I was watching my older brother give the dog a bath one afternoon. He had a tub, a brush, water, etc. I decided I could do the same thing, so I filled a pot with water, got a brush, grabbed a kitten and bathed it by holding it under the water with the brush.
My parents managed to save the cat’s life - barely. Needless to say, the cat went wild after that. We saw it around the neighborhood for years. Finally, when it got to be about 10 or so, it decided to come home and be a domestic cat. And the strangest thing was that it attached itself to me, followed me everywhere, slept on my bed, etc. I sat down to watch a ball game on TV one afternoon when I was a senior in high school and Pogo jumped up in my lap, curled up, purred himself to sleep and never woke up again.
When I was about four, I consumed most of a bottle of Excedrin before taking it to my mother and complaining, “The children don’t like the medicine.” Mom called the doctor, freaking out, and the next thing I knew I was dosed with syrup of ipecac, stripped naked, and put into the bathtub (with my little brother along for good measure). We both puked up everything we had ever eaten.
When I was…well, younger than four, anyway…I found some brown playdoh/finger-paint/foodstuff in my diaper and had a glorious time with it until Mom showed up. She took a photo of me to mark this very special occasion, and I’ll find it one of these days, yes I will.
You poor, poor girl/woman… (sorry, couldn’t resist – I know you meant indignant).
I was born in 1959, so our family didn’t have a VCR when I was growing up, but the story told by flamingbananas reminded me of when I was starting to lose my baby teeth. We had a dictionary that featured little index tabs marked with the letters for each section, so you could open to the entries for “C”, “T”, or whatever. I removed one of the tabs (“K”, as I recall) and told my mother that the book had a loose tooth, so I had performed an extraction. She wasn’t amused, and glued to the tab back in after literally “impressing” upon me how unwise I’d be to perform such an act of dentistry again.
Costumes! I forgot one. The nuns at the local Catholic church came to our house when I was about 6 to give me and my mom a rosary and scapular medal. I was running around the house in my Wonder Woman underoos and refused to put anything on on top of them. “They’re my costume!” I exclaimed proudly.
I was four and was spending some time with my uncle. I was climbing on top of a writing desk and then jumping off it, showing off my “acrobatic” tricks. The seventh or eighth time I did this, I completely wiped out and split my lip on the seat of a stool.
When I was still in diapers but toddling a bit, my preferred method of moving my bowels was to stand with my feet a foot or so from the wall, lean in, and press my forehead hard against the wall, letting my arms hang below me, and grunting as low and loud as I could. They say they were relieved to have me potty trained so they didn’t have to listen to the rabid animal sounds echoing through the hall.
After I was potty trained, when I first was using a grown-up potty (the kind with the oval-shaped seat), I was amazed at how it all just went away when you pulled the magic handle. I thought I could figure out how it worked, so pulled the handle and leaned my head in really close. As the pieces started to turn in a hypnotic spiral, I turned my head to watch, and got it STUCK in the toilet seat. I screamed bloody murder until my dad came in to turn my head back and pull it out.
Bloody murder echoes real loud when your head’s in a porcelain bowl.
When he was 4 or 5 years old, he and his mother went to visit friends who lived on a farm. He came into the house crying with tears running down his face. “What’s the matter Ronnie?” “The goddamned duck bit me!”
When I was little, like most kids, I had imaginary friends. I also had a pretend little sister that I named Olivia, after my favorite character on Sesame Street. I talked about her so much at preschool that the teachers and other students’ parents started asking my mother where her other daughter was.
Of course, a few years later, my REAL sister came long.
I think my sister was better at embarrasing things than me.
When she was three, before I was born, my parents took her to London Zoo. A man in front unwrapped a sweet and threw the wrapper down on the floor. Quick as a flash, my sister ran over, picked it up, and said very loudly and pompously, “You dropped this, Litterbug!”. Red faces all round.
At a posh family gathering in 1976 - a very hot summer - with aunts, uncles and grandparents all present, someone commented on the number of insects in the room caused by the weather. 6 year old Cleo (her real name!) decided to join the conversation and said “Bloody flies.” By all accounts, everyone ignored her until she’d repeated it several times. Then my Dad says, “we don’t call them that, they’re just flies”. Indignantly she says, “but that’s what you always say”.
