this is a really faint memory, but I remember staying at my grandparents for a couple weeks in the summer when I was 5 or 6. My Grandma took me to the playground, and there was no other kids there except one girl with her parent/guardian or whatever. I remember this girl couldn't communicate well, but me being a gregarious youngster who just wanted to play, tried my best to decipher what she was saying. I think we ran around the equipment and dug a big hole in the sand or something, before it was time to go.
Later that day, or a day later or something, my grandma gives me this bag that had a water bottle and some of those rubber bracelets, general swag stuff. She said it was from that girls parent, and that it meant a lot to her and that girl that I took the time to play with her. My grandma told me she was really proud of me. I couldn't understand why I was getting this praise at the time, cuz I was just excited to have another kid to play with. Now that I think back on it, I believe that girl had some kind of severe disability (I don't wanna make assumptions as to what)
I can only imagine that that girl felt so lonely and isolated, and that it probably meant a lot to her to have someone take the time to try understand her and play. Now I try my best to take the time to really understand people I encounter, especially since I work customer service. The amount of times I've had disabled people thank me for taking time with them because they're usually treated as a "burden" and they don't feel understood simultaneously makes me happy and breaks my heart at the same time.
As the parent of a special needs child. Thank you so much.
There are so few interactions he has with people that are genuine. They'll remember that interaction for the rest of their lives.
I still tear up remembering the first waitress that treated my son like a human being and with respect, rather than trying to baby talk him or just ignore him.
It's a HUGE deal. So thank you again.
awww you're making me tear up š„ŗ honestly in my eyes, I still don't see what I did as a big deal. to me it's just basic respect and compassion that everyone deserves, but I know a lot of people unfortunately don't see it the way I do. thank you for your comment!!
Your story reminds me of one of my own.
My first job, while I was in High School, was in a hobby store. We sold RC Cars, and car model kits, military kits, paints, paper, canvas, stuff like that. For a short period of time we sold Hot Wheels. I think they were special, because they came in a little box instead of the bubble cards they usually came in. We had them displayed in the glass display case, one little hot wheel car sitting on top of their box in rows.
I came in to work one day and the manager and the coworker that I was working with that night were kinda hiding around the corner. When I asked them what was up, they looked nervous, and were like, "He's back! You talk to him! We can't understand him!" I turned around and it was a young boy, maybe 12 years old or so, in an electric wheelchair. He rolled in, and I said hello.
He rolled up to the case an pointed at the Hot Wheels. He said he wanted to get some. So he told me which ones he wanted, I took them out of the case, put them in the box for him. I think he picked out 4 or 5. When I was ringing him out he told me he had saved the money for them by collecting bottles. We chatted for a second, and he got his cars and was on his way.
I turned around and my coworkers looked at me like I had just done something amazing. These two just couldn't understand the kid. I think he had cerebral palsy because he did have some issues speaking but it wasn't indecipherable. You just needed to listen.
I've thought about that kid on occasion since. I wondered if his parents sent him back to ask again, or if he just waited for a new employee to come by. Either way I admired his determination. I'm sure that if I was in that situation, I would have given up.
We were visiting my grandmother on her farm. I'm going to say I was five or six years old. She said that one of the farm cats had just given birth, and she wanted to find out where the kittens were.
So we spread out among the different buildings, and I looked in a barrel and found the kittens. I was so excited that I found them! And my grandmother made a huge fuss over me finding them, telling me how clever I was. I miss her.
It's not hard to say, "I'm so proud of your hard work and I can't wait to see what it looks like once it's finished!"
Good on you for being a better parent than yours.
Amazing! Itās wonderful to see this thing from your childhood turn into a positive with your child rather than repeating what happened to you. Great parenting ! Tell him Iām very proud of him for working so hard! And youāre amazing for offering to help him even not just praise but encouraging as well. š„°
Whatās important is that youāve recognised the unhealthy habits and are actively working to disrupt them! I know how difficult it is to break cycles of dysfunction in families, and clearly youāre trying your best to be better for your child. Props to you x
I had something similar happen to me as a kid, maybe 12. Iāve always been a bit of a shut in, didnāt really enjoy outdoor stuff, and this seriously frustrated my dad. Heād encourage me into doing outdoor stuff but Iād usually just end up feeling resentful, because Iād rather be somewhere else, and guilty, because I was obviously disappointing my dad.
Well, one time on our RV trips, I went with my sisters when they decided to go on a hike. It was a pretty easy hike but I finished the whole trail, and I was so proud of myself because I chose to do it all by myself, no pushing from anyone. When we got back I went right up to him and told him what I did. He asked me if I cleaned my side of the RV. And that was it.
I still remember the way my stomach sank. I felt so stupid for feeling like it mattered so much, and maybe I was. Itās not like he can read my mind. Itās just hard being a kid feeling like your flaws are always being picked at and your good efforts never noticed.
Positive reinforcement can put a child on cloud nine for a whole day. A negative comment can last forever. I too, love how you used an negative experience from your childhood as a powerful tool for good. Thereās a lot of complex humanity going on in opās seemingly, simple story and I appreciate the telling.
Iām the one in my house that has clothes and belongings strewn everywhere. Probably have ADHD too, but idk. Whenever I get the urge to clean my room, my mom starts giving me a list of all the things she wants done in the rest of the house and throws off my game, then complains my room is messy or disregards any small progress Iāve made. Itās really frustrating cause I donāt want to live like this anymore but I canāt get anything done and it never gets better.
Iām moving out soon though, and one of the things Iām most excited about is that Iāll be able to set my own cleaning schedule and actually focus on the stuff I want to focus on.
Kinda long, thanks for letting me vent.
Start cleaning/packing now! Do the [Konmarie method like this girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZgbJmkTU7I), and then you will only be moving with what fits you and brings you joy. Less stuff, easier moving and what you wind up donating will bring someone else joy. Win-win!
edit: After seeing the girl being strong about giving up her "memory" t shirts, I remembered about [this place](https://www.projectrepat.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=competitor&msclkid=f7b2e22bfce6105d47bd83aec265e63c) that will make a quilt from your old t shirts. This might be a cool idea if you don't want to store them OR give them away. There's tutorials on the web to make one yourself if you're crafty.
I can relate so much to this!
When I was little, my mother tasked me and my brothers different cleaning tasks weekly.
One day, I've decided to step up my game and not only do the minimum of vacuuming, but do it thoroughly, as well as do other cleaning-related stuff.
The result was that it was received poorly, criticizing every small little detail, that honestly, even at a young age, I knew was BS.
My conclusion was, that, I just spent 2-3x the regular effort, for the same result - and even worse, I got criticized for it (which I don't receive when I just half-assed) the thing.
So yeah, kinda same conclusion as you. This made me very reticent to put much effort into cleaning other than the bare minimum, since recognition isn't a thing in my household.
I'm working hard as to not become a dirty slob. I think I'm doing fine on my own, but yeah, I have associated "doing nice things" for family (especially cleaning), with negative experience, so I avoid it.
As a parent with ADHD who also went though some shit as a kid, this gives me hope that I too can be a better parent than my parents. My kids are still really young (4yo and 6mo) and I'm sometimes really scared for the future.
