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May 19, 2000
An accident waiting to happen.
It's all the same right now -- arguments, recriminations, accusations, tearful apologies, pointless heart-to-heart talks... I don't want to talk about it anymore. So here is a diversion. Beth has a forum topic on random childhood memories running, and as I was reading through it, I realized that almost all of my childhood memories revolve around getting hurt or getting in trouble, or some combination of the two.
My earliest memory, I think, is of whacking my big brother over the head with a toy pinball machine. I think I was about two. (Right, Mom?) He took some Legos away from me. Don't mess with me and my Legos, man.
My other earliest memory is of falling down the stairs with my Weebil house. I have no idea how old I was. I don't remember it hurting, but I do remember having screaming hysterics when I hit the bottom.
When I was three or so, I heard the big kids using a neat new word at the playground. I went home and started saying it all over the place. "Shit! Shit shit shit!" My mom told me it was time for my nap, and I said "Shit, Mom!" She washed my mouth out with soap, and I swallowed the soapy water, if I remember correctly.
My mom used to find our bikes wherever we had left them after we fell off by following the trail of blood, or so she says. When I was in grade school, we lived in a tiny town -- two blocks. There were three other kids in my class. It made for excellent bike-races. One of the houses on the edge of town had a big, mean dog. It was always chained up, but we had no doubts that, if it were to get loose, it would eat us in one bite. One afternoon, the dog got loose and chased us on our bikes. I turned a corner too fast, hit a patch of gravel, and wiped out spectacularly. Scraped the skin completely off my leg in three places. Bled like crazy. The dog ran up and licked my cheek and wagged. My brother carried me home, and I spent the next few days on the couch because I couldn't really bend my knee.
Around the same time, my brother and I discovered a neat new trick: we had two old, brown, nylon sleeping bags. We also had carpeted stairs. Shag carpet, and a long staircase. My brother dared me to slide down the stairs in the sleeping bag. The front door to the house was right at the bottom of the stairs, and my mom's room was right next to the door. My mom heard a "Whoosh," and looked out of her room just in time to see a brownish blur go streaking down the stairs and crash into the door. If the door had been open, I think I would have slid right into the next town. That was way too much fun; I want to do it again.
I had more than my share of clumsiness -- all of the photos of me as a child show plenty of scrapes and bruises. There's one, taken after summer camp, where I look like a war orphan -- my hair was hacked off, because one of my friends had decided it would be fun to play barber. She cut my hair off so short I had to have a boy's haircut. (Very traumatic -- when people would ask my mom how old her son was, I would bite them, or kick them in the shins.) I had a blazing sunburn. My two front teeth and I think one bottom tooth were all missing, and I had a cast on my arm. (Some big kid at camp stepped on my wrist and broke it.) I was a mess.
I never outgrew the clumsiness -- yesterday I managed to knock over and entire cart of books just by resting my hand on it. (Made a lovely crash in the quiet library, heh heh...) So far today I have dropped books on my fingers, closed a cabinet door on my hand, banged my hip into the side of the desk, and cracked my knee on the printe shelf hard enough to leave a bruise, and tripped over my own feet three times. And it's only 11 o'clock. Last year I managed to dislocate my knee bending down to pick up my keys, which I had dropped on the stairs at home. I stooped down, my kneecap popped out, and I fell backward down the stairs.
I go through a lot of Band-Aids and ice packs. I have a half-dozen Ace bandages lying around the house. I am an accident waiting to happen, I tell you.
Posted by Mary Ellen at May 19, 2000 02:31 PM