Comments on: Three vignettes from childhood

By: Being Amber Rhea » Blog Archive » Class consciousness: all I can do is write my own story

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 17:25:37 +0000

[...] 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 [...]

By: Amber

Amber — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:25:08 +0000

Done. And, great story. :)

By: SnowdropExplodes

SnowdropExplodes — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:17:36 +0000

oops, I forgot to close the “bold” tag – can you correct that for us, Amber?

By: SnowdropExplodes

SnowdropExplodes — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 19:16:18 +0000

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.

By: J. Brotherlove

J. Brotherlove — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:11:13 +0000

Ha! I just thought of one!

By: Childhood Vignette: Eat Me » jbrotherlove

Childhood Vignette: Eat Me » jbrotherlove — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 22:08:24 +0000

[...] Note: This post was inspired by Amber. [...]

By: Sara

Sara — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:43:10 +0000

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.

By: J. Brotherlove

J. Brotherlove — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 18:03:45 +0000

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.

By: Rusty

Rusty — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 16:39:35 +0000

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.