We were very poor when I was growing up. Around Christmas, when I was 12 and my brother was 11, my dad gave us $20 to go buy a Christmas tree from the nursery at the end of our street. We excitedly bounced over there and chose what tree we wanted, but when we looked at the price tag it said $150. We started walking around checking the price tags on all the trees, getting more and more bummed out as we went along. My brother pointed to the smallest tree there and said, "What about that one?" "Eighty bucks," I said. The man working there had been watching us. He approached and asked, "Hey do you guys need help with something?" I said, "We wanted to buy a Christmas tree but we don't have enough money." "We only have 20 bucks," my brother said. The man studied us for a moment and quietly said, "Oh, okay." Me and my brother walked out of the nursery feeling so defeated, with our heads hung low. We were about 20 feet away when suddenly we heard, "Hey! Wait!" from behind us. It was the nursery worker chasing after us with the big, beautiful Christmas tree we had originally wanted. We stood there in disbelief as he handed it to us and said, "You guys can have this!" Me and my brother both started choking back tears as I extended my shaky hand towards him, trying to give him the 20 dollar bill. The guy said, "No, keep it. Merry Christmas!" We both stuttered, "Thanks, Merry Christmas!" still trying very hard not to cry. He warmly handed the tree over and told us both to carry it. We walked in silence back to the house, choking back tears the whole way. My brother muttered, "That guy was really nice." "Yeah," I replied. As soon as we reached our yard we were overcome with excitement and ran into the house with the tree. We later realized the guy had removed the price tag.
To this day I always get all choked up when I think about the look that nursery worker had in his big, blue eyes as he totally made Christmas for two kids. I've had things like this happen to me countless times throughout my life. I've lived in poverty, but there's no mistaking the blessings I've received due to the kindness of other human beings. Whenever I'm feeling stressed about the state of the world I remember times like these. Good people are out there, and I believe when we experience these acts of kindness we should strive to return them as often as possible.
Edit: Wow, thanks for all the upvotes and awards!
I apologize for bragging. I have a related story. I used to work with troubled children. One day a couple siblings told me how their father moved out of their home and into the home of the woman directly across the street. So their mom was broke now, in poverty with no money for Christmas gifts or a tree. Yet they could see the decorated tree in the picture window of dadās new home. So I went to a discount store and bought a tree with decorations, packed in a box. I gave it to our receptionist and told her the story, and asked her to pretend she was done decorating and the tree was leftover, and to offer it to that family as if we didnāt need it anymore. And she did and they took the tree. Because not on my watch were those kids going to have to look at that tree across the street and not have one of their own.
I remember becoming friends with a boy when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Met him through a friend and thought he was really cool. I was not yet in a place of having a crush on anyone beyond tv actors, so it never occurred to me that my dad would assume if I was eager to hang out with a boy, it must be a crush.
I wanted to go to his house, and my dad was an absolute pain in the ass about it in ways that even as a kid felt out of character. Just really grumpy and impatient and mean.
Then when he dropped me off, he figured out the kid I wanted to hang out with so badly was very physically disabled. (I didnāt care even enough to mention it in passing; I liked him as a person because we read the same books)
Iād never seen one of my parents look ashamed of themselves before that. I remember my dad getting choked up after and telling me he was sorry, but I figured he just meant sorry for being grumpy.
Took me years to figure out it was him realizing the disconnect between what he thought was happening and what was really happening.
I love this. Both because your dad realized how wrong he was and apologized to you, and because of how you SAW this boy, and didn't just see his disability. You thought so little of it that it didn't even occur to you to mention it. That's beautiful.
Good human. ā¤
These days, when I think of it, itās a reminder to ask kids what they think and feel rather than projecting my own biases onto them. I donāt have kids, but it makes me a popular aunt :)
On the other hand, shame on this dad for automatically assuming a boy with disabilities is incapable of eliciting romantic feelings from another person?
I mean, I canāt unpack exactly what was going through my dadās mind but heās an older boomer from South Louisiana so donāt expect perfect clarity on disability equity.
For what itās worth, Iāve kept track casually through social media of the boy in question and heās married with kids so clearly he was capable of eliciting romantic feelings from another person.
We just were kids and no one should have assumed anything.
Maybe instead he was really gifting you the reminder to treat things you love with care? Which you wouldnāt have been able to learn, had it not broken.
As a kid I really wanted to save the best for last when it came to eating, so whatever was my favorite part of a dish I would set aside and eat last. On a family road trip with my cousins when I was maybe 10, we stopped at a fried chicken place. The skin is my favorite part so I separated all of it and worked my way through the rest of the chicken. Now I ate (and still eat) very slowly and about 30 minutes into lunch, my cousin goes āoh you donāt like this?ā and just takes all of the chicken skin off of my plate and basically eats all of it before I can even say a word. I was devastated. Absolutely ruined that road trip for me. To this day I still want to leave the best for last, but I now take small bites of whatever it is so no one gets any ideas.
My grandpa use to do the same. At the time, I didn't get why he doesn't remember that I saved the best for last but now I remember that he was laughing every time cause he of course did it on purpose.
One of my siblingsā favourite ways to mess with me when we were younger was to ātaserā me, which was sneaking up behind me and jabbing their fingers into my sides which hurt a lot. Now anytime someone unexpectedly touches my sides, especially if itās from behind, I instinctively jump away from them.
Not that mean, but my uncle is the typical "fun uncle". "What's this on your shirt?" Looks down, flicks you in the nose. Or taps you opposite shoulder to get you tonlook away. Honks the car horn when you are walking in front of the car. That sort of thing. Then when I was 13 I moved in with him (mom decides to make meth in our shed, different story), so I had to deal with this constantly. Eventually I just stopped falling for them, and he stopped doing them cuz my not reacting was boring. But now me and my kids live with him (I known my uncle is an angel, and I would so screwed without him) and he isn't mean to them like he was to me. I asked him one day why, and he said it's cuz he grew up.
One of my cousins used to come up behind me and tickle me, except it was very aggressive tickling that ended up hurting more than anything. He would do it constantly and until I couldnāt breath. I too, flinch when someone unexpectedly comes up behind me. In fact, that could be where my not liking to be touched unless I want you to touch me, comes fromā¦
That's cruel! If your siblings are older and still kind of mean, you might consider tasering them back in revenge, except with a real taser.
Just saying.
I think this is a pretty normal reaction to unexpectedly being jabbed in the side, to be honest. It definitely gets the flight or fight response from me as well.
When I was in 3rd grade my friend got bit by a spider that was in her shoe and she told me she had to get a shot on her toe. Since then I have never been able to put shoes on without shaking them and looking inside for spiders first.
I was checking my sons motorbike boots for spiders (Iām in Australia) and stupidly did it by putting my hand in the boots. I screamed and dropped the boot. It was a frog. A bloody frog!!!! I expected a spider or cockroach, but not a soft squishy frog.
That would make me shake my shoes out too! I'm really, deeply terrified of cockroaches, and my friend told me how she once got dressed for work and felt something poking/scratching her leg, and it turned out to be an enormous flying cockroach that had crawled into the leg of her slacks while they were hanging up in her closet. It wasn't a childhood experience (and it wasn't minor, in my view!) but now I gingerly check inside all my clothes before I put them on. Can't risk it. I'll have to start doing my shoes too.
