I was reading Ryans blog the other day and it was about capturing tadpoles. It reminded me of when I was little, about 5, and I used to capture tadpoles in a big red bucket. Once we found a robins egg and we picked it up. I think we broke it, because I remember feeling really guilty. I used to also capture grasshoppers in ice cream containers. Someone told me that grasshoppers produced molasses, so I thought that it would be nice of me to capture a ton of grasshoppers to make molasses for my family. I lost interest after maybe capturing one or two, which I suppose is a good thing, because otherwise, i would have supplied my family with a dish full of grasshopper shit. Mom used to tell us that dragonflies would sew our lips together if we talked to much. I don’t think that adults always understand that children don’t understand jokes. I was absolutly terrified of dragonflies until i realized that mom was joking.
We lived in a really big house with a pool. Our neighbours lived in this tiny run down house. The youngest in the family was a boy a year or two older than me named Andy, there was an older boy named Rene who would have been about 15 maybe, I think, and there was an older girl but I can’t remember her name. I remember when I was learning how to ride a bike, Rene came over and he was riding his bike in our driveway (it was a pretty big driveway). This is a wierd memory that I have. I don’t know why I remember it or why a five year old would think this way. I was just learning to ride my bike and he wanted me to ride beside him in the driveway. It made me feel really uncomfortable and I felt threatened by him. I really wanted to run away and go tell my mom, but i was embarassed, because if you say “Mom, the neighbor wanted me to ride my bike beside him” she would have said “ok... and?” Nothing had ever happened with him, and I didn’t dislike him or anything. Just by him saying, “Ride beside me” made me want to cry.
Once, when i was around the same age, my dad took me to the store up the road. he gave me money and told me to go in and ask for a pack of rothmans king size cigarettes. I didn’t know that it was illegal for a 5 year old to buy cigarettes... why would i? I think he thought it would be cute or something. So I went in and asked for the cigarettes and everyone in the store laughed at me, and the person at the counter refused to give them to me, even when I explained that they were for my dad who was in the car. They kept on laughing, probably also cause they thought it was cute, but I was unbelievably embarassed.
When I was in probably grade four and five, I tried out for the gymnastics team at school. It was more of a club than a team, really. We just got to go to the gym at lunch time and do summersaults and walk on the balance beam. There was a gymnastics ‘meet’ every year and we got to choreograph out own ‘floor routine’ and perform it at the meet. I thought I was super good and was all happy with myself for creating this amazing routine. When I got there, I watched a bunch of people do their routine. The first bunch all seemed to be really bad gymnasts and/ or quite overweight, so I thought I was going to do awesome and maybe even win a ribbon. I felt bad for the fat kids and the bad gymnasts because they probably didn’t know, but people were laughing at them and feeling sorry for them. Then here and there, there was a really super good gymnast and I was like woah, shit, i’m one of the shitty fat kids that everyone is laughing at. It was another really embarassing moment for me, because I really thought that I was good, and capable of going places with my fantastic gymnastic abilities, but in reality, i was a fat kid that could barely stand up after doing a summersault. I think I drempt about it recently. I remember waking up with this horrible feeling of disapointment and dispair and I kept thinking back to that day. I really thought I was good at sports, but I just wasn’t. I tried out for the basketball team in grade 6. I made it, but I think I only made it because my homeroom teacher was the coach and she would have felt too guilty cutting me from the team. I didn’t understand the game at all. I did something that i supposedly shouldn’t have done in the very first game. that was a foul. In the very last game, I was soooo excited. It was almost my turn to start playing. I stood up to get ready to go and my teacher looked at me and said, “Do you want to play or DO YOU WANT TO WIN???!!!” The first part of her question hadn’t quite registered yet and I only really heard the last part, so of course i yell, “I WANT TO WIN!!!!” and only after, did I realize that that mean that I would have to sit on the bench for the rest of the game, because I sucked too much, even to be on the team, and I was only there because of guilt. Awesome. The more I talk about my wierd little memories, the more I remember and the one’s that I am remembering right now are making me sad. I don’t want to type them anymore.
I also had really happy moments in my childhood that I remember. We used to dress up in dad’s clothes and mom would paint mascara mustaches on out faces and we would lipsynch to lee greenwood, ronnie milsap and hewey lewis. We also used to excersize with mom, and then go jump in the pool with out excersize outfits on. That made me happy.
And going back to the animal capturing thing... THis is kind of hard to explain. There were windows in the basement, but they were underground, so there were these holes dug out in the earth around the windows to let the light in. Know what I mean? Well, once, I saw a mouse in there, and he couldn’t get out because the hole was probably like two or three feet deep. So, I decided to give him a cheese slice, and I found a little blanket that was supposed to be for one of my toys, and I dropped it in the hole. I kept checking up on him. He didn’t eat the cheese and he didn’t lay under the blanket. He died. I was pretty sad.
