I ran out of options on the car repairs. The first car Mr. Legend owned was a '76 Dodge Colt. By the time we got married in 1981, we had rebuilt that engine twice (and the second time, we’d learned how to get the timing chain on correctly). We went on to do repairs on subsequent cars, but we learned the same lesson as @mbh : once you’ve bought the tools and spent time learning by getting it wrong the first time, paying a mechanic doesn’t seem as expensive as it did at first glance. And when I say “we,” I mean both of us - at one point, I took to wearing nail polish just so the permanent grease stains under my nails wouldn’t be obvious at work. Nowadays, I won’t so much as change my own tires, but at least I know how. I also know when a shop is trying to bullshit me about repairs.
I’ve committed (minor) crimes, but I’d forgotten some of them until I read some of your responses. I mean, drugs! Of course! Shoutout to @Procrustus on beating an open container charge - the only time I was ever actually arrested was a completely bogus open container charge, and the judge was so surprised I was going to contest it that he kept reiterating how low the fine would be. They dropped the charge.
My earliest dated memory is from Dec. 24, 1959. I was almost five. It was already dark when we got into the car to go to the children’s program at church. Mom forgot something and had to go back inside. She didn’t realize there was a crack in the kitchen curtains and I saw her put away the milk and Oreos we left for Santa. I realized there was no Easter Bunny either, but I didn’t tell my folks because I didn’t want to chance losing the candy.
Shortly after I began seeing my gf, I finished mowing my lawn and got a text from her asking if I’d come help her with a job in the horse pasture.
I wanted to take her over a refreshment. Her home was a 2 1/2 minute drive away. So I opened a bottle of beer and drove over to help her.
On the short drive over a town cop car just happened to be behind me. Concerned that he’d pull me over holding an open container, I quickly chugged the beer and put the empty bottle under my seat. He didn’t pull me over.
I haven’t found a tick on myself or my dogs in about thirty years, but even though we just had a freeze, it will be 65 degrees an a couple of days and the skeeters will be swarming.
I suspect we need all of those pests. Well, except bedbugs. I voted for ticks despite suspecting we actually need them. It’s only a silly poll. If i actually had the power to eradicate a species I’d be more careful.
When I was a teenager in Texas, our town changed the school zone start for a local elementary school from 3:45 to 3:15. This was before they had the blinking light, and old flattop parked himself in the zone and ticketed me when I cruised by at 30 mph. Still pisses me off more than 40 years later.
Traffic violations. I’ll admit that my foot gets heavy on a lengthy, unbroken straightaway. How can it not? You don’t want me to speed, break it up with some stop signs. I can and do stop for them.
My “other” from the traffic ticket poll: Back in the days when you had to pay tolls in cash if you didn’t have a transponder on your car, I got to the toll plaza at the Benicia-Martinez Bridge in the Bay Area, and discovered I didn’t have sufficient cash on me to pay the toll. So the toll taker handed me a traffic ticket. For a first offense the options were either A) pay a $25 fine + the $6 toll, or B) get a FasTrak transponder, which is technically free but you have to put a minimum of $25 in your FasTrak account, and they would deduct the toll from your FasTrak account, and the fine would be waived. Since B was effectively the cheaper option I went with that (They were clearly trying to encourage people to go that route).
I almost counted that as an HOV/Toll lane violation, but I assumed that was only referring to the special lanes one has to pay to drive in, and did not include bridge tolls.
I don’t fully understand anything’s place in the food chain: except that everything’s got one. So I hesitate to wipe anything out on purpose, especially while we’re wiping out so many things by accident.
I didn’t answer the “first memory” poll because:
What’s probably the first has so little left of it that while it may have been positive there’s no way to tell. The memory’s almost entirely proprioceptive, and very short: I’m standing up. There are vertical bars in front of me. I’m holding onto the one on the left with my left hand, the one on my right with my right hand, and looking out between the bars. I must have been looking at something, but I have no idea what it was.
The only sense I can make out of this one is that I was a baby standing up in a crib, and not yet tall enough to see over the crib rail, so that in order to see out I had to look between the bars. And maybe it stayed in my head, and in that fashion, because it was the first time I managed to stand up unaided and I needed to hold on to the bars to do so, therefore what was important was holding onto the bars and standing and that’s what stuck? If so, I think that’s a positive memory; though if I was afraid of falling back down, or trying to figure out how to get back down without falling, then I suppose it’s mixed; and in any case whatever emotion I was feeling at the time is long forgotten.