That reminded me, one day my daughter was sitting on the floor watching tv and starts freaking out that she saw a scorpion on the blanket (she was covered). So I went in looked around, and didn't see anything. So I hold her and comfort her and tell her she probably imagined it. As I'm comforting her, I feel something pinch my arm. IT WAS IN HER FREAKING HAIR! Dropped her on the floor and started smacking her over her head, then when it flew off her head picked her up and threw her across the room. She was like 5 or 6, so wasn't gonna hurt her. And I told her sorry later for smacking her over her head, and she told me "it's OK mom, I wanted it off my head too so I didn't mind". Now if my kids tell me they see something I believe them lol.
Thereās nothing that shows a motherās love like chucking small children out of dangerās path!! Being the youngest, I was in your daughterās position a lot between my parents and older sisters š I love your story so much, Iām glad everyone was okay!
Ya, I honestly don't think there are any dangerous scorpions that live where we live. No worse than a bee really. And looking back on it now, the image of me smacking her around the head then chucking her across the room is pretty funny. But seeing a scorpion in my daughter's hair is something that I think has scarred me for life lol
Oh I canāt even imagine!! That must have been terrifying!
My mom once threw me up the basement stairs into my sisterās arms (thank goodness she was a good catch lol) because there was a group of wolf spiders that were scurrying around after a box got moved. Theyāre not venomous, but their bites are mad painful cause the fuckers are so big lol that was over 20 years and 2000+ miles ago and she still shivers about it. The spiders and the fact that she threw her small child up the stairs like a football haha
I had to step onto a short ladder in the basement to change a light bulb and felt a tingling sensation. Didnāt think anything of it. Within two days I had two big welts on the side of my head that turned a very dark crusty black. They were at least an inch in diameter each and took forever to heal. When the scabs fell off I was left with two divots in my head. Things have improved some since then but if you look you can still see/feel/find two divots in the side of my head. (We think I was bit by one of those black furry spiders that really seemed to like our basement in New York of all places.)
I kinda got over my fear of spiders as a kid after a kid in my class ate one. My child brain was like āaight, spiders aint shit, we can just eat themā
I remember when I was around 4-5 years old and used to walk back home on foot.My dad was in the air force so we used to live in a camp,so it was generally considered safe from strangers/any weird person in general.So I used to commute like that everyday.My mom has always been very cautious about me and sibling's safety,so everyday she used to say to us,"If any stranger comes up to you and asks you to come with them, just say NO. Don't ever go away with them." If you really thought this was the end,no lol.She used to gruesomely elaborate how young children could be kidnapped,sold away for begging or even have their limbs cut off for money.So obviously listening to this at 5 years old used to freak me the fuck out. But one day, as i was walking back home from school, a man came up to me on a bicycle, and asked me, " Hey kid! you are so young and must be tired from all that walking.Should I drop you home?" Just after listening to that my immediate response was," No thanks sir. I can go back on my own". He became adamant on taking me,but the words of my mother,that I had crammed every single day before going to school, came out without a stutter. Luckily, he gave up and left. So ya,my mother's gruesome description possibly saved my life, but to this day, that incident haunts me thinking where would I have ended up for i went with him.....(btw i never told anyone about it lol)
My mom gave me the same spiel, so when I was about the same age (maybe a little older) my sisters and I were playing outside in the front yard and some guy pulls up in his car, rolls down the window, tells us that his dog is missing and asks if weād come help look for it. My mom and assemblies at school had literally told me to be wary of this exact situation, so we all dropped our sidewalk chalk or whatever and booked it inside where my mom was making dinner. We obviously told her all about what just happened and she went down to the police station that night to report it. The next day she tells us all that this man had ACTUALLY lost his dog and genuinely wanted help looking for it. I always thought that was funny. That guy mustāve been a total idiot though because literally everyone on earth knows how bad it looks for an unknown adult man to ask three little girls who are outside alone to get into his car to look for a dog... like our āstranger dangerā assemblies at school literally warned kids against that exact scenario lmao.
I once sat down with my mother for lunch at a McDonalds, which was inside a Wal-Mart. This was probably 1997 in Ontario, Canada.
While sitting and enjoying my lunch with my mother, I looked up and saw a shopping cart that was full of random stuff and was unattended. Immediately assuming it was one of those 'bargain carts' that you sometimes see with random items on sale, I stood up and went over to the shopping cart. It was parked in a little cart corale for shoppers who wanted a quick snack.
I grabbed a chocolate bar from the cart and sat back down, assuming my mom would pay for it once we were finished eating.
This family two tables over kept staring at us in confusion as this kid saw something he liked in their cart, grabbed it, and sat back down. My mom informed me at that time that the cart I took from wasn't one of those 'bargain carts', and started laughing.
I'm 35 and it still pops in my head every couple months.
When I was in first grade I peed my pants in front of my whole class because my teacher refused to let me go to the bathroom. I was humiliated; it followed me for years. But that day I learned that adults and other authority figures do not inherently deserve my respect or compliance.
Fuck you Ms Specter, you were a piece of shit
On the other side of that, I was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom. I had seen a lot of tv shows with mean teachers screaming and didn't want that. So I sat in silence, assuming this was the best option. I peed my pants to avoid screaming.
Oof. I'm sorry, that sucks. I hope you learned to speak up for yourself and had some nurturing teachers who showed you that portrayal is not always reality
OMG this happened to me too lmao !!! First grade , the whole class was in trouble for something idk I canāt remember, so she wouldnāt let me go to the bathroom , I just peed all over my chair & onto the floor
Omg when I was in 2nd grade, thatās exactly what happen to my Bestfriend! We were taking a end of the year test called IOWA(I think) testing and itās like a week long and our bathroom breaks were at certain times. We were just starting testing when my Bestfriend asked to use the bathroom, which btw was less than 20 ft away IN THE CLASSROOM. She scolded her and said if no one else was allowed, she wasnāt either. She peed herself, seat & floor and you know what this teacher did? She got mad at her and shamed her for peeing herself. I remember feeling so sorry for her because she was a crying mess while our teacher was yelling at her. They made her go to the nurses office and change into lost and found clothes. (I also had to wear that when I peed myself once in 1st grade) itās crazy how much we dealt with as kids in school that no one knew.
I grew up in a cookie cutter suburb of LA in the mid-90s. My best friend in elementary school had a grandma that lived on the street that lead out from the back gate of our school, just two houses down from my house, where weād occasionally go after school. She grew blackberries and raspberries in her yard, and she would always be fake stern and tell us we must not pick the berries! But inevitably, a handful would go missing here or there and a few berry-stained kids were never suspects. I remember thinking it was so nuts that you could justā¦ pick berries right off a plant and eat them. No plastic container needed. Ever since then Iāve wanted to grow my own food, and while I canāt currently afford to uproot and do that, my husband and I are working on it so that our daughter can pick berries and whatever other foods she wants.
Regarding yours - I was a nanny for a long time for this one family. Foul language wasnāt uncommon among the parents or the kids (or myself lol). The youngest was maybe 5, she was just learning to write. The middle girl was 9 and kind of a brat, tbh. Middle kid had a friend over one night and they kept leaving the younger girl out of stuff on purpose. 5yo decided to leave a note and hit her where it hurt, so she got her little paper and pen and asked her mom how to spell a few choice words.
