheap after 6 pm), and we'd just ride Montezuma's Revenge over and over during the last hour that the park was open, where there was no line. Damn, that was fun.
eating dinner at my aunt and uncle's place tonight. Nathaniel, who is 3, runs over to me and reports that 'Madison (his older sister who is 5) fell down on the stairs and got hurt.'to which i reply wryly 'THAT is a travesty'.
he looks at me and says 'No its not. Its a boo boo.'
Flashback to July of '88: the world was still two years away from U2's Joshua Tree, and I was just shy of starting 5th grade. I'm full of summer energy, running around the main floor of our house. Our house had hardwood floors, which any kid will tell you is plenty good amusement in stocking feet.Basically, I'd do a running jump, slide across the room, and repeat the procedure until mom kicked me out into the yard. The time came for mom's intervention, and I made a bee-line for the French doors in our dining room, off the kitchen, that led to the deck and backyard. Having probably had one or two too many popsicles, my brain was too sugared-up to judge distance. I put my hands out, and my right arm effortlessly blew (ninja-style, wrist first) through one pane of glass. Blood EVERYwhere. I freak, mom comes running in from doing dishes, wraps a dish towel around my wrist, and carries me over to our neighbor's house (the neighborhood doctor). Doc takes me to the office and stiches me up, saying how lucky I was that I passed right over the veins in my arm. Had I hit them, I'd have "been dead in about 15 seconds".
The moral of this story was taken to heart--for about a week--until I did the same thing again (same door, same window, same hand). This time, my right thumb took most of the window (clearly not life threatening, but all I remember, is screaming, counting to 15 a few times, and mom saying "Oh Jess! Not AGAIN!"). Neigborhood Doctor takes me back to the office, and puts my arm in a cast (to keep the thumb from moving, says he, but I'm thinking he was hedging his bets).
Ol' Dad had to take apart the whole door again to put another pane of glass in, and I was stuck with a cast for the rest of the summer, and some pretty cool looking scars on my hand to this day.
So I was maybe about 11, and I wasn't one of the cool kids in the neighborhood growing up, they were all a few years olderr than I was. But they had a skateboard ramp set up, a three-foot high half pipe, which isn't really good for skateboarding, but great for bike jumping. Well, they're all jumping off this thing like crazy, and one one of them dares me to jump off too. Now, I was a little scared, seeing how high they were going, but come on, one of the big kids had dared me to. So I gritted my teeth and raced toward the ramp. I flew up into the air....I should probably tell you at this point that we weren't really rolling in dough as a kid, and so my bike was an older Schwinn BANNANA SEAT.
I couldn't walk straight for three days.
i remember when i was younger, i sucked at skateboarding. i could use it for transportation, but i couldn't ride ramps or anything. unfortunately, all the kids in the neighborhood built ramps and skated them. so i started jumping the ramps with my bike. i remember one they set up that was pointed at a ditch about 5 feet deep. the ramp was probably 4 feet high. which, when you jump off it, gives at least a 7 foot drop after takeoff. i was probably 10-12 feet in the air and i felt pretty dang cool.my only real injury came from a time when the handelbar grips had slid up the metal bars, and the hollow ends were exposed. i ran into a curb, the wheel (and handlebars) twisted and i jerked forward, and took the hollow pipe right in the mouth. i still have a scar on my lip and my gums from it. that hurt.
that totally must have hurt, I hated the hollow ends to the bike handles when the rubber grips slid up, espcially because they always got full of dirt and stuff. Most of my childhood injuries came from bikes, but none were very exciting, scraped knees, painful leg groin area, you know the usual. My major injury didn't come until high school when I broke my leg, and no greenwood did not break it it just happened when we were wrestling, my orthopedic surgeon claims he doesn't know how I did it because it was the hardest bone he's ever seen in his life, it took him 6 hours to drill through it, and it normally only takes 2-3, oh and for those who don't understand I have a metal rod in my leg because the bone wouldn't set properly, and yes it sucked a lot.
That leg thing was pretty freaky and not very funny. It _was_ funny when that kid Adam tried to jump the fence on the north side of Von and ripped his leg open.
Yes it wasn't funny when I busted my leg, what really wasn';t funny was that everyone ws just staring at me and it wasn't until I yelled, "I broke my leg someone go call 911" that anyone even did ANYTHING, it's bad when the injured guy is the only one with the common sense to do something. But whatever I didn't lay there that long so it was ok. And yes it was funny when Adam cut his leg open, although the chunk of skin he left behind on the fence was kind of gross.
