Three vignettes from childhood
(1) When I was in kindergarten, they brought a fire truck to school one day for us to look at, touch, climb on, and be generally awed by (as 5-year-olds are wont to do). At one point all the kids started urging the firefighter to “do the siren,” so she did. Then one kid started crying. I wasn’t at all upset by the siren, and actually I thought it was pretty stupid for the kid to be crying; but for some reason, I felt a sort of peer pressure, and started crying myself just because he was. It seemed like the thing to do – even though I thought it was stupid.
(2) In 2nd grade, one time they brought a bull to school. Yes, a bull. I have no idea what the backstory behind that is, if there was even a reason or what – but it seems like a profoundly dumb idea, doesn’t it? The bull seemed pretty tame – but then, what do I know about bulls? (Not much.) I remember they had the bull tethered outside in front of the school, and we were all lined up to take turns petting it. When one little boy got up there for his turn, the bull licked his arm and left a big black mark – and the kid started wailing. Not out of pain, as I recall, but out of shock at being licked by a bull.
(3) When I was about 6 years old, there was this girl who was my age who my parents wanted me to play with. They knew her parents (don’t remember how) and I guess they figured since we were the same age, we should play. We only played twice that I remember – I went to her house once and she came to my house once. Her house was huge, had a pool, a guesthouse, they had a maid, and she had a pony FFS. Her room was very pink and had a bunch of stuff to do with ponies in it; she was very into ponies, which I found boring as hell. I wanted to play games where we ran around the backyard and got dirty and dug in the dirt and such, but she wanted to play all these girly games and not mess up her clothes. (Not that I wasn’t into my share of “girly games” – I liked to play house, and I had lots of dolls – but something about her was way too frou-frou for my taste.) She annoyed me. When my mom picked me up from her house, I asked about her family: “Are they rich?” My mom replied, “No, they just have a higher income than we do.” And being 6 years old and not knowing what that meant, but just knowing that it sounded like big adult words and a good enough explanation, I accepted it and that was that. It wasn’t until years later that I realized my mom had cleverly fooled me.
Here’s one I remember:
I was at Showbiz Pizza (which was way better than Chuck E Cheese). I can’t remember how old I was, but I’m guessing somewhere between 4 and 7. For some reason they had an elephant out front and were offering kids rides on it. So I took a ride, and smelled like elephant for the rest of the day. Elephant is a very specific smell that’s close to fertilizer, but not exactly.
LOL. Great memories. I swear I don’t remember many of mine. I’d have to sit in a quiet room with no stimuli (which rarely happens) to come up with something.
Also, lol @ Rusty smelling like elephant all day.
Great stories! And Rusty, I totally agree about Showbiz. It was way better.
My memories aren’t as strong as yours, but this is the first one that popped into mind:
When I was about 6 or 7, there were a group of older boys in the neighborhood who one day began terrorizing me and my friends when we were trying to play. (Shocking though it may seem, at age 6 or 7 I was not yet freakishly tall.) They were 11 or 12 and they kept harassing us, pushing us down and getting in our way, and wouldn’t let us get away from them even to go home. I got annoyed with it all, and when one of the guys tried to wrestle one of my friends onto the ground, I kicked him in the balls. HARD. And at that point they all decided to leave. I was a total hero for about a week.
[...] Note: This post was inspired by Amber. [...]
Ha! I just thought of one!
Here’s one that I’m quite proud of:
Aged about 5, playing in the school playground, things got rough and eventually, I ended up hitting another kid, and the teacher saw me.
I was in trouble.
Teacher came across, and stood us facing one another, told me I’d done wrong (which I agreed I had, although wasn’t given the chance to say so out loud) and then she demanded I apologize. I remember very strongly how humiliated I felt by the demand, but I also remember agreeing I’d done wrong and being quite prepared to do as I was told. I just had one condition, which I stated clearly to the teacher:
“Okay. But go away first.”
Teacher was outraged at my insubordination, and my best recollection of her words is that she said, “Well, I’ve never heard anything as rude!” I got into more trouble, but from my point of view, it was worth it, because I was standing up for my human dignity and I wasn’t going to be forced into an apology, but was perfectly willing to give one when it didn’t feel forced upon me to do so. I didn’t have the words to explain all that, but I certainly had the emotional understanding to experience it.
oops, I forgot to close the “bold” tag – can you correct that for us, Amber?
Done. And, great story. :)
[...] memories: First class-related memory. I’ve written about this one before, so I’ll just quote what I wrote then. When I was about 6 years old, there was this girl who [...]