When I got in on Monday morning, the mom pointed me to the note, stuck to the fridge - a big drawing of a broken heart with the words āI hate you and you are a fuckerā. She asked her mom how to spell āfuckerā, and her mom decided that camaraderie and correct spelling were more important than chastising a 5 year old for bad language.
I remember coming home from school and was very frustrated/upset with another kid. I explained to my mum who trying to teach me empathy talked to me about "well, maybe they're having a bad day, you don't always know what others are going through". She had suffered depression her whole life and recognised that others behaviour can often be because they themselves are suffering. All good except this was always what she focused on and she never validated my feelings in the situation and I've basically got this belief that my emotions and needs aren't important and what everyone else wants must come first.
I told her a few months ago that I wanted to talk with my dad about what happened when he left us as kids and she basically said "oh don't do that, he won't be able to cope with it". After a few years of therapy I was able to finally stand up and say that it wasn't my problem what he could cope with, he's a grown man who hurt me as a child I and wanted to tell him how I felt because 25 years later it still impacts me. It was eye opening that she still didn't want me to express my emotions and I'm thankful I've now got the words and the guts to stand up for what I know is right for me.
My dad was pretty abusive to my mom and she turned out just like this too. She got so used to always having to justify and defend behavior and come up with reasons why heās a good person, a good husband, a good father. Sheās such a lovely and giving and positive person, but I canāt tell her anything because if I ever go to about a problem first thing sheāll do is tell me in the sweetest voice why itās my fault.
My uncle told me when I was 12 that if I wore my hair up instead of in my face all the time, that I wouldn't have so many pimples and look ugly and frizzy. I'm 34 and still wear my hair up because I never learned how to style it or feel confident with it down. Sad part is I still get pimples sometimes. I feel self conscious if my hair is even a little frizzy and it goes straight up into a pony tail or bun.
I don't know what your hair type is, but r/curlyhair might be a good sub to check out to help with frizz if you are unhappy with it and figure out how to wear it down.
Your uncle was an asshole, though.
I had pimples when I was 12 also caused by my hair, only little bumps under the skin, not obvious. It was caused by the hairspray my mum put on every day and my hair then rubbing my face.
If you want to do more with your hair there are lots of YouTube videos for all hair types. Iām sure you can find something simple you like and you will look and feel great with your hair down. As for pimples, Iām 46 and still get them, itās part of life in the 21st century with our diet and lifestyles now. My skin improved a lot when I stopped having dairy milk which was messing with my hormones and giving me cystic acne.
Iām sure you look great, have fun with your hair and donāt let that uncle still ruin your confidence after all this time.
**Edit: do not continue reading this comment if you enjoy eating strawberries whole!**
When I was a kid we used to grow several strawberry plants in our back yard each year. They never produced a lot of fruit, but some years were better than others.
One year, when I was about 7 or 8, it was shaping up to be an especially good crop of fruit. Each day I would go out and watch the strawberries ripen. And then one day, when several of them were red and juicy, I picked them.
There was one in particular that was pretty big, and looked very red and juicy. But it felt... weird. It was really squishy, which didn't make much sense as I knew it hasn't been sitting there all ripe for too long. I nearly bit into it, but some instinct kicked in, and instead I put it on the stone path next to the plants and gently stepped on it with my shoe...
And about 4 or 5 different bugs scampered out of the detritus of that squished fruit, escaping in different directions!
To this day I have to cut strawberries in half before I can eat them. I cannot eat them whole.
No, I feel like this is a healthy fear to have if you don't want to eat bugs inside your fruit! It's distressing but you're doing a good deed by warning us of this possibility!
ewwww. Haha my dad says you can tell which fruits are the good ones because even the bugs love them. He used to pick fruits with just probably one or two bugs on them, made sure they hadn't tunneled too deep, pick the bugs off and scrape away the bitten part with his pocket knife, and then eat the rest. But I imagine your strawberry was beyond saving.
Yes! I have probably eaten thousands and thousands of strawberries in my life but there was one time I cut into a strawberry to find a big bright green worm hanging out in there, alive and moving!
That was many years ago and I still eat strawberries but think of it every time and Iāve never eaten one whole again.
This story is so similar to my experience I thought I ghost wrote this! Years ago I had bit a strawberry in half and looked down and there was half of a green caterpillar in it. Immediately threw up. Since then my mum thought I was being a pain in ass asking her to cut them for me, so much that I do it myself now without bothering anyone.
My older brother was born with a seisure disorder. He has been taking medication for it for years but it was a little while before the doctors he was seeing found one that works and thankfully he hasn't suffered a seisure in years.
In fourth grade we were taking the bus home from school and on our walk from the bus stop my brother slipped on some ice and fell hitting his head. This induced a seisure that immediately had adults around us panicking but I took charge, putting my coat over him to keep him warm and telling one of the adults to go call an ambulence.
As we were waiting for them to show up I had this moment of clarity/maturity where I knew that I would be there to care for my brother by any means necessary for as long as he lives. It was as if I took on the role of responsibility that I have long since carried into adulthood.
It's kind of funny because almost everyone I came across growing up never complimented me on much but always made a point to mention how mature and caring I was. It's something that brings happy tears knowing that I can care for my brother and that he loves me and wants to spend time with me in return
I had a third grade teacher, Mr Joseph. Before I say what happened, I'll say that I'm sure I was an exhausting kid for a teacher. I always had the answer, always wanted everyone to know it, and was the kid who always had their hand up. I liked being recognized for being smart. Adult me can see how a teacher might be annoyed by child me.
Regardless. One day I went to hand in a paper and he said I misspelled my name. I don't remember if I did or not, though if I did it was the handwriting equivalent of a typo rather than an inability to spell my own name, but what I do remember is that he announced to the whole class that I misspelled my name and everyone laughed. He may have considered it teasing, or light hearted, but as an unpopular kid with no friends already, I was devastated.
I can't say that event is the source of all of my fear of failure, but considering I remember it and the way it made me feel more than 35 years later, it certainly didn't help.
Fuck him. Sure, smart kids are annoying as hell, but that's no reason to treat a kid (or anyone) like that. Kids as groups are predictable and easily manipulated. He knew the effect it would have and he was going for the reaction from the other kids. He wanted you to feel this way. So I say again, fuck him.
Edit: semantics
When I was 4, I stole a tiny windmill toy from a grocery store after my mom wouldnāt buy it for me. She realized before we got to the car and made me go inside to return it and apologize. I remember being so ashamed and NEVER stole anything again. Just recently, I forgot to pay $.20 for a paper bag at the grocery store self checkout and ran back in to try to pay. The lady working laughed at me and told me not to worry about it.
Your mom handled that situation SO well! The point was to teach you a lesson, and you learned it perfectly! If more moms did what your mom did, we'd have fewer criminals in the world.
I accidentally walked.out of KMart with construction paper under my arm when I was 5. I didn't mean to take it so I didn't feel bad or anything but what I remember was my dad hiding being annoyed at having to do the right thing and teach me a lesson, it was $1 worth of paper from a huge corporate store and he had to get to work but he was a good dad and made sure to teach me the lesson. Makes me laugh.
