Talk Thursday: Mea Culpa

Ohhhhh I'm in trouble.. You think it's all fun and laughs, but when your mother will probably be the first person to read this, ya get a little nervous...

I have fessed up to most, ummm, a lot of my childhood transgressions.  At the age of 21, I confessed to the Great Wooden Spoon Disappearance that occurred when I was approximately 3 years old. My mom and I lived on my grandma's property and she babysat me while mom worked. I have no clue what I did, but one day mom broke a wooden spoon over my butt. Determined that this would never, ever happen again, I stole all the wooden spoons. Not just from our house, but grandma's house too. I crawled under the house, dug a hole, broke the ones I could and buried the whole lot of them. As if this story alone doesn't show that even at the sweet age of three I was a hellion and wouldn't take no shit, you should also know that this is the age that I put the hammer through the fish tank, not once but twice in one week. (Some of you might think I deserved that broken wooden spoon, but rationale says put up the god damned hammers!)

My point is, there seems to be a statute of limitations on confessing childhood misdeeds. I sure hope that 20-25 years is long enough, cuz if not... it's going to be a lonely Christmas...

Second or third grade saw me as a latch-key kid. Yes I survived, no I never burned down the house, but holy crap! I don't know how I managed not too.
First of all, I LOVED McGuyver. He was my second crush ever!
Second of all, my step dad reloaded his own ammunition. I had hours and hours of unsupervised time in a garage FULL of flammable and combustible goods. I spent MONTHS trying to make that damned couch-fluff bomb. (mom.... I know you're shitting yourself right now.... but we're all alive.. and I'm a somewhat well-adjusted adult) (and hey, you LET me watch McGuyver and left me unsupervised...)

I should mention my first crush ever.... Flint.. from G.I.Joe's... My mom wouldn't get me Joe's... so when I went to my dad's house, I'd lift them from my little brothers. Mom found them, the first time, and made me give them back. After that, she never found them again. I had hours and hours of unsupervised time in a garage FULL of flammable and combustible goods. My favorite thing to do was to stand the Cobra evildoers in the sand and surround them with wooden matches (to be honest, the gun powder didn't burn well, and I lost interest in it fairly quickly) and I'd light one match and torch the Cobra with mom's hairspray... or lighter fluid (we bbq'ed a lot). (Again....you LET me watch McGuyver and left me unsupervised...and I think it's prudent to point out, if I'd had my own, I wouldn't have had to destroy them for fear of my theft being found out.)

At 12, they bought me a gun! But that's a story I'll save for Thanksgiving!

I am a SCIENTIST.... I'm curious by nature.. One of my mom's favorite sayings is "Curiosity killed the cat... SATISFACTION brought it back.." Not having a proper science kit, I did quite well with a stand magnifying glass, Exacto knife, and some hard, clear plastic sheeting that I made slides out of.. I would catch bugs, put them in zip lock bags, freeze them, then dissect them and put various parts on slides and store them in the freezer. I can't tell you how many times I got in trouble for it. Inevitably we would have company and my mom would go to the freezer to get ice, and find my experiments... Just think what I could have done if I'd had a proper science kit.
Also, in the name of science, I would catch bees, put them in little paper bags, shake them up really good, douse it with lighter fluid, and torch it. Instant fireflies!
I HATE June bugs. With a fiery passion.. actually, in this case, it wasn't fiery. Thanks to McGuyver, I learned very young what happens when you mix ammonia and bleach. FOR THE LOVE OF SCIENCE... I caught a particularly hissy June bug and put it in a ziplock bag, to see how long the bug could live without air... The fucker lived for ever!!!!  So I took a cotton ball and put ammonia on it, put it in the bag... took a cotton ball and put bleach on it.. put it in the bag... That damned thing lived for like 3 more hours... and science proved that when the leaders of this world go crazy and push the buttons, June bugs will out live us all.. the bastards.

You may say, "Now you're a parent, Psam... based on your own childhood, aren't you worried?"
Not at all. Though impulsivity IS an ADHD trait, mine also has clinical anxiety and therefore is too chicken to be anything like I was as a child.

You may think that I'm disturbed, wondering if I ever moved on to small animals, and if I'm a serial killer in the making... No.... Although I did go through a small phase where we played funeral a lot, combing the neighborhood for dead animals to give proper funerals too, I never killed any animals, small or large, in the name of science, or not.

And... I don't play with fire anymore.... well, last year our patio slab had an ant infestation in a crack... and I used lighter fluid on it.... does that count??

I love you mom! (Who picked this topic???? No Christmas card for you!!)