This thread got me thinking of an idiotic notion I had when I was a kid. It’s something really stupid and pretty sad (but now funny in a lame sort of way) I thought of to get my dad’s attention. So, here’s the story:
My mom and dad divorced when I was 2. It has always been readily apparent to me and my mom that my sister is his favorite. I really, really wanted his attention growing up, so in 2nd grade I got it into my head that if I had a wasting, terminal disease he’d finally pay attention to me and realize the error of his ways.
So I spent hours researching all the diseases I could think of until one fell into my lap: leukemia. I needed to get leukemia. I tried really, really hard, but it just didn’t work out. Little did I know it wasn’t something you could catch.
But one day I noticed a little sore on my forehead. Then another cropped up a week or two later. I was beyond delighted. They just wouldn’t go away and they were itchy, but worth it. So I showed my mom and she took me to the doctor, who told me I had a skin problem called psoriasis.
Psoriasis! Yay! An actual, honest-to-goodness “condition.” A disease! Finally my dad would realize that I was on death’s doorstep. I told all my friends. They were suitably impressed. I told my dad, too. He was…not. Apparently he has it, too. It’s hereditary. And basically glorified dandruff. Dammit.
Luckily for me, it mostly went away. And I didn’t go back to the drawing board. Unluckily for me, I still remember this and am now deeply embarrassed for my lameness. However, it did give me a greater appreciation for why kids might lie.
Anyway, tell me – did you do anything as a kid to get attention that really embarrassed you later? If so, feel free to share.
I lied about what beeps and bloops I could hear on hearing tests so I could get out of class in elementary school and hang out with the speech & hearing lady, just like my brother did (who had a real speech impediment).
The good news is that I don’t remember any big “reveal” so the pathologist must have figured me out, told my mom and I just stopped going to visit with the pathologist. No public embarrassment.
When I was six or seven years old, if I wanted to talk to an adult and they were busy talking, I’d step on their shoes. It always got an angry reaction–but they also instantly asked me what I wanted.
I would give myself bruises for attention. I even had a short metal pole I’d hit myself in the arm with. Also I’d slam a trunk lid on my arm or leg and then run crying to my grandmother, pretending it was an accident just so she’d hold me and baby me.
The grown up me finds that incredibly sad.
I was a very smart little kid and I was not shy about letting people know just how “book smart” I was. In retrospect, I was nothing more than a smart ass, still I was charming so that took the edge off it
But when I think of how left wing some of my ideas were, well I was a 8 year old leftist, you can imagine how embarrassing my ideas and statements on how to run the world were
One minor one that still makes me cringe when I think about it:
I was about 12 (old enough to know better) and my Mom was talking to a friend while my sister’s and I were waiting for her in the car. She had turned the radio on for us, but it seemed like she had been talking for hours.
John Denver came on the radio and I sang along…loudly “Take me hooome”…then quietly “country roads”.
THe other one, when I was 8 or 9, I had a fried hit my index finger with a book until it swelled up so I wouldn’t have to go to piano lessons and could stay home while my favorite grandmother was visiting. That finger is still crooked 40 years later.:smack:
I have unusual control over my tongue. I can roll it, and I can turn it upside down, either left over right or right over left, and as a young child I would demonstrate this to anyone. I was very vague on the idea of even plain vanilla penis-in-vagina sex, let alone oral sex. Fortunately, I had quit doing that several years before Deep Throat came out.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAH, that’s cute. Unfortunatly deaf kid speech therapy is NOT FUN. In Train Go Sorry, the hearing author (whose father worked and lived at a Deaf School, where she was reverse mainstreamed in a class of deaf kids) faked a lisp so she could discover what went on in speech lessons.
In kindegarten, the teacher would ring a big bell when it was time for us to go inside during recess. I was in the sand box with this boy, and he was so excited for some crazy reason that he threw a beachload of sand all up in my face, into my eyes. The pain was so horrendous that my wails rang throughout the entire world (yeah, that was me). In my memory, it seems like the whole school flocked to my rescue, the teacher half-dragging, half-carrying me across the big playground, my twin sister by my side, sobbing like I was dead. It was a major production, on the scale of Ben Hur. I think there was even some dramatic background music to go along with it.
After a few minutes of trying to get the sand out, the two kindegarten teachers gave up and called for my father to come get me. He did and I spent the rest of the day hanging out with him at his school. It was the first time I’d ever gotten to spend more than a few seconds with either of my parents all by myself, so that made the time seem magical. When we got home, I told my twin sister that we’d done all these wild and fantastic things together (like going to Burger King :)) that didn’t happen. She was soooo jealous. I know she was.
So the first grade comes. It’s recess. I’m not playing with anyone because I’m too cool for their reindeer games. But I’m bored and want some attention. So I head down to the sandbox and throw some sand in my face. Well, none of it really got into my eyes but I pretended that it did. I did a faux-cry that any grown adult could have spotted a mile away and ran off to the teacher. That teacher took one look at me and told me to not be such a cry baby, now go somewhere and play.
I’m not real embarrassed by it, but it does make me kinda sad that I would resort to such a stupid trick just to get some adult attention.
In my barely-pubescent skivvy-wearing {look unnervingly like a girl} phase, I actually made for myself, and wore, a necklace of interlinked paperclips. I used to wear it when we went ice-skating. Even at the time I doubt I could have explained what the hell I was trying to achieve with that.
From age 9 to the end of high school (the whole 80s decade), I would watch the weekly weekend broadcasts of MTV’s “Friday Night Video Fights” and “Top 20 Video Countdown” and I would also watch and listen to Kasey Kasem as he did “America’s Top 10” on TV and “America’s Top 40” on radio.
THEN, I would write down the name of the each artist, song, album and record label in my notebook. I was very neat and meticulous with the writing and information. The following Monday, I would take it to school and show all my friends and discuss what the “hot tunes in all the land” were. This made me a popular kid, or at least I thought. It did help me approach some cute girls who wanted to know what’s good music to dance to.