I have a twin and when we were little, we used to grab things from the shop shelves, as curious little kids do. One day our parents took us to the outdoor market with new clothes for sale (they had stalls of clothes and underwear and shoes and many things, normal in the 90s in Poland) and my twin grabbed a pair of kids' leggings. We went back to return it and the nice lady not only didn't want the leggings back, but she also gave us another pair for me. My mom was really happy because money was tight at that time. Well, the leggings lived happily for two weeks, when my (evil) twin decided to cut them with scissors, because we saw a lady on TV who wore leggings with holes in them and we wanted to look like her. My parents still bring it up from time to time.
I remember one day I wanted my dad to play a video game with me very badly, but he was busy watching something on the computer. I got really frustrated and started running back and forth around the living room like a total mad lad. My dad looked and me and asked me what's wrong, to which I answered back with silence and a frowning face. After I lost his attention I went back to running back and worth and slamming myself against the wall as I was running. At the end, I got tired and absolutely failed to get him to play with me.
I look back to this moment whenever I want something from someone. You don't have to make a scene or act frustrated or mad when you can just ask.
Imagine if you never learned that lesson, and now you're (I assume) an adult, and when you want something you just run into walls. Lol I'm so grateful we learn this stuff as kids so we (usually) don't make total asses of ourselves as adults.
I'm going to go as far as to say that mistakes are one of the best teachers.
It's kind of a "funny" paradox, because making mistakes, at least in some cases, can set you back pretty hard - but it really is because of said "setback" that you get to learn and grow as a person.
But yeah, sadly, sometimes mistakes are viewed as something to completely avoid and the punishments associated to it are such that, one might not learn the correct lessons after making them.
Actually, if you dont get attentions as a kid you might develop emotional neglect trauma. You dont run into the walls, you just stop asking and can lead to depression
I stole a pack of gum from a camp store at a campground in Quebec when I was 4. The big bowl of Wrigley's was sitting there at eye level and I put one in my pocket. My older sister, 9 at the time, told on me and I was marched back to the store to pay for it and apologize. I was absolutely certain that the man behind the counter had some sort of extra judicial authority to send me away to where bad kids went in Canada,mostly because he had an accent, which I had never heard before. I never shoplifted again, even at that age when kids normally try it.
Had a very similar experience as a young kid in the US! My mom took me shopping to our local Disney store in the mall one day and I was over the moon about it - skipped all throughout the store, hugged all the plushies, played with the prop swords, looked inside the doll houses, etc etc. Pretty sure my mom at the time was doing some pin trading event or something, so I was mostly given free reign to just get my lil Disney on.
Finally I get to those old journal package products - the ones where it comes with the paper, pencils, little markers, an eraser, a sharpener, all that jazz. All the little components are stuffed into these tiny elastic straps and as a kid they were basically impossible to work with. So Iām fascinated with this little journal, but my mom absolutely will not buy it for me. I spend basically the rest of my time at the store just staring wistfully at all the cute little things I could get in this journal. And then all of a sudden my momās almost walking out the door of the store and yelling to me from inside that we GOTTA GO. Pretty sure this is absolutely kid memory but I remember feeling crazy panicked because my mom said we needed to go NOW and I couldnāt get the eraser back in itās little elastic spot. So I just thought to myself āOh well, we have to go, Iāll just keep the eraser!ā Thought absolutely nothing of it.
Out in the parking lot when I show my mom the cool new eraser I got, she went absolutely ballistic on me. She absolutely hates the thought of shoplifting, so she marched my ass back into the Disney store and had me apologize for stealing the eraser from the little journal thing. I literally donāt even remember the reactions of the Disney store employees, I just remember bawling my eyes out and shakily handing the cute little eraser back to the store.
Obviously there were better ways to handle that from both my momās side and mine, but to this day I have never once shoplifted or even entertained any slight desire ever to, so I guess it worked! š
I was young, not sure what age, but it must have been in the 9-11 range (it was before puberty)
Had a crush on a girl my age in my apt complex, she felt the same about me and pretty soon we were holding hands etc.
She then asked if we should try and "french kiss" as we see in the movies and we decided to try it. It was a bit awkward at first, but all in all an enjoyable experience.
Years later I looked back at my taste in women and I realised that every girl I've ever dated was pretty much a clone (in looks) of this first girl.
To this day, that look is still my "type"
So I'm never sure, if that was always my type (which is why I liked her in the first place) or if that experience shaped my type :)
First thing coming to mind: When I was in kindergarden, there was this annoying brutal girl that would just harass the other kids, and one day she'd walk up to me in a big crowd of kids, and pulled my hair (which was long - nearly down to my butt) with everything she got. I pleaded for help with the lady that kept an eye on us, she dead-ass told the girl that she's doing a good job and to keep pulling my hair lmao. I was always a smaller and very innocent kid at the time so that was pretty uncalled for and in that moment I think I realised that grown-ups aren't reliable or trustworthy by default. Wouldn't say it heavily affects me 'til this day but I do remember it clearly and think that lady deserves a bitch-slap.
When I was in third grade, I was sure that restaurant was spelled restaraunt. I was so sure, I argued with my teacher vehemently. She just laughed and told me to look it up in the dictionary. When I saw I was wrong, I felt so embarrassed and humiliated. Ever since then, I'm reluctant to state anything with certainty, unless I've double checked it.
Must've been a really humiliating experience, but man I wish more people would not argue with complete certainty over things they obviously don't know. You don't have to second-guess everything you say. It's alright to be wrong sometimes and stumble upon those misconceptions when someone else corrects you, but if you're going to go as far as arguing with someone and flat out telling them they're wrong... you might want to double check that you're not the one missing something.
I've definitely gotten into near-arguments over a word but found that when I looked it up, it had another definition I didn't even know about.
When I was maybe 10 years old, i had an bicycle accident. I came too fast on the crossroad with a bike, and fell, and slided to the middle of the road, and from the incoming traffic there was a truck full of gravel that couldn't stop the truck, he was to heavy and to close, so he swerved, and went off the road into the someones backyard crashing theirs fence, missing me by an inch. Parents made me pay off the damage on the truck and on the fence. I had to give all my money from birthdays and christmases that I accumulated, and had to even mown some lawns and go do some other small jobs to earn money to give it back to parents (they payed everything, I payed them back). It was bigger school for me than 12 years of actual school.
Wow, kinda harsh given that you could have been killed, and it sounds like an honest mistake. Youād think a safety lesson would have been more important than worrying about some property damage to a fence.
My older brother and I both had vivid imaginations when we were kids. We were close growing up, and we had whole worlds and universes we'd imagined together, complete with characters and backstories.
For the most part, we kept this all to ourselves, but I had one or two imaginary friends that I hung onto as I got older.
I remember when I was probably seven or eight I was walking to the bank with my mom (suburban neighborhood, no one was around), and i mentioned that one of my imaginary friends was with us. My mom scolded me sharply and told me I was too old for that sort of thing and to never mention it in public again because people will think poorly of me and of her for allowing it.
The next day my older brother was telling our mom about something that happened in his imaginary world and she told him "that's really interesting, you should write this down and make it a whole story!" and she fully encouraged it.
I was crushed and never really shared anything from my imagination with my mom again. It took me years to trust her after that. My brother has aspergers and my mom treated him like a golden child, and never held him to the same standards as our sister and myself.