What’s probably the next two is one moment of watching my mother feed cats outside next to the house, which would have been positive; and another also brief moment in which I was trying to play with two slightly older little girls who lived with their parents in one end of the house I grew up in, and who moved away when I was two (after which we used the whole house); only I was physically too small to do what they were doing. That must have been frustrating, so I suppose it was negative, but it wasn’t traumatic; and I don’t know whether it was before or after the memory of my mother feeding the cats. (There are some other early memories I can’t date, but I’m pretty sure they’re all later than those three, because they’ve got a lot more words associated with them and are less momentary.)
The ‘other’ part of my traffic ticket poll was an expired inspection sticker. I may not have had to pay it, because I’d gotten the car inspected before the court date; but I don’t remember whether I had to pay, and I was definitely guilty.
Yeah, most of my childhood and adolescence I never owned a coat. I grew up in Culver City (west Los Angeles).
Born and raised on the west coast, and I’ve always said it with three syllables…as does nearly everyone I know. I’ve only heard the two syllable version as a joke.
I rely on my car too much to count on my doing the repairs properly. Plus, for the last 40 years I’ve lived where I can’t do any work on site. Why bother? Back in ye olden days, my younger sister had an automatic-ish transmission VW Beetle. There was one belt that kept coming off, and we replaced it ourselves many times. But that’s pretty much it.
Assume they are part of that since you were in a toll lane/road for which you weren’t able to pay the fee, feel free to re-vote. [/Dope Semantic Nitpickiness Syndrome]
As mentioned before, my first memory is of imagining a tiger in the clouds of a brilliant sunset. I even recalled the general angle and the fact that I was in the backseat of my father’s Cadillac looking out the left passenger window (this was long before child seats note-they simply put down a mattress back there). My mother said we were driving to Niagara Falls in May along either Interstate 90 or US 20/Ohio Route 2 in late May, hence the sunset would have indeed have been in the direction I recall it at that time of year. I was 10 months old.
Alright, I re-voted, although it seems kind of weird to me to lump that in with HOV lane violations (which is why I assumed it didn’t count).
Re: earliest memory, I have a vague memory of my mom picking me up from preschool in her burgundy Chevy Vega and taking me to Hardee’s for lunch. But I’m not sure how much of that is an actual memory versus a reconstructed/false memory just based on the fact that I know mom used to have a Vega and I know we would sometimes go the Hardee’s as a special treat.
What a small world, that’s my earliest memory as well, but I know I was standing in my crib waiting for Mom to let me out. It was early morning but I don’t remember if I’d heard her get up or rousted her myself.
My memory’s got no other context whatsoever. There’s only standing up, holding on, looking out – and no idea whatsoever what was in my field of vision other than the bars, and I’m not really remembering what they looked like.
Whether I was standing in a crib is just a guess. But it’s interesting that you also have a memory like that, but have a clearer memory and do remember it being a crib.
My earliest memory was also of being in a crib. It was a hot summer early evening, and I could hear people playing basketball on the driveway outside (we had a backboard and hoop on the side of the house). That’s pretty much it.
I have a borderline-narcissistic friend already, who will pretty much talk by the hour if I let him, with only an occasional “Uh huh” or “Really?” necessary on my part. But he’s a nice guy and enjoy his company, even if I’m occasionally miffed that he doesn’t ask me anything about my life. If he was my only friend, I’d probably still keep seeing him, just for human contact.
I’ve always said “coyote” as “kye OAT ee.” I can’t hear “KYE oat” without thinking of Yosemite Sam.
I usually use a spoon with ramen, although sometimes a fork to tackle the noodles, and then I just hold the container to my lips and drink the broth.
None of those car repairs are within my capabilities. Leave it to the pros, say I!
My mom did indeed tell my sisters and me not to wear our coats in the house because then we’d feel colder when we went back outside. I think she was probably right, or maybe it’s just the power of suggestion.
I voted to eliminate bedbugs. I don’t know that they’re good for anything or have any particularly necessary ecological niche other than bothering human beings, and they’re really hard to get rid of, so fuck 'em.