As i have mentioned in a previous post, i LOVE stories. Combine this with the fact that i am now far from home and need some cheering up and you’ve got someone who wants to hear some especially funny ones. I was thinking about some kids i used to baby sit and how horridly funny they could be, and i got the idea to ask for your stories; about your childhood, your kids, or just randomly witnessed kid shennanigins.
As for the incident that made me laugh remembering it:
I grew up across the street from a moderately sized catholic family. There were three boys, one girl and a dog. The girl was a friend of mine and was also the oldest of the clan. She ended up baby sitting the boys, and through the merit of always being around her, so did I. When the youngest was about three and a half, he made the always interesting discovery of his penis. Not the diffrence between boys and girls, mind you, just his penis. In a very uptight catholic household, this was no minor occurrence. Each time he tried to talk to his family members about his newfound joy, he got a deeply shocked reaction and was promptly scolded. Far from discouraging him, he went to great lengths to find someone NOT in his family to entertain with his penis. Which of course, translated to ME.
I remember the start of it very very vividly. I was over for breakfast, an oft occuring thing, and he came up to me in his little footie pajamas saying “Hey! HEY! you wanna, um, you wanna see my penis!?” (he had a lisp at the time, greatly encouraged by his mother and father who refused to stop baby talking at him. I was the only person who spoke to him like a normal human being. the lisp made this situation all the funnier) I, stunned, neglected to make a reply, and taking this for consent, he promptly started working his way out of his footie pajamas. For those of you who have never seen a small child try to get out of one those monstrosities, i assure you it is hillarious in its own right, far more so when the child is trying to remove it in a hurry to expose himself before dad reaches the other end of the dining table. I promptly burst out into a giggling fit. He was sent to his room, but for the next three months or so the very sight of me prompted him to remove his clothing, and when that stopped he became enamoured of asking me to show him everything’s penis. I do mean EVERYTHING. examples: when peeling him an orange “Where is, um, where, where is the orange’s penis?” When climbing a tree “where is the tree’s penis?” It wouldnt stop, and he only became more and more puzzled with my answer that the (insert inanimate object here) didn’t have, nor did it need, a penis. Eventually, he got around to asking me where MY penis was. and this time, when i told him i didnt have one, he asked what i DID have. Luckily his father was there and, being much less fanatical than his wife, drew him aside and explained the diffrence between boys and girls. He never asked about my, or anyone else’s penis again. He was too shocked i guess.
Anyone else thinking what I’m thinking: Matthew Broderick on SNL?
My funny story. Kind of rambling, but here goes. I was 11 and visiting my sister, her husband, and my nephew who was about 2. Sara* had been in the process of potty-training Brad*, and had tentatively reached success. Remember this.
We went to a garage sale, and among other things, she bought a blouse. The next day, she wore the blouse to a job interview, and got an offer; she said at the time that she thought it had brought her luck. Later that evening, we see a car roar up to the curb. A frantic woman, with toddler in tow, jumped out, rang the neighbor’s bell, then was directed to our house. She rang our bell, and when Sara came to the door, still wearing The Blouse, she immediately began shrieking “That’s my blouse!! My sister wasn’t supposed to sell that!!! I’ll give you what you paid that’s mine!!!” And so on.
Somewhat testily, Sara said, “All right…give me a minute to change, for gossakes.” She let her, and her son who was roughly Brad’s age, in to the living room, then retreated to the bedroom and came out to exchange garment for cash. Miss Manners stood up to leave, pulling her son up with her…and a puddle was revealed on the carpet where he’d been.
Sara still laughs about that: she went to all that trouble to stop Brad from having accidents, but she didn’t take into account hysterical strangers and their poorly trained kids. :rolleyes: Oh well. It wouldn’t happen today, because no one would let an unknown quantity into their house.
But the most memorable was without a doubt the day I taught a workshop for some kindergartners at a school in New Jersey.
There was a little boy who was bothering one of the girls. Teasing her, making faces, etc. She put up with it for a while, and then finally got fed up.
She turned to this boy and said, “Tommy, you are such a jerk! And if I was old enough to sleep with you, I WOULNDN’T!!!”
I don’t actually remember this as I was very young, about four or so. But it illustrates that at an early age my Dad had my number and knew how to handle me without resorting to spankings and the like(actually I think I my Dad and I are VERY much alike)
I had either just started Sunday school, or was about to, and it seems I was misbehaving, being cranky, and said I didn’t want to go! Okay, a parent could FORCE me but Dad took a different tack. He brought me out of the superintendents office and told me no,I didn’t have to go after all, not if I didn’t want to. BUT…I would not get to be in the Christmas program, I wouldn’t be able to participate in the other fun activities the Sunday school classes did, and so on. Well, apparently after that I wanted to go! Good old reverse psychology.
grok: i read your post. amusement ensued. thank you.
and zenster: i didnt see it that way at the time, yet somehow, it has indeed helped me to make sense of my S.O. today. Not that i catch him franticly trying to wiggle his way out of his footie pajamas all that frequently…
This happened just the other night at the dinner table.
I was wearing my Boy Scout T-shirt, it has the the Cub Scout progression on it…Tiger, Bear, Wolf, Webelo.
My oldest (16) says, “Exactly what kind of animal is a Webelo?” We laughed a bit as we tried to figure out why the Webelo symbol looks like an ear of corn. “But what does it mean?” she asks. At this the 8 year old scouter says - “it means we blow, get it?” “you know, WE BLOW!?”
He never did figure out why we were laughing so hard.
Well, I have some funny stories of my childhood some of them based on the fact that I was really naive as a child.
*I thought that people lived at Disneyland. I once asked my mom if we could move to Disneyland. She must have thought that I meant, “Could we go there?” and she said, “Someday.”