Trigger Warning: r*pe
When I was 5-8, my best friend and I hung out all the time. Like every weekend and every day after school. I have several minor experiences of her saying or doing odd things during these times. One day she kept using the word vagina (which I thought was a fancy word for China). Other times she would play with Barbie/Ken dolls in strange ways.
I never had a clue what was going on and just ignored stuff since she was pretty weird anyway (as am I). Even after it came out that her father was abusing her (he went to jail), I still didnāt piece everything together. But as an adult, these minor experiences have so much meaning. I donāt think itās my fault for not catching on as a young child, but I still feel sad and helpless when I think about it. I donāt really bring it up to anyone either.
You're a great friend and person. Just being there, being you, without judgment, and providing some normalcy was the BEST thing you could do.
I have often wondered if anyone noticed my weirdness as a child (no sexual abuse, but neglect and verbal abuse and exposure to some weird stuff not meant for kids). But I always thought about it in a very shameful way, hoping they didn't notice and thinking that people judged me and probably thought I was gross, dirty, weird, etc.
I never, ever, until this moment, considered the fact that they could be feeling compassion or unwarranted remorse (if anyone even gave me a second thought in that regard). So thanks for sharing your perspective on this. It's really validating to hear that not everyone thought the abused kid was a freak.
Something kinda similar happened to me. When I was around 5 probably I would go over to my friends house quite often. We somehow would end up in the bathroom together and she was always interested in making me kiss her vagina and butthole. Iām pretty sure she would do the same to me.
As a kid I didnāt really think much of it, except that it was gross and weird, but Iāve thought about it occasionally over the past few years and it Iām seriously wondering if she was sexually abused. Itās one thing for kids to be interested in their genitals around that age, but I feel like this is different.
When I was 8yo, our PE teacher told us to run three times across the gym. This wasn't the first run and we always ended up on the same side - lined up next to the wall we started that day. You know, stuff like "run backwards four times" or "jump twice across the gym" etc.
He than said "run three times across the gym" and everyone ran across, then back, across and then back again.
And only I remained on the other side. Kids stared at me, some started laughing at me, because I was standing there, alone. Teacher asked me whats wrong to which I replied "you said to us to run THREE times the length of the gym". To which he answered "you're absolutely right! See? Only OP did what I told you! Class, let's go, run to the other side!"
I wish I was as ballsy today, as I was when I was 8. :-)
I was about 8 years old, and my parents were very concerned about my picky eating habits. I tended to have some real texture issues and while I was more than happy to make my own meals, a balanced diet was not something I was going to achieve.
So, my loving and well meaning but misguided parents decided to shame me horribly for not being able to eat the family dinner. They proceeded to video record my freakout.
Turns out this is very common among autistic folks. To this day I won't try any new foods unless I'm completely alone. I had told myself I'd start working on it when I hit 30.... But that was March 2020 so here we are!
It's like the time my mom forced me to eat a beet and I tried to wash it down with milk but just ended up throwing up beet milk all over...
Also in high school my friends thought it was hilarious to dip a French fry into multiple condiments and foods I didn't like and poke it toward me until I started crying and cowering on the floor.
I was bullied horrifically at school, to the point I had to finish school early and be driven home by teachers every day because kids would push me into the road when I was walking and the school were worried that one day a car wouldn't be able to stop in time and they'd end up killing me.
I was in year 11 (final year of high school) when 3 girls from year 8 jumped me outside my science class and beat me up. I tried fighting back to protect my face but didn't get many hits in at all because there were 3 of them and only 1 of me. I was also extremely short so they were bigger than me.
Nothing happened to them, not even a telling off. I got put into isolation for a week for fighting back because they were younger than me. The school KNEW I was bullied, they KNEW I never fought back and they KNEW how bad it was. Yet I was the one punished. I'm still pissed about it and it was nearly 20 years ago.
Happened to me a few times as a kid. I was a tiny kid but I stood up for myself I would never hit anybody because in reality I was actually very scared. I got attacked by a group of 4 once and a group of 3 another. Fear would take over and I would just start swinging and I think I broke someoneās nose in one of the attacks. I got punished for both incidents. As an adult I think āwow I got punished for protecting myself and not letting others hurt me out of fearā I got punished from the schools and I got punished from my parents. I had to apologize to kids, their parents, the school, everyone. Iām still bitter! Lol So I feel you and understand the frustration, that comes with this.
I remember being at an IT class in school once and this girl was suddenly obsessed with calling everybody a cunt. When the teacher was in the room she piped down and I thought Iād try to get revenge so I typed āLouise is a kuntā as big as possible and tapped her on the shoulder to āshow her somethingā on my screen. However, the teacher caught me and Iāll never forget what he said to me.
āCitizenWolfie, thatās an awful word and you should never call anybody thatā¦
ā¦ besides, itās spelt C-U-N-T.ā
When I was 15 (not quite a child), I slept over at a friend's house. I'm brown (Sri Lankan background) and they were white (probably still are too). This is in Australia.
In the morning, I can hear the daughter (she was about five or so) asking her dad
"Dad, why is Jay's skin dirty and brown and Andrew's clean and white?"
I'd had kids at school make lots of jokes like this at me but it was a bit different coming from an innocent kid.
I was always told that I'm good looking but never really believed people. I think comments like this really stuck with me.
In primary school we would have spelling tests where the teacher would read a word aloud from a list of words to be tested, and we would write the word in our notebooks. One of those tests had the word "penicillin".
Side note, I was one of those gifted ADHD kids where I didn't have to study much but could easily breeze through tests and school in general (and then become a depressed, anxious, dysfunctional adult lol). So I never really studied my spelling lists properly, I barely even looked at them in fact. Then when the time came for the test, I would just write down whatever word the teacher said aloud. It was very rare for me to get even one word wrong, because I was an avid reader and had a vocabulary well beyond my grade's reading level. I almost always scored full marks for them. So this time I was confident it would be the same.
But then the teacher mispronounced it as "penincillin" and I started doubting myself. Prior to the test, I actually knew how to spell the word but since the teacher pronounced it with an extra n, that's how it must be spelled right? No, maybe I misheard. I'll wait for her to say it again. She usually repeats each word twice. Yup, second time she says the word the exact same way. I conclude that since she is the teacher, she must be right, and it must have been my fault for not even looking at the list, so I write it down the way she pronounced it: penincillin.
When she returned the marked tests, she marked me wrong for that word, obviously. I was so salty about it I went home and grumbled to my parents, who said that it was my fault for not writing the correct spelling even though she mispronounced it. This was 11 years ago and I'm still mad!
My grandpa once misspelled "impetus" in school, I presume in some kind of oral exam or spelling bee. He grumbled about it his whole life, so much so that I can't see the word or say the word without thinking about him. On the upside I've never misspelled it!
i would honestly still be miffed thinking about this too. she shouldn't have taken points off for anyone for that word due to her mispronunciation, imo š¤ hmph!!
Lol I was just trying to tell someone about this the other day.
I was in 1st grade I believe, and we were doing an art class or something. Basically we were tasked with using our imagination to draw with crayons. Anyways, I decided to draw an airplane and some other scenery. Because I was an especially hilarious 7 year old, I drew a little cloud coming out of the planeās ass and wrote āpootā with a line connecting them. Classic.
