When my twin brother and I were in the incubator, I peed in his face. Only one person I know doesn’t find this funny. Sheesh. It’s not like he can remember it or anything.
And you’re female? 
When I was two, my parents found me on the sidewalk sitting and laughing and playing with my pretty new friend-a foot and a half long garden snake.
We had a park across the street but in the house there was no place to really play, since the kid’s room was mostly beds and dressers, so we used to take the kitchen chairs, turn them sideways, and use them to barricade the area under the table, which was our fort. I called it Fort Duquesne because I’d read about the battle in history class.
My two brothers and I used to take the same long-suffering chairs and put them down on their backs to make a train in the living room. We also had a Nature Club in the woods outside, that we would sweep the forest floor of with a leafy branch every day.
I also used to cook chocolate pudding and hide it from my brothers in the bookcases (in dishes, OK?). I’m pretttty sure I got them all out. Yep.
When my brother was but a wee lad, my mom saw my brother peeing in a full-length mirror in a bedroom. When she told him to stop, he said, “But the little boy in the mirror is doing it!”
My little sister just loved garlic dill pickles. We were visiting my grandparents, and there was one pickle left in the jar. Both my grandfather and my sister wanted it. I pleaded with him, “But Shannon’s an orphan! She only has one mommy and one daddy!”
This thread has me laughing so hard I’m crying. hehe.
Oh, gah, guys, these are hilarious. Can you imagine what a collective baby book for Dopers would be like? We could market it to the Chicken Soup for the Soul crowd and rake in the money – to be used for totally worthwhile purchases, such as placing a Culvers in my bedroom closet.
Other brother story:
When my youngest brother (we’ll call him Piggy Boy) was two or three, he and Brad (at about four or five; he can be called Ape Boy) were inseparable. They did everything together, with the exception of one monumental family memory.
My parents used to keep the regular Pepsi in the car, foolishly assuming that we children would never be able to break in and drink it. Piggy and Ape were messing around in the car, “liberating” cans of Pepsi. Piggy takes a duck dive and manages to kick the car out of park. KinderApe panics and actually does a pretty awesome action movie dive out the car door. The poor LTD (Piggums inside) rolls down the driveway, and crashes into the rear end of the tractor parked there. The car is totalled, but Piggy is not harmed at all. He does, however, continue to have exploits like this to this day, though he has yet to crash another car.
NurseCarmen is a guy.
Fantastic thread.
When I was in 5th grade or so, I got it in my head to bake bread. I was quite keen to follow the recipe exactly, so when it said “one package of yeast,” I put in one package. We were, at the time, getting yeast at Costco (wholesale foods), in 1 lb packages.
As a kid, my friend’s brother Craig was often called “Craigey D.” for whatever his middle name was. He apparently thought this was “Craig E. D.” because he disingeniously introduced himself to his kindergarten teacher as “Craig Ed,” a nickname he still bears.
My mother’s favorite memory of me is of when I was just learning to talk I would wake up and then lay there and name each and everything I could see. And then all the things I couldn’t see. And when I would finish I would begin making various combinations of the words I knew with ever increasing complexity. She’d just lay in her own bed and listen to me go through all the words I knew and then combining them in various ways.
Of course to embarass me she quote me as saying “Gramma got big boombas!” But it my defence it was true.
I also proposed to a girl when I was about 6. Ahh Rochelle, she said no. She wanted to live with her mother forever. Sigh.
[hijack]
Fern Forest, when I read that, I instantly thought of this:
“Oh!, where have you been, Billy boy, Billy boy,
Oh, where have you been, charming Billy?
I have been to seek a wife, she’s the joy of my young life,
She’s a young thing and cannot leave her mother.”
Just had to share.
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I was a precocious tot. When I was about six, my parents were having a fancy-shmancy party which was to begin right around my bedtime. Instead of going to bed, I put on my “fancy” nightgown – one that had a lacy frill around the elasticized neckline, which I could pull down around my shoulders to look like a grown-up lady’s off-the-shoulder dress, or so I figured. I topped this with the blue wrap-around skirt I wore over my leotard when I went to dance school, however, I wore the skirt as a cape around my shoulders. I put on my “princess” sandals (white patent leather) and pinned my braids up on top of my head in an elaborate configuration, and put on chapstick to make my lips shiny.
