Pffft. Y’all got nothin’ on my childhood stories. I’ll try to do these in chronological order.
At about 1 year old, I received my first disciplinary action. We had these lamps with little knobs to turn them on and off. I decided to unscrew the knobs, and I was told to stop doing that. Of course I didn’t stop, and my mother gave me a time out. According to her, I turned beet red and just screamed with indignation, because who was she to tell me what to do?
Around that same time, I had this MAMMOTH orange pacifier, which I referred to as “dot.” I would suck on it vigorously, and then I would pull it out. And I would scream my fat little head off (I had a lot of baby fat), because someone had taken away my dot.
A little later on, when my parents were trying the restaurant thing again, I was in a high chair at the end of the table. As is not uncommon among littl’uns, I had a tendency to tilt the chair back by pushing with my feet against the table, so my dad had his foot firmly planted on a front lower rung of my high chair. Unfortunately, he lifted his foot for just a second … and WHAM! I was horizontal on the floor. My mom was in hysterics, I just kept telling her, “I’m fine, Mom, I’m fine.”
My grandparents have an inground pool, and once when I was about 3, I was sitting on one edge with my feet in the water, my mother beside me. I was sitting right above the thermometer that was in the water, and I decided I wanted to see what temperature it was. I leaned over a little further, a little more … My uncle had to jump in fully clothed to save me.
At a chinese restaurant, after I had outgrown high chairs, I was sitting in a booth and there was a large bowl of sesame noodles on the table. I decided I wanted some, so I dug the serving utensil in deep and yanked - up. At first nothing happened, but soon enough a handful of noodles was flying through the air, and landed on some poor fellow 3 or 4 tables behind me. We didn’t go back to that place for 10 years (and that incident is another story as well, but not as funny).
My little sister’s first words were “don’ bovver me,” which should give you an idea of how I treated the little tyke. In fact, my parents used to send me to this one house where a lady ran a daycare business, and this caregiver lady would give me various little baby toys that I was to pass along to my mother, destined for the new infant. I, of course, would have no part of this, and when the caregiver lady asked my mom how she liked the toys, my mother had no idea what she was talking about. When I was queried about this, I reportedly responded: “This baby gets nothing!”
Another good story about my sister. I was lying on my stomach watching TV, and unbeknownst to me, she toddled over to the kitchen, opened up the drawer, pulled out a wooden spoon, toddled over to me and mercilessly whacked me on the head with it. My parents would have had an easier time punishing her if they hadn’t been laughing so hard.
I actually locked the babysitter out of the house once. I shit you not. It was probably around this time that my grandfather started calling me Calvin. I swear, Bill Watterson might have just been following me around and taking notes, and you’ll believe it too after you read the next few stories.
A local sporting goods store, around the time of elementary school little league, had just purchased and installed and programmed a new cash register. I reached up and started pressing buttons at random, and I’m told I completely cleared it out.
I turned off the lights in a social security office. Again, no joke. This really happened.
I cut the cord on the house phone in the kitchen (back when phones had cords). Apparently while one of our au pairs was on the phone with her grandmother, too. Of course, by this time I was old enough to actually comprehend what I had done and why it was wrong, which is why this is really the last of the good, juicy stories.