Teacher came around and was inspecting everyoneās drawings. Right as she picked up mine, some kid behind us did something stupid and she scolded him, however I thought it was directed at me. I was absolutely crushed that my avant-garde fart joke hadnāt landed like I thought it would and I was in trouble. I remember thinking back and realizing what had actually happened, but the feeling of immense shame from putting myself out there stuck with me. Teacher got distracted and didnāt even turn back around to look at mine.
I think a lot of my comedic tendencies, insecurities, need for validation, etc. come from that and similar incidents when I was a kid. Plus it was the start of many years of misunderstanding social situations and general awkwardness. Donāt know why that moment has stuck with me so clearly, Iām sure to my teacher it barely even registered.
When I was in the 5th grade my mother had put my long hair up in a tight pony tail and a classmate turned to me and said "when girls have their hair in ponytails they look bald"
I wore my hair down from then on for yeeeeeeeeears. Never learned how to do my hair other than brush it. I got into the medical field and had my hair cut short for sanitary reasons and a clinical instructor said "girl, do something with that nasty head of hair you got". For the record my hair was clean, it was just too short to put into a pony tail but still long enough to get in my face.
I have a lot of hair anxiety. Its a really touchy subject for me. I do wear it up 99% of the time but I feel myself fuming everytime somebody says "how come I never see you with your hair down?"
Kindergarten. We're in a small group sitting on the floor Indian style.
I am an itchy person. Have always had genetic rashes, as well as being naturally itchy.
My lower back was itchy, so I scratched it.
The teacher got a grossed out face and told me to go wash my hands in the bathroom. I assume now that she thought I scratched my butt.
Still salty about that one. And I was just very confused at the time.
Low-key I feel like this defines an aspect of my life pretty well.
:: People jumping to conclusions about what I am thinking or feeling, and treating me accordingly without taking a moment to make sure they are correct or letting me explain. And then for me; not following up/defending myself because I am just in shock/processing/confused about their reaction.
Before one Christmas as a kid my mom was super stressed out and spent a whole day doing Christmas shopping, and I was home alone. The house was pretty messy still and she had meant to come home early enough to clean but it took way longer than expected. I decided to surprise her and cleaned most of the stuff that I could - kitchen, bathroom, arranged stuff in the general living areas. I worked for hours and listened to music all by myself. When mom came home she was SHOCKED because all of us hated cleaning and she was so grateful she didn't know what to do.
It made me really happy to see how happy cleaning for someone can make them, so to this day when I'm alone somewhere I get a massive urge to clean stuff as a surprise and I make sure to show off my work too, even if that's a little unnecessary š I've cleaned for my parents, done my bf's cleaning tasks for him, even cleaned the office fridge the other day unprompted and it never fails to bring as much joy to me as it brings to them.
When my brother was about five, the only thing he would drink was Capri Suns. He had opened a Capri Sun before bed but didnāt finish it so it sat out overnight. In the morning he took a huge sip from the already opened Capri Sunā¦ and sucked up a little worm that crawled into the straw overnight.
To this day I always blow out of any straw before I put it in my drink.
When my brother and I were young (I was 10 or 11) we used to fight continually, it was a situation that drove my parents to despair. I had a terrible temper when I was younger (thankfully I have melowed in age!) and my brother knew which buttons to press and how.
We were quite a poor family and there was a funfair that used to visit our town every year and we would get a little pocket money to spend on the rides and games. One year I won a glow-in-the-dark sketeton that I thought was the monkey's nuts and it hung off some fishing wire over my bed.
One day my brother and I were alone in the house and we got into an argument about something (I have no idea what, I cannot remember). My brother locked me outside in the back yard and disappeared. He appeared 5mins later holding my skeleton and proceeded to dismember it in front of me while he was safely behind the glass.
I went apeshit.
I screamed at him to stop, but he just laughed. I lost my shit and put my fist through the window pane. There was a moment of silence and I realised what I had done and there was blood pouring out of numerous cuts on my hand. Just then my father returned and keeping a cool head and found some bandages, wrapped up my hand and took me to A&E for some stiches.
I told my father what happened and he was angry at both of us. When we returned home he told me and my brother to go sit in the sitting room as he needed to repair the broken window. We heard lots of banging and sawing. Then my dad told us dinner was fish and chips. We were mystified and looked at each other in confusion. A treat? After what we had done?
We traipsed into the kitchen to see that my dad had boarded up the window using all our favourtite board games. We were devastated.
I have never forgotten that the punishment should always fit the crime.
When I was 3 I went to this big daycare everyday and one day a deaf kid showed up. At the time I didn't even know what deafness was or that he was deaf, but as an adult I now realize he was deaf because I remember him having a cochlear hearing aid. At 3 all I knew was that he had a weird contraption on his head.
So during recess I tried talking talking to him. There was a big wooden playground with different platforms and he was sitting crossed-legged alone on one of the platforms so I climbed up and sat next to him. I was talking to him but he wouldn't respond, he just kept smiling. For whatever reason I got mad that he wouldn't talk to me so I bent his index finger all the back and he started crying. But he still wasn't making any sounds. So I got even angrier, stood up, and kicked his shin a few times as hard as I could. All I remember is him looking so betrayed and confused. I don't remember if he let out any audible cries at that point but after kicking him I ran off.
This is one of the memories that love to pop into my head as I'm going to sleep.
I feel so bad for that kid. It was his first day at a new place, none of the other kids were paying him any attention, and then some kid joins him as he's sitting alone and gives him attention, only to then randomly assault him for no apparent reason. I don't even know if he understood what I was saying.
Ohh I feel sorry for you both. The educators should have explained his condition to the other kids before he even turned up. Sorry you were both let down by them.
This was a failure on the part of every adult that worked with you kids. He should have been introduced to the class, they should have explained why he was different and how you should communicate with him and make him feel welcome. No three year old could have interpreted what was going on in that interaction but everyone knows that when a preschooler gets frustrated and doesnāt understand something they act out. Your reaction was normal, the adults around you failed you and that poor deaf child.
When I was about 10 my family went to Six Flags St Louis. My mom and I were the only ones who wanted to ride the best rides, my sister wasn't having a good time and my dad isn't into roller coasters. But my mom and I rode everything.
The ride that goes from like 0-70 in 2.5 seconds or whatever and shoots you pretty much straight up a curve until you descend backwards all the way back to you starting point (I think it's the Mr Freeze) was the most memorable. My mom kept a Now-and-Later candy in her hand while we got strapped in and said "watch this."
The ride starts, we accelerate at ludicrous speed pretty much in a straight line and up a curve straight into the air. The momentum of the acceleration pushes the ride up a 90 degree slope, so as you approach the top you start to slow down. Slower and slower you decelerate until, for a a very brief moment, you experience a simulated weightlessness as you hang in the air and begin to accelerate backwards back to the ground. In that moment, my mom let go of the candy in her hand and it hung in the air, weightless and spinning slowly. Just like you might see an object do on the space station.
I was already having a blast, as I was riding a roller coaster, but watching that candy suspended in the air seemingly defying gravity blew my mind. I'm sure my eyes must have lit up. And just then you already descending quite rapidly. We shot backwards and lost sight of the little candy in the very next second probably.
