When I was a little kid, roughly six or so, we went to a family reunion at my great-aunt’s place up in Vermont. She had a huge spread up there – couple hundred acres – which had been in the family for generations.
Another thing that had been there that long was an old barn which was in desperate need of being knocked down. So, since there were a ton of people up to visit, that sucking was coming down. They tied off supports and rafters, and used trucks and tractors to rip the whole thing down.
When the dust settled, the fun began as the entire ground started moving. It would seem that the space under the old barn was home to thousands upon thousands of garter snakes, and they were all high-tailing it out of there. Nice, high-octane nightmare fuel for anyone phobic of snakes. Everyone at the reunion had come out to see the barn come down, so there were plenty of people around for a good, old-fashioned mass panic – dozens of people running this way and that, screaming their heads off.
And there was six-year-old me, running through the fields, laughing and scooping up armloads of snakes. I crammed them all into an old habitrail that my great-aunt had lying around the house. I probably fit a good 200 of them in there, and then in brilliant six-year-old logic, I realized my destiny: I was to become a great snake entrepreneur! I’d take this mother lode back to New Jersey where I’d sell them to the neighborhood kids for a dollar per snake, and become rich beyond my wildest dreams. I took that snake-packed habitrail and secreted it in our camper (after all, I couldn’t let mom and dad know about this…they had a stunning lack of vision, and were always shooting down my best ideas).
By the way – did you know that habitrails have a small gap in their construction near the bottom? I didn’t. It’s fine for containing hamsters and gerbils, which are too big to fit through. Snakes, not so much.
It took about two days of hunting before my family was reasonably sure that there were no snakes left in the camper. My folks were decidedly not at all pleased with me.
I was about 7 and trying to be a good kid, so I was changing the toilet paper.
Do you know that if you hold on to the toilet-paper-and-little-spool combination only by the outside of the toilet paper, the little spool can slide right out? And did you know that if you had just flushed the toilet, that little spool can go right down the tubes?
I didn’t. This is why I’m to this day inhibited about changing the toilet paper while any actual toilet activity is going on. I’d rather wait until later when I’m gargling or something.
I have no memory of this, but I am told that when I was a toddler, I had a great time playing stickum with my family’s Christmas card stamps. They were probably 8-cent stamps at the time, but still.
For no apparent reason when I was about eight, the phrase “God how boring” became the oh-so-witty bons mots du saison at school.
On a visit to my grandparents’ village, my mother dragged us along to church, and was informed that kids could be absented from the service to a room in the belltower to participate in fun, craft-based [del]propaganda[/del] religion-themed activities using poster paints, glitter, glue, etc.
Finding church services tedious beyond belief, I was absolutely delighted. To express this delight, I turned to the Sunday School teacher and said, with a smile:
“God how boring!”
The injustice at the remonstration by my mother burns to this very day. I had to go to the service instead. They just didn’t understand yoof-speek. :mad:
The first one to pop to mind (one out of many) was when, to be trendy and cool, I decided to bleach my jeans.
… aaaand I decided the best possible place and time to bleach my jeans was in the bathtub up at our family cabin, which was designed and built by my architect grandfather and watched over, hawk-like, by my grandmother. The place was and is fabulously fun and beautiful, and to my grandmother, it was a santuary where everything stayed clean and well-ordered. My mother and aunts were always on edge about us kids tracking in sand and dirt, not putting toys away, etc. I understand NOW why they were so anal about everything, but at the time I did not.
So everyone went off for a hike and I was given permission to stay behind, playing on the beach. I came in, dumped God only knows how much bleach into the tub, ran a little water and threw in my jeans. Instead of getting that acid-washed look, big white splotches started showing up amid scraggly lines of blue. Panicked that it wasn’t working out, I drained the tub and squeezed out my jeans and then ran them outside to rinse them with the hose.
I came back in a while later with my sad, ruined jeans and saw that I’d splashed a lot of water onto the bathroom floor and it had bleached HUGE patches of color from the bathroom carpet. In some spots it had eaten away the pile. Then there was a trail of bleached dots from the bathroom to the front door, some on throw rugs and the rest on the hardwood floor.
Trouble, man. I was in a lot of it. You just can’t hide that shit.
When I was 3 or 4 years old, I always got up early on Saturday mornings to watch cartoons, my parents would still be asleep. I decided to be helpful and feed the fish…dishwashing liquid! Not sure what my logic was, but the tank was all sudsy and the fish were belly-up by the time my parents got up.
I was 5 or so. I was playing with some toys in the bathroom sink, and didn’t want to be disturbed. So I locked the door using the bolt-thingy. Then I couldn’t get it unlocked (and there was no way to undo it from the outside).