Then I went outside – I don’t remember if I crept out while my parents weren’t watching or if they knew and just let me get away with it – and went down to the end of our front walkway, and greeted each guest as they arrived by saying grandly (with an outflung arm, for good measure) “Welcome to the Lewis House. The party is about to begin. Please make your way into the delightfully decorated living room. And do be sure to sample the dip, it’s quite good.”
I remember this as if it happened yesterday. I also remember being quite flabbergasted at all the adults laughing at me when I was trying to be a gracious hostess! I mean, really!
My father tells this story about me (I don’t remember doing it). I was about to get a whipping and was on my way to the bedroom to “assume the position”. The telephone in the hallway rang on my way there. I picked it up and very seriously said “Our Father, who art in heaven. . .”
My father was laughing so hard he couldn’t give me a beating, especially since he had to explain to my grandmother (on the other side of the phone) why I was praying so hard.
This took place after my Mom had divorced my Dad and we were living with her parents…Grandma and Grandpa
My Grandpa would watch me while my Mom was at work and I a normal 3 year old did my best to bedevil him at every opportunity while he was milking the cows
Finally when he couldn’t stand it anymore he told me “Why don’t you get lost kid?”
So… he enjoyed about 20 minutes of blessed calm before he realized something was wrong…it was TOO quiet
According to HIM(the big fibber) I was around 300 yards away just about to go over a hill and be completely out of sight when he saw me and ran to catch up…when he got there he had all kinds of things he had planned to holler at me about but I told him…“YOU told me to get lost and I was trying to do it”
While that took the stuffing out of him as far as getting yelled at I still was placed on a hook on one end of the barn with my toes two feet off the ground until he got done milking that night
I was three years old when this happened
My sister Katie and I decided to build a haunted house out of scraps of lumber and cardboard that we found in my dad’s workshop. I think I was about 5 and she was around 4. Anyway, before we built the haunted house, I got ahold of a green permanent marker and wrote “Do Not Pat” on all the wood and cardboard. I insisted to my sister that we had to do this because if anyone touched someone else in the haunted house, the touchee might think it was a monster trying to grab them and die of fright.
We built the haunted house (which was basically just a maze, and it wasn’t even dark inside because it had no roof) and then got our parents to show them. My dad saw “Do Not Pat” written all over his pieces of scrap lumber and cracked up. I remember feeling very embarrassed.
My dad still thinks this is a very funny story and reminisces about it all the time (I’m 26 now).
Also, when I was a kid, my dad and I did a Y program for fathers and daughters that was called Indian Princesses. (Do they still have this? Seems politically incorrect now.)
Anyway, every year, the tribes of fathers and daughters from New Jersey went to Y camp together. Each tribe had its own cabin. During the day we’d do camp activities together, and at night, the dads would put us to bed and then keep us awake by smoking and playing poker.
Well, at the last dinner of the campout, every cabin/tribe had the option of putting on a skit. Nobody in our tribe was very creative, and the dads just wanted to skip it.
I was only about 6, but I apparently decided this was Unacceptable and took it upon myself to organize our tribe into doing a skit. I decided we could sing a song I learned in school that went like this:
Ice skating is nice skating
But here’s some advice when you go ice skating
Never skate where the ice is thin
Thin ice will crack and you’ll fall right in
And come up with icicles under your chin
If you skate where the ice is thin.
It was a winter campout, so I felt this was the perfect skit for us.
There were hand motions that went along with this song. I wrote down the lyrics, rounded all the fathers and daughters up, and taught them the song and the hand motions. I guess I was kind of a little Hitler about it. I can remember feeling very frustrated that the dads were such slow learners, especially about the hand gestures!
