| Saturday, March 18, 2006 |
| Childhood Vignettes |
Couldn't sleep so decided to torment blogland with some tales from days of yore that will leave you shaking your head or fleeing for the woods. Probably both.
You likely won't find these too funny; you'd have to picture the way my mum tells them, accompanied by her tones of voice, facial expressions and gestures. I, however, can't help but have laughing fits every time I hear them.
I.
The first is one that never fails to amuse me. Mightily. As in cackle my fool head off... which both my mum and I did on the train tonight. I think we frightened the other passengers with our hilarity.
As a very young child (a fresh lettuce leaf), I had the disturbing (to Mum, at least) habit of decorporating my dolls (I did more than remove heads; I removed limbs as well). Barbies got absolutely no respect and, after I'd kilt the one some misguided person gave me, I never received another, thank goodness. But I digress.
Mum, unlike me, is a sensitive soul; she also has a great deal of fortitude. Poor lady, at every turn, she'd be confronted with dolls' heads on the floor, staring wide-eyed and wounded, giving her many a frightened start. Patiently, she'd replace the heads on the dolls (she claims to have been afraid to touch the things and would gingerly lift them by their faux hair), only to find me removing the heads again and again. Sometimes I'd even gnaw on them (there's pictorial evidence!). It's amazing I didn't turn out to be a pyschopath or cannibal. :-O
However, Mum says that though I regularly removed heads and, to a lesser extent, limbs, I also tried to put them back together. She thinks I took them apart to begin with because I was fascinated by the moving bits. I'll take that explanation, thank you!
II.
My brother was a hospital-obsessed child, which is pretty ironic when I think about it, given that as adults it was I who worked in healthcare and he who was an artist. Now he works in healthcare and I'm in a creative industry. Odd how things work out. Anyway...
He wasn't exactly a sickly kid, but he was rather small and thin, and did have his share of ills, especially in the wee hours of the night. Whenever Mum asked him if he wanted to go to hospital, he'd nod vigorously and there we'd be in the emergency department. The majority of the time, he was fine, which was a load off our mother's mind but which must have been equally annoying and amusing to the doctors as we took such trips rather frequently. Fortunately, the fee was very small then, but to this day we cannot fathom why my brother was so eager to go.
III.
When we were children, my family lived in an apartment that would be large even by today's standards, and was very inexpensive as we were quite poor. There were 3 bedrooms, a small kitchen, a small bathroom, and living room. There was no heat or air conditioning and the neighborhood wasn't the greatest (at one point, our home was burgled thrice in 1 month).
One day, Mum lay down for a nap, leaving my brother and me (about 4 or 5 at the time) playing happily. When she awoke, however, she didn't see or hear us, so she went through the apartment, becoming more and more apprehensive when there was nary a peep or glimpse of us. She looked everywhere, even under the beds, and asked our neighbors if they'd seen the two of us downstairs or outside. When she couldn't find us, and no one had noticed us, she naturally grew very frightened and called my father, who came home with some of his coworkers to hunt for us.
After a thorough search of the apartment and building yielded nothing, another inspection of our home was done, and we were finally found...
Far, far under a bed, both sound asleep and lying snug against the wall. We'd been missed in the searches on several occasions because the bed was large and wide, the space between the bed and the floor was very small, and we were right up under the far side of the bed, making it difficult to see us, especially since we had dark clothes on..
Mum is firmly of the opinion that I had convinced my brother to play under there and that we eventually tired and didn't bother to come back out.
Moi? Maybe it was his idea. *cough cough*
Yes, mi mater has had to put up with a great deal from my brother and me. |
posted by Cheshire Cat @ 3/18/2006 02:44:00 am   |
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| 4 teabag(s) brewed: |
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This is great stuff. I loved these vignettes. More, more, more please
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Lol. Thanks, Mummified, but your praise will go to my already swollen head.
I don't have too many of these vignettes. I only mentioned these three because every few years, my mother brings them up and we still laugh uproariously every single time. :-D
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Microwavnig barbie on high for five minutes renders her into Elasto-woman, liek the contortionist at the freak show.
The under the bed games are ok as long as you and your brother laid off after turning about nine, unless you were from Arkansas.
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LOL, PK!
Thank you for your unwitting compliment: I couldn't nuke said Barbie because microwaves as routine kitchen appliances did not exist back then. Much as I wish, I am not a fresh salad anymore. Wilted, limp, and vinegary, more like. :-P
As for the under the bed games, it was just the one time, PK! And we were playing with Legos! Bad, PK! Bad! ;-)
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This is great stuff. I loved these vignettes. More, more, more please