Mom had to coach me out the window (first-floor, fortunately). Then when my oldest brother got home from school, he had to climb in the window and undo the door lock.
I was 3-4. Some workmen had left a ladder propped up against the side of the house (same 1 story house as above). My 3rd brother (I was kid 4 of 4, he was kid 3 of 4) climbed up and was running around. He came and got me. I took a cardboard pocket folder that I had found, and I had some vague idea of using it as wings to fly off the roof.
Fortunately, the next door neighbor saw us running around on the roof, and called my mother, before I had a chance to implement this plan. Bit of a near miss there!
I was 10ish. Had just heard about how stepping on a rusty nail would give you tetanus and you would die a horrible death. Playing in the woods near the house, I managed to - you guess it - step on a rusty nail. It went right through the rubber sole of my sneaker and into my foot. While hopping around in pain, I stepped on the damn thing AGAIN. I was too scared to tell my parents that I needed a tetanus shot.
Fortunately for me, I had an annual well-kid check a few days later, and I was due for a tetanus booster anyway. Phew!
I can report that a jump off a 1-story house roof onto grass isn’t too big of a deal, especially if you roll when you land. I did it all the time, but I was 7 or 8 at the time!
These are great. They make the story about how me and a friend accidentally set fire to a bush seem a bit lame. We were using the bush as cover for our pyromaniacal experiments. Or the time another group of us decided that taking a running leap into this particular rhododendron bush was the greatest fun. Until we realised that it was home to a wasp nest.
That reminds me, a friend and I were throwing rocks at each other near my house (yeah boys are dumb!), and I accidentally hit the bottom corner of the glass sliding patio door with one. Nothing happened for a few moments, but then a spiderweb of cracks started radiating out from the impact location covering the whole door, and the whole outer layer of the door glass came apart in little pea-sized chunks (safety glass.)
I thought I was in huge trouble, but actually the flower room it led to wasn’t heated or cooled, so only having one layer of glass wasn’t a big deal!
When I was 7 my Mom used to leave me with a neighbor in the mornings for the 20 or so minutes I had to wait for the bus. It was a blustery winter day and I had just missed my bus. I couldn’t find the Lady of the House who was supposed to be watching me, and her husband was Asleep and Scary, so I did what any other kid would do: I ran out to the shed, checked the air in my tires, and decided to ride my bike to school in the middle of a blizzard.
Did I mention our driveway opened into a major freeway? Or that I have a terrible sense of direction? After biking down the highway for a while, and receiving some annoyed/alarmed honks from passing semi-trucks, I decided the ice was too slippery and I would walk my bike.
I of course had absolutely no idea how to get to school from my house. It was at least 5 miles. I ended up off the freeway and completely lost in some residential area. After about the 5th time circling the block with my bike, I knocked on some random guy’s door and asked to come in and use the phone. I tried to call my Mom at work, but couldn’t get through, so Mr. Nice Guy threw my bike in the back of his trunk and took me to school himself.
By the time I got to school, the day was almost over. My principal was perplexed but mostly amused by my academic dedication. He did not even bother to call my Mom. She didn’t find out until that evening, when she came to pick me up from the babysitter.
I’ve always been rather absent-minded, even (or I should say especially) as a kid. We were at a friend’s house, and they had a screen door on the back patio which was made of very fine mesh. I must have run into that sonofabitch half a dozen times that day.
I was nearly 4. Dad had taken all four of us to Sunday Mass; Mom was at home (I guess she went earlier). At some point, I noticed that Brother #2 was not with us. Asked Dad, who said that Bro2 was at Communion.
Well, I had no clue what “Communion” was, so I decided to look for Bro2 in the car.
Only, Dad liked to park a block away from the church (to avoid the post-Mass traffic jam). Across a fairly busy street.
I made it across the street just fine. Went to the car. Bro2 wasn’t there. So I headed back to the church.
I don’t really remember what happened while crossing the street, but I have a vague impression of BUMP, then I was sitting on the sidewalk in front of the church, surrounded by a bunch of people including Dad. Apparently I had indeed been hit by a car. Though some folks might argue :p, I was apparently unscathed.
Irony: I dislike Bro2 intensely (and wasn’t too fond of him even then). No clue why I was so concerned over his absence.
Funny (sort of): Apparently, Dad never told Mom of the incident. I was 18, home from my first year of college, chatting with Mom, and made reference to the event. She got THAT look on her face - you know that mix of horror and anger - and called Dad upstairs, asked him if it was true, and chewed him out. So he got away with it for 14 years.
Oh, jeez, I’d forgotten about the time two of my friends accidentally set fire to the woods near my house and I was the only one who had any idea of what to do.
The good news: I knew we should try to smother the fire.