I didn’t notice it at the time, but my Dad says that the dads (who really hadn’t wanted to do some lame skit) apparently were so flummoxed by the idea of a bossy 6 year old who could read and write that well and who lectured them to stop goofing around and pay attention to the lesson that they all just kind of fell into line and did the skit. I think they were also stunned because I was usually so shy and quiet that they’d never really heard me talk much before, and suddenly I was directing a big stage production.
We didn’t win a prize or anything, but I hear that those dads still laugh about it.
We went to a Methodist church when I was a little 'un of about 4-5. As part of the service, the kiddos were always brought up in front of the congregation for a little minilesson.
One time the minister, who liked to use props (“manipulatives” is the teaching term 
), was using a candle to illustrate “lighting your light for Jesus” or somesuch thing. He was asking questions like “Can you light your light/this candle with lying? Stealing? Being mean to your brother?” blah blah blah. Fed up at some point, I loudly proclaimed, “Why don’t you just use a MATCH!?”
My dad loves that story because he said I was being logical. As an engineer/scientist, that’s a quality he especially values.
Gawds, parents and baby movies. There oughta be a law.
My mother delighted in setting up the projector and showing the old 8mm movies of me in three-cornered pants being taught how to walk by our collie (he would walk slowly, I would hang onto his fur and churn my chubby little feet around all over the place). They thought it was great that I could share this with my girlfriends. They then wondered why I stopped bringing girlfriends over to the house.
When I was… seven, I think… I told my sister that alligator shoes were made from alligators. She didn’t believe me, and went and asked Mommy, and was told that alligator shoes were in fact made from alligator skin.
I told her then that alligator luggage and handbags were also made from alligator skin. She was all of maybe three at the time, and quite reasonably asked how they removed the skin without hurting the alligators.
I told her they didn’t. They freeze-dried the alligators, and formed them into the appropriate shape. Baby alligators made one shoe each. Middle-sized ones became handbags, and the BIG ones… the MAN EATERS… became luggage.
She sat with her eyes huge, following me like the Word of God.
I continued in this vein by explaining that you didn’t EVER want to get ANYTHING made of alligator skin WET, though.
“Why?”
“Because if you do… well… those alligators will rehydrate, hon.”
“Rehydrate?”
“That’s right. Those alligators will absorb that water like a sponge… and swell up… and COME BACK TO LIFE!”
She looked at me, horrified. She’d noticed the great care Dad took with his alligator shoes… and asked, “But what if it rains?”
“That’s something you have to be very, very careful about,” I replied.
And that was the end of it for six months. I forgot all about it. We went on vacation… and it happened at a little motel in New Mexico. We’d gotten two adjoining rooms and we were all sitting around watching TV. Dad was taking a shower.
Dad liked his showers hot, by the way. When he came out, wrapped in a towel, a great cloud of steam came out with him… fogged the mirror… and in the frosty air conditioning, it condensed like crazy… and began to run in rivulets down the mirror… and drip onto Dad’s suitcase.
Dad’s suitcase was one of those old fabric jobbies, by the way – vintage 1960s red and black plaid pattern… but my sister had gotten the idea that ALL luggage was made of alligators, not just “alligator luggage”.
She promptly shrieked as if someone had fed her leg into a meat grinder.
We all (yes, me included) leaped to her aid, asking what was wrong. Mom promptly grabbed her and began searching her for injuries. She was waaay too hysterical to answer reasonably, and continued to shriek and thrash and wail about water, steam, Daddy, luggage, showers, water, Daddy, and how IT WAS GONNA EAT US UP!!!
We all looked at each other, quite confused. Mom finished the search, and found no gaping wounds or scorpions. We spent the next ten minutes getting her calmed down enough to tell us … that she had screamed because the luggage had gotten wet.
This confused us all even worse. You screamed because the luggage got wet?
“BECAUSE IT’S ALL GONNA TURN INTO ALLIGATORS!!!” she screamed again, spraying tears everywhere.
At this point, dawn broke over marble head, and I realized that I would be considerably safer if I were out of the room. I got fairly close to the door before Mom nailed me to the floor with a glance and two words.
…and over the next twenty minutes of comforting and questioning, my parents learned precisely why my sister was so hysterical.
