Back before the Consumer Product Safety Commission started wagging its finger at anything that might be fun for dangerous to a child, I used to play with chemistry sets. When I got tired of ending up with seemingly the same strange smelling brown liquid, I began reading the manual and learning all that the planned experiments were designed to teach. Then I found my mother's college chemistry text in the attic, and studied it cover to cover. I was about eight years old by then. Eventually, that became my major at my first college, and my first career.
My childhood buddy and I used to pretend that we were dinosaurs. We would stomp around eating leaves off of trees and drinking out of mud puddles. I also remember drinking motor oil out of one of the puddles.
I was the same way when I was younger, although I never found a college textbook... I played with a lot of old chemistry sets. However, during my first year of proper chemistry, I wasnt wearing goggles and splashed chemicals in my eyes. I thought my eyes were going to burn out; it sure felt like it! I'm an only child and lived in the inner city when I was younger, so I wasnt really allowed to go outside because it was dangerous. I guess I've been a storyteller since I was born then, because the only thing I could do was make up stories with model horses and Barbies. I even nicked some of my uncle's old Hot Wheels cars and made up stories with them (totally unrelated to the cars themselves; for whatever reason, I always replayed The Lion King -- ). If the television was on, I clearly remember telling Daddy what was going to happen next --even if I had no idea. I had a 'babysitter' (she was eleven) when I was around three years old, and I would always cajole her into playing make-believe with my grandmother's old retro clothing. I remember riding my Aunt Jennie's pony Dudley for the first time when I was five years old. I started riding on my own about a year later and started riding competitively when I was thirteen or so. To this day, I still am very interested in riding, retro clothing, chemistry (although I'll never get close to it again), and of course storytelling.
I was picked on extensively by some of my older siblings, so I took out my frustrations on my little brother and other kids in school. I was a bully. I do remember getting fed up with one sister once and going after her with a bike lock, the big, solid metal "U" shaped ones. She hid behind a door in which I promptly put several holes in. I was probably about seven. I also remember getting revenge on another sister, can't remember what I was doing to her but she told me that it hurt, and I said "It's supposed to, you idiot!" That still comes up a family get togethers. Good times... EDIT: My older sisters have since told me that they are amazed I turned out so well, and we all get along great now.
I once had a horrible experience with a wasp when I was a li'l gurl. My mum used to force me to wear this hooorrrible pair of leggings that had straps to hook under your feet (Lolol, 90's-wear) and she'd just taken them off the washing line. I complained that they were tickling me at the ankles, so I rubbed them together, and then promptly screamed my head off as this MASSIVE wasp stung me and flew out of one of the legs. Euugh. I've hated wasps since, can't stand to be near them. One good memory is when me and my cousin went out with my family to the beach but the tide was out, and it was all mud and sludge, and there were these big squishy banks that we jumped on and we got thigh-high in mud. It was the best fun ever, we just ran and jumped in mud all day. On the way home, my mum made us wear black bin bags over our clothes in the car because we were caked in mud LOL.
When I was a kid, I believed that marshmallows grew on trees. I saw a marshmallow farm on Sesame Street, and since no one in my house eats marshmallows there was never a moment to correct the misinformation. I went to Paula Preacher's 13th birthday party across the street and picked up a a marshmallow from a said something like , "Funny, isn't it, how you can't tell which end connects to the stem?" Paula says, "What?" I begin to explain, very full of myself how marshmallows are grown on farms of marshmallow trees. You can guess what the reaction was....
Erm... I suppose going to Lego Land, and repeatedly going on the Big Dragon ride (I've completely forgotton its name) to see if I can stop myself from screaming... I only managed to stop it once! Oh, and I was riding my bike, got dizzy and fell off into a rose bush... got quite a few scratches... Then there was the time where I got told it was "wrong" and "naughty" at school to use my left hand and therefore was forced to use my right hand for everything... that was weird...
sad, sad story time.... i remember in kindergarten or first grade, me and a boy would always play together during recess. something action-y with guns, i'm sure. i dont know what. anyway, i had really short hair at the time. then it was picture day and i had to wear a dress, and the boy said "i didn't know you were a girl" then he said we couldn't be best friends and play anymore..... *whines* haha~
Oh god...where to begin.... I climbed on to the bunk bed when I was 18months to 2 years old...don't know exactly, fell off the ladder and knocked myself unconscious Not too much later on I was walking on my bankie across the tile because it was cold, only I slipped and landed on my two front teeth which led to 2 rootcanals with no anesthetic because I was too young and they did not want to risk it. When I was in preschool...I freaked out my teachers by drawing faces and flowers and things upside down. They thought I had some learning disability or something until they figured out I just LIKED drawing upside down and could do both equally well In kindergarten, I was sent to the councilor for drawing black hearts on my art project. They thought there was something wrong with me, like depression or abuse or some crap. Really...Richard had the red crayon so I used the black one no one else was using. When I was in first grade they put me in the remedial reading group because they thought I couldn't read. Reality was I read just fine...I was just too shy to read OUT LOUD. Once they saw how well I could write...they moved to the advanced group. By 4th grade or 5th grade (can't remember which) I got called in to talk to the teacher because she thought I was having my parents write my papers because she didn't believe I knew all the works I used. After about 5 minutes of talking to me one on one...she decided I really did know those words. In 8th grade, we were doing skits of Greek mythology. I was cutting Zeus' lighting bolts out of poster-board, flipped one over, and totally sliced my left eyeball open. A trip to the ER, dayglow orange eyedrops, and being told not to use my eye for a week (no reading or watching tv etc) and I ended up not being able to even be in the skit I can just keep going...
lol - i think drawing upside down is absolutely adorable!!! being able to cope with crayon subsitution = depressed. ugh - teachers tend to do that they never believed me when i tried to argue a case though... had to bring my mom and my social security card to jr. high school because the teacher didn't believe i knew my own ssn... that story made my eyes hurt.... owwww
sorry to say the history part, but it was considered 'evil' to right with your left hand, 'the hand of lies and the hand that satan used'. bah silly religion. Carmina That gave me a few laughs lol not the 8th grade thing thats just nasty
That used to happen a lot. Weird religious thing. On a side note, the word "sinister" originally only meant left. But with the association of left and evil...sinister came to mean evil.
Well, there was also a push to "train" lefties to write right-handed simply for uniformity's sake. That was before they discovered that overriding native handedness led to stuttering and other problems.
When I was a kid, dentists handed out lollipops to kids at the end of the visit. A rather dodgy practice, aye?
Sounds like recession-proofing their business to me...maybe today's dentists have a thing or two to learn
I remember drinking Coke for the first time. The fact that it was black really fascinated me. We used to put vanilla ice cream on the top of it. We were in the Philippines and it was my first taste of American culture. I was 7.