*You remember those little cartoon phones that if you pressed their face on the buttons they would “talk” to you. I used to think that they were really real. I never used one because I was too shy. I used to think, “What would I say to Barney Rubble? He’s so famous!”
*I once commented to my dad that I didn’t like Snuffy from Sesame Stree. I was probably only four or five, and he said to me, “Why don’t you write a letter to Snuffy and tell him?” I was so ashamed of saying it, that I forced myself to like Snuffy.
*I used to call our vacumn cleaner (one of those with the lights in the front) “Cookie Monster” and would run away from it, screaming. It still doesn’t make sense to me.
A friend of mine works in childcare. A little boy had just discovered the joy of having a penis and all day, he would take it out and pull on it. My friend and her co-workers really didn’t know what to do, but thought that he’d outgrow it pretty quickly. He didn’t. One day, this kid takes out his willie again and starts pulling on it. My friend decides that enough is enough. But before she has a chance to say something about it, he walks up to her and says: “Now you pull on it!” My friend, while frantically trying to avoid laughing in his face, explains to him that a penis is a wonderful thing, but it’s really for the better to play with it when you’re alone, in your room maybe, at night. She thinks that an example might do the trick and asks: “You don’t see your dad walking around, pulling his willie, do you?” The kid pauses for a while, and then says: “No, but you know, once, he drank something funny and then walked around town showing it to people. Mommy got really angry.”
I don’t know how many times she’s told me this story and I crack up every time.
My three-year-old Anne in a public place held a door open–a man walked through without pause. Probably he didn’t even spot her. Anne waited, & then said, “You’re WELCOME!!”
My wee sister used to begin conversations by asking the other participant, “Are you dumb?”
She also used to ask, repeatedly, whether or not she would grow a penis when she got older. She reasoned that since her father and her older brother had one, she would probably need one too at some point. It took a while to convince her otherwise.
A prodigy-like early aptitude for trying to manage her conversational time more effectively. I like it.
My family routinely had a bowl with an assortment of mixed nuts sitting on the island between kitchen and dining room. Walnuts, almonds, what-have-you. I was probably 10 or so when I discovered if one was careful with his application of the nutcracker, applying the shear force directly on the main seam of a walnut, you could split the hull into two halves very cleanly. A lightbulb went off, and I focused on separating one as cleanly as it could. After some mishaps, success! The halves came apart perfectly smoothly at the seams, I snacked on the meat and removed the inedible interior bits to throw away. Then taking some glue, very carefully glued the halves back together. Lighter than the usual walnut, certainly, but looked perfectly normal. Buried it back into the depths of the bowl.
Some days pass. My father wanders through the dining room and pauses to snack a little. I’m in the living room reading a book, and perk an ear as I had been whenever anyone stopped at the nutbowl. And I hear this beautiful echoing crunching sound that’s impossible to replicate in text, a stunned exclamation of some sort from dad, who then dumbfoundedly was showing the rest of us this mutant empty walnut, which the nutcracker had basically made explode violently. I kept a straight face for just a little bit.
a relation of mine turned 50. we decided to have a family surprize party at her house. the youngest member of the family was going through potty training. the birthday girl arrives and the party starts. potty boy announces he has to GO. so he and dad go to the bathroom. his mom tells us we must all praise him when he come back from the bathroom. potty boy returns and we applaud and praise for about 2-3 minutes. he glows.
about a half an hour later birthday girl goes to use her own bathroom. potty boy notices the absence. he is told that auntie went to the bathroom. when birthday girl returns to the living room, potty boy starts applauding and chanting: “way to go potty, girl!” of course, we all join in laughing, chanting, and applauding.
I used to watch ALF on TV and when my dad got home (he was a trucker, only got home every other weekend) I’d tell him what had happened in the episodes he’d missed. Not just summarize - I’d act them out. Play all the parts, do the voices, get all the lines done right. I had a very good memory. Still do for things like that. Can’t remember names but can recite entire movie scenes.
My foster brother and sister (ages 5 and 4) just discovered knock-knock jokes.
In the house we lived in when I was a very young child we had black carpets in the bathroom (hey, it was the 70s, OK - don’t lay your interior design trip on me) and I had decided to do some redecorating with a tube of toothpaste. My mother walked past the door and registered her displeasure vocally.
Apparently, I referred to toothpaste as “oh bugger” for months afterwards……
I have another story from the same friend, but this time it involves her, her 3 y-o daughter and a bathtub.
She was giving her daughter a bath one night and suddenly realized that the little girl was, um, “enjoying herself”. Mom is stunned for a second and then asks the girl: “What are you doing sweetie?” The little girl replies, quite passionately: “Mommy, I’m tickling my wee-wee and it feels so good…”
Mom, trying to keep a straight face, told the little masturbator that it’s something you should probably do in private, when no one else is around. The little girl looks at her and says, completely calmly: “Mommy, could you please leave?”
When my oldest brother was a kid, once watched some Three Stooges and getting an idea, used the kitchen drawers as a ladder to climb to the top of the fridge, get a cake (There being no pie) and try to hit my mother in the face with it when she came through the door to see what the racket was.
This same brother at the age of 3, watched my father installing his brandnew hifi set, and then when my dad left the room to get a drink, took the dikes and cut every wire on the stereo off at the nub. Dad had to take everything apart and rewire it all.
When our waffleiron burned out, we made a gizmo with its guts, was a box with a light in it. As the coil heated, the light would go out…what we failed to realize of course, was that the coil was on the bottom of the box…the circular burn marks were on the carpet until the day we moved out.
I won’t go into the adventures with gunpowder, rockets, electronics cause that all happened when we were older.