You know what? Moms don’t honor statutes of limitations… sigh …and the only thing that saved me from having the crap beat out of me was the fact that, once the whole story was out, it struck Dad funny… and he never could stand to hit me if he couldn’t keep a straight face… and Mom was so irritated at Dad for having the giggles that she hit him instead of me…
My late grandfather was terribly fond of little plastic gewgaws, and used his grandchildren as an excuse to buy them – and yes, he always gave them to us to keep after he’d played with them for a few minutes. The guy was vice-president of a bank; he had to hang on to some dignity.
Anyway, one Easter, he took us out and bought all sorts of Easter toys. I believe the year was 1971 or so; I would have been around seven, and my sister was around two. Her big thing that year was an inflatable Easter rabbit that was bigger than she was. My great joy was the Aurora dinosaur models. Still, I remember that silly plastic chicken…
It didn’t lay plastic eggs; instead it came with some gumballs you were supposed to stick up its ass, then push down on the chicken’s back to make her lay “gumball eggs”. I did, and gobbled them down as fast as she laid them. Eventually, there were no gumball eggs, and I experimented with other small egg-shaped objects, including jelly beans and chocolate balls. Eventually, I lost interest and went in to assemble my Pterodactyl (with optional Battle-Damaged Wing) and made it soar menacingly across my grandparents’ living room…
It was still Easter. We’d been up hunting eggs by 7 a.m., breakfast by 8, rolling in toys and candy by 9, and by late afternoon, I was bored. My pterodactyl had attacked and eaten entire tribes of imaginary cavemen by that time; I was terribly interested in seeing how he’d come out against my Allosaurus, but that model was back home; a grudge match would have to wait. What to do?
That was when I remembered the chicken. Make it lay some more eggs to eat. I began looking for the chicken, which was nowhere to be found – until I remembered it was out on the patio. I trotted outside and discovered all the adults sitting around in lawn chairs making adult-talk; nothing to concern me. I looked around, spotted my chicken, still sitting next to my Easter basket…
(At this point, I feel obligated to point out that the geographic location was deep south Texas. My point here is that although it was barely spring, it was hot by early spring standards…)
I ran over and picked up the chicken. Ahh, plenty of heft – no need to load it. I put its little orange feet on the pavement and pushed down on its back.
Nothing happened. Instead of the brisk clickelick of the spring mechanism unloading an egg, I got silence – and a feel of mushy resistance. I frowned, perplexed. No jelly bean? I let up, let the mechanism relax, then pushed again. Nothing happened. Irritated, I pushed harder.
It seemed that I’d left the thing loaded with those little chocolate balls, not the jelly beans. Chocolate balls. In the hot sun, all afternoon. A wonder the ants hadn’t found it. Anyway, the chocolate hadn’t had enough time to melt, per se – not really hot enough – but it had softened pretty well, not enough to leak out, but soft enough to be forced out under the proper circumstances. When I pushed down, the chicken finally excreted a thin tailing that, upon reaching the pavement, coiled brownly up in a little pile, like–
I was completely blown away. Here I’d just expected that a jelly bean egg was stuck in the chicken’s clockwork bowels, only to discover that my plastic poultry could produce a plurality of biological functions.
“Hey, NEAT!” I cried gleefully. “My chicken just POOPED!”
All four adults sharing the patio with me abruptly looked up from their conversation. I noticed this, and mistook it for interest. I put the chicken down again and pushed; it obligingly repeated the phenomenon. “Didja see?” I cried. “Didja see?”
