Tamara gave me another excuse to put off doing anything productive, and for that I thank her. I've been trying to think of six weird things I did as a kid and honestly, it was harder than I thought it'd be. I either wasn't as weird as I thought I was (ha) or I've blocked out most of the weird things I did. And I didn't want to ask my parents because I was afraid that would bring up a topic of conversation that would NEVER DIE.
So here it is. My list of six weird things I did as a kid. I tried to leave off stuff like eating dog food and running away with a pack of gypsies because I figure everyone did things like that.
1) I thought I could fly if I just thought a happy enough thought. I'm not kidding. It wasn't just "oh, wouldn't it be cool if I could fly by doing that?" but "man, if I could just figure out what my happy thought is I could totally fly right now." Like it was completely possible to fly, I had just never found my happy thought. Yeah. This could have a lot to do with why I've never fully grown up.
2) My friend down the street had one of those Fischer-Price orange and yellow teeter totters. You know the ones I mean? The ones that are made out of flimsy plastic for like three-year-olds? Well, I think I was six or seven (old enough to know better), but I decided to stand on one end of the teeter totter and have my friend push down on the other end. I think I thought I would fly magnificently through the air, do some sort of flip, and then land gracefully on my feet. Either that, or I had given up on the happy thought thing and this was my next experiment in Human Flight.
3) When I was in kindergarten, one day I forgot to get off at my bus stop and ended up riding it all the way to the bus parking lot before the bus driver noticed that I was still there.
4) I don't know how old I was, but I was at my Aunt Brenda's house, trying to go to sleep and when I opened my eyes a BAT was sitting on my chest, staring at me. I screamed and it flew away and TO THIS DAY no one believes that it really was a bat and not my overactive imagination, which, OK, it probably was but I'm still scared of bats. Also pandas, because of a scary dream I had when I was little about pandas sneaking out from under my bed to steal my stuffed animals and they had long claws and red eyes. I don't know how they fit under my bed with all those Gremlins under there, but they managed.
5) I used to hide food all over my room because Claudia did it in the The Babysitter's Club books and books were where I got all my good ideas. This went on for a while, until my dad caught me eating Starburst one night.
6) This goes along quite well with Tamara's protesting of the Vietnam War, but when I was in elementary school I was a total mini-feminist. I went to daycare, and whenever we took a field trip we had to split up into three different vans. The two blue ones were pretty nice, with air conditioning and a radio that got more than one station, but there was also a white one that had no air conditioning, worn seats, and no seatbelts and actually now that I think about it NO ONE should probably have ever ridden in that van. Anyway, at this daycare, there were way more boys than girls. And the (male) teacher would inevitably say, "White van? Ok, all the girls, you're in that one," and each and every time I would bitch and moan and cry sexism until one day he let us ride in one of the nice vans. You know, it still kind of pisses me off TO THIS DAY. In 5th grade, I also railed against the injustice of my male gym teacher picking all boys to help him set up for gym class because THOSE BOYS GOT TO MISS PART OF THE CLASS BEFORE IT. I also got into an argument with my 3rd grade (male) teacher about whether men or women were stronger and I just keep picturing a little, pig-tailed me running my mouth to this guy and it makes me giggle, especially now that I'm old enough to realize he was probably gay (mom? dad? help me out here?) and he was also probably wondering what makes an 8-year-old, middle class, girl from the suburbs SO ANGRY.
Anyway, I don't know who to tag with this, so if you're bored, do it, because then I can read it when I'm bored. EVERYBODY WINS.
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