– Children playing ball games, Roman artwork, 2nd century AD. Photo by: Jastrow via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0
One of the best laughs I’ve had with my wife have been due to sharing childhood experiences. She’s also fond of my baby memories, or the really embarrassing experiences I’ve lived.
To me, they are a reminder of how I’ve learned to be who I am.
How I broke my friends leg
When I was around 12 or 13 years old there was a zipline that went from a big eucalyptus tree to another. I was always careful around it, but it was fun to ride. One day my neighborhood friends were visiting. One of them was Pato. If I had to describe him in one word it’d be either bold, or reckless. You’ll see why shortly.
We were carefully riding the zipline in turns. When my turn came I heard someone climbing the ladder behind me. I didn’t give it much thought; it probably was someone eager to take their turn. So I stretch my hands, grab the zipline handle, and jump from the platform.
The next few moments were complete chaos. Something hits me in the back, the line brakes, and first thing I know I’m on the floor after a soft landing.
Turns out Pato thought it would be hilarious to ride the zipline in pairs, so he jumped and latched to the zipline handle. The cable snapped under the newly applied tension. By Newtons law of inertia, Pato continued his forward motion while falling until he hit my back, which pushed him slightly under my freefalling self. Fortunately for me he softened my landing.
I don’t remember the exact words he said but they were something like: “AHHH! MY LEG, MOVE OUT %&$!”. Only then I noticed what really happened. In my disorientation I stood up as fast as I could, and looked at Pato. Turns out I crushed his leg. The bone was lightly exposed and to be honest I tried to not look at it that much.
I do remember what Pato said next while screaming in pain: “QUICK TAKE A PHOTO!”. That was the kind of person Pato was.
Note: Pato was swiftly taken to the hospital and if I remember correctly, he was fine after a few months with his leg immobilized.
The Shrek cosplay incident
Copied from my other post here. I’m too fond of this story to not just add it here with a few edits.
When I was 8 or 9 years old there was this annual event where they divided the school into 3 teams and they competed through different kinds of contests in a sort of Olympics. My classroom chose me for the costume contest. Naturally, the day of the contest I showed up to school in a FULL SHREK COSTUME.
I painted my already bushy eyebrows black. Painted my face, hands and neck green. Wore a Shrek vest, shirt and shoes, topped by a green hoodie with Shrek ears. I even had a pillow below the shirt to fake a Shrek belly. It was a good costume.
Note: please mind that this is early 2000s in a South American country. Cosplay wasn’t even a known thing here. As successful as Shrek was, it still wasn’t the cult classic it is today. At that time kids my age were trying to look cool and edgy, and my Shrek costume as good as it was, was the complete opposite. I wish I could have done this in the era of Shrek memes.
When I got to school, the awkwardness was off-the-charts. Not because of my wacky costume or the awkward shoes I was wearing.
It was a normal school day.
Imagine tens of kids entering school in their uniform in perfect condition and a green blob of absurdity in between them. I had to skip the usual salute to the flag we did on Mondays because my teachers didn’t know how to explain to the principal why I was in that costume. I had to be in math class in a green Shrek suit with a green face because they didn’t give me time to remove it.
I had normal street clothes in my backpack. So when I got the chance in between classes, when no one was in the classroom, I hid in the back of the room, undressed, cleaned up the green ink from all over my body, and put on my normal street clothes.
Turns out everyone had left because the contests were starting, and guess what was the first contest? Costume contest of course. All that humiliation for nothing, and now everyone was mad at me for missing the sign-up.
I don’t remember much after that.
Dumb stuff I did when I was little
There’s plenty of dumb stuff I did when I was little. I’d really love to write everything in full detail. But here’s a quick rundown:
- When I was 8 years old, I was bored during class and I trimmed one of my bushy eyebrows. The teacher melted down in rage, told my parents and I was grounded for a few weeks. (more details on this story here)
- When I was 6 years old, on my first day of school I went to the “grown up” kids bathroom for the first time. All the bathrooms I had used until then were individual bathroom stalls. But these were open urinals. For some reason, when it was my turn to do my business, I dropped my pants and underwear all the way down the same way as I would in a bathroom stall. Everyone broke out in laughter and I quickly realized I was mooning my fellow co-urinalists.
- When I was 5 years old, I said a bad word in front of the teacher. She was livid and sent me to the bathroom to go wash my mouth out with soap. Now, I’m pretty sure it was a figure of speech, but I took it literally, went to the bathroom, and actually washed my tongue with soap.
- When I was 4 or 5 years old I got my head stuck in between the wooden balusters of the balcony handrails of a beach apartment. I was there for maybe 15 minutes. The solution was to lift my head a bit, where the wooden beams were slightly further apart.
- Also when I was around that age (maybe 6-8 years old) I watched too much Shin-chan, and copied some of the “funny” stuff he did. Turns out mooning people is really bad.
Is there any conclusion to all of this?
There are way more stories but I’ll leave them for future posts. If there’s anything to conclude after all this is that childhood stories remind us of simpler times. When mistakes didn’t have many consequences and we were learning all the time.
For example, from breaking my friends leg I learned that even though you could be doing everything right, you can still hurt dumb people doing dumb stuff, and it won’t be your fault, even if you feel guilty when you see their leg broken under your own weight. It’s not your fault.
If you want to share some of your childhood stories, please let me know in my socials listed bellow, or try using this website I made were you can only have a single post: https://app.pressnt.net/. It’s been too quiet there since I created it, but for some reason I haven’t taken it down.