Looking back through my memories through a child’s eye, the expressions on their faces still kind of amuse me. My grandmother’s face indicated that her entire brain just kind of locked up on her from sheer shock. My father, on the other hand, had his mouth hanging open and looked kind of like he wanted to laugh, but was wondering whether or not he should swat me for appearances’ sake. Mom got a firm set to her jaw and glared at my grandfather – (did YOU buy him that thing?), and my grandfather looked most confused of all – partly amused, partly shocked, and partly like the captain of the Exxon Valdez preparing to meet with the press --“Well, it wasn’t supposed to do THAT…”
I can correctly interpret these expressions only now, as an adult. As a child, at the time, I simply assumed that they were as blown away by the magic of the phenomenon as I was – as if Pinocchio had become a real boy, or the Tin Man of Oz had suddenly needed to take a leak or something. Merrily, I proceeded to hop my little plastic chicken around the pavement, leaving little piles of confectionary crap in its wake. Just as the adults were regaining the power of speech, it occurred to my sister, who was sitting nearby, that the chicken’s leavings …
…were edible.
I leave it to your imagination what the reaction was by the Old People to a cute bediapered infant happily scooping up and sampling ersatz chicken turds.
I was not punished. Upon explanation, it became clear that I had not planned the event, didn’t know any better, and wasn’t even exactly clear on what all the foofaraw was about. My sister and I were washed (a little too vigorously; milk chocolate comes off skin fairly easily), as was the chicken; when it was dry, I got it back, along with the rest of the jellybeans. The chocolate, I was told, was no good; ants had gotten into it, and let this be a lesson about leaving your things outside.
I knew, of course, that there were no ants in the chocolate, but I kept silent; I was young, but not stupid. Chalk it up, I decided, to the weirdness that creeps in during the metamorphosis from child to grownup as the brain petrifies. No telling what their problem was. I mean, even the BABY knew it wasn’t REAL poop…
I didn’t look at the poster’s name for the last post, but when I got to the end and had that “stomach-back-laughing-hurt” thing, I figured, it’s gotta be–and of course it was. You’re very effective at conveying mental imagery, Wang-Ka. I don’t laugh at your posts, necessarily, but at the pictures that they create in my head.
Wang-Ka reminded me of the Kidnapping of Ted.
My sister Katie is 14 months younger than me. When I was little, I wasn’t interested in having a security blanket or any other such childish accessories. Katie was my exact opposite: she had a security blanket, a Nuk, and a teddy bear, all of which she treasured and held on to for dear life. She named her teddy bear Ted (creativity not being her strong suit).
Well, for whatever reason, I can remember being insanely jealous of Ted when I was about 3 or 4. It wasn’t that I wished Ted was mine. It was more like I wanted to eliminate what I saw as competition for my sister’s time and attention. She loved Ted, and so I decided that Ted must go.
So I kidnapped Ted and hid him on a high shelf in the pantry, in the big pot Mom used for boiling crabs once every couple of years. I remember thinking that no one would ever think to look for him there.
I remember the screams and the wailing that began when Katie discovered that Ted was missing. Mom, Katie, and I searched high and low for Ted. I remember a mixture of fear and curiosity overwhelming me as I wondered what would happen to me if they figured out I’d been the one to “disappear” little Ted.
But they didn’t figure it out. Ted wasn’t found that day, and I didn’t tell. Katie was inconsolable. I don’t think I was trying to be mean to Katie–well, maybe a little. Mostly, by that point, I think I was mainly terrified of what would happen if I turned myself in. My parents would probably ground me, and even at age 2 or 3, Katie could pack one hell of a punch.
Mom and Dad bought Katie a new bear exactly like Ted. She named him Fred. One of her favorite books was of two dogs or bears (can’t remember which) named Ted and Fred. And everything went along fine, even though Katie sometimes still pined for Ted. Mom and Dad were totally bewildered about what could’ve happened to him, but I guess they didn’t suspect me.
Until the day Mom found Ted in the crab boiling pot.
Of course, she instantly knew that I’d done it. I can remember her yelling at me, over and over again, “Why? Why? WHY?” I think I just shrugged. I’m not really sure I knew why I’d done it.
Katie and Ted enjoyed a tearful reunion, and he got bundled up in her security blanket with Fred. Two little twins, swaddled like infants. She still keeps them in her room that way, even though she’s 25 and in medical school. Little Fred lost an eye somewhere along the way, but otherwise, the bears and the blanket are in mint condition. Thankfully, she gave up using the Nuk a few years back.
My son just wanted to chime in and say that he thought this story was funny. 