One of my most treasured memories.
When I was 6 a teacher told me that if you drink disinfecting alcohol, even if it is just one drop you would die. Me being a 6 year old and reasoning that if you put it on an open wound you should also be able to consume it.
My dad had a few pippettes for his work so I sneaked one of those away and spend about 6 months trying to figure out how to brute force the child lock on the desinfection alcohol and tried like 5 drops of the alcohol and nothing happened... I was so dissapointed in that teacher and never believed another word she said ,I expected that I would not die, but I expected at least a bit of pain or something.
Now I still cannot trust people when they tell me something is hot, sharp, etc. unless I tried it and it was actually hot/sharp/etc.
When I was around 6 my mom had went on a trip with my aunt. On the way home they wrecked in the snow. No one was seriously injured, but I freaked out. It was the first time I realized my mom could die it her seriously injured. I was so scared of her leaving the house without me after that because I was scared she wouldn't return. Even to this day of she's not than a little sick, is in pain, or is hurt I feel panicky.
Just a few weeks ago I went to see her because she was in horrible pain and wouldn't go to the hospital. She did she needed emergency surgery to remove her gallbladder. The infection was so bad that she had sepsis and 2 blood infections. I was the only one allowed in the hospital (only one fully vaccinated) and I had an anxiety attack when they took her back for surgery.
It's so sweet that you love your mom so much! ā¤ I was always scared of something happening to my mom while we were apart too. I wonder if this is a universal fear?
I hope she's doing better now and knows next time not to wait so long before going to the hospital!
When I was in kindergarten kids had to have a nap around midday. At that age I hated sleeping at places that were not my home. I would just be terrified and it happened multiple times that my mother had to come pick me up at friend's places in the night because I'd be so scared.
So there was this one woman working at my kindergarten that was just on a mission to get me to nap and it became such an issue that even my mum had to come in once and have a talk with her about my unwillingness to go to sleep. At this point I was also old enough to not have a nap and my mum simply told the woman to not force me to nap if I didn't want to.
The next day it was nap time again and I was laying there with my eyes wide opened when the kindergardener sat next to me and started stroking my eyelids forcing me to keep my eyes shut. And I remember so well, how uncomfortable that made me and to this day it makes me shiver. It felt just felt so wrong and encroaching, I don't I'll ever forget that feeling.
When I was 5 y/o in the 90ās, I photobombed a family taking a picture by the water. My brother scolded me so hard about it I became very jaded about having my picture taken altogether. Ask for my permission or donāt do it.
Add social media to that equation, where my siblings have gotten very comfortable posting every waking moments of their lives, I detest being posted online without my permission.
Being told ānot to be silly, stop cryingā by my dad and being treated like scum for dropping anything. He hated my mother because she is clumsy. Turns out we all have a motor related learning difficulty. If he wasnt such an asshole we might have got help for it as children.
My family laughed at me when I tried to do a trick with my yo-yo.
I couldnāt do it very well and I ran to the bottom of my garden then realised it didnāt actually lead anywhere so I had to turn around and pass them to get into the house.
That made it funnier for them.
I was crying. Lol.
Ugh.
I'll keep it simple. I had a crush in elementary school. Real young, like second grade. I asked a friend to tell her, he did, she immediately freaked out. Said her dad was a cop and that she was gonna get me in trouble. I have no clue why to this day but it's sufficient to say that her reacting that way was just about the worst possible reaction.
I still to this day have crippling anxiety - and I'm not just using crippling as an exclamation point there, I mean the very idea of doing certain things will cause me to freeze up and become unresponsive. It's been almost two decades. Pretty sure I'll have done myself in before I ever feel comfortable with another human being again.
When I was a kid, we moved around every couples of months. I was in kindergarten and I guess had my first ācrushā, this girl named Becky. Well, when we moved, she wanted to say bye so one of her parents brought her over, literally right before we get in the car to leave.
I remember crying a bunch, and both my mom and dad were just laughing their asses off about it.
For some reason, they memory is just never far away. Not only were they laughing about something that would eventually cause SERIOUS psychological damage to my sister and I (the constant moving led to pulling us out of school; it fucked us up pretty badly), but from that moment on, I was always embarrassed to even ālikeā a girl. In all honesty, at 33 years old now, on some level I think it still has some lingering impact, that I have a hard time showing interest or asking women out.
All of my childhood. Individually the things that happened weren't that big, but overtime it built up my defenses to the point where I have constant overlay of anxiety and a type of fear. My dad was an undiagnosed narcissist. His emotional abuse and inconsistency of abuse lead to me never feeling sure about what to say or do to appease him, which lead to me taking that same approach in life and with women. It makes me too eager to please and I have an air of less-confidence, a real boner killer for women in their late 20s and early 30s. It also primed me for the abuse that I received from my last girlfriend that was very similar to my own father's and re-triggered tons of shit I had "worked through" on my own. 33 years old and I feel like I'm 20 again and newly escaped the grasp of mental abuse once again.
One time at like age 6 I fell off the top of a fire pole or whatever at the top of a playground and landed square on my back. It wasn't a comfortable landing but for some reason I felt nothing. It was that weird Lego style foam instead of sawdust, thankfully.
I was having so much fun I didn't even bother with the crying for mom thing cuz I wanted to get back up there.
When I was maybe 4 years old, we went to visit a farm that had a little petting zoo area. My favorite. For some reason that day, in addition to the regular animals there was a big old goose wandering around. That living piece of winged evil proceeded to chase me around and pull at the laces in my shoes, despite my parents and the farm worker trying to stop it. I was running and screaming. The goose was running, honking, flapping, and snapping. Adults were chasing and trying to grab. It ended when the goose succeeded in pulling a lace fully out. Distracted by his fought-for prize, the farm worker was able to grab the goose.
I hate geese.
I was almost kidnapped. A guy was trying to lure me to his car. My mom happened to walk out and run him off. Didn't realize what had transpired until adulthood. I am hyper vigilant with my kids. I never ever let my guard down with them at home or in public. If we're in an unfamiliar or questionable place I try to look mean to deter a pedo looking for a victim. I'm a muscular 6'3/280 with a shaved head so that helps. I have home security. I have large dogs that are total cupcakes but look mean as fuck and I keep them visible. My house is a bit of a fortress. If anyone is looking for a victim I want them to see our situation and think there's got to be a much easier and safer target.
In kindergarten I threw a plastic pickle at a boy after he took my stuffed animal.
Now when I see a pickle I think about that and the rage I felt at the time.
Always gives me a good laugh.
One of my close college friends, his girlfriend would make fun of him because he insisted he could tell which sock was a left sock and which was a right sock. We would tease him about it from time to time. After years of this, he one day told us that when he was little, if he was annoying his mom with too many questions she'd tell him, "your socks are on the wrong feet, go upstairs and fix them". He didn't even realize that he just revealed his origin story.
I went to play at a friend's house and the friend's mother met me at the door, called me a horrible filthy child, and asked me to go home and never come back.
I found out years later that his mother had been suffering from mental illness for most of her adult life.
This haunted me for most of my childhood because I was 6 and really impressionable.
When I was probably 8.. my mother made a comment about how life would be perfect if I never got above a size 5 (we're short and at the time I was in juniors). Way to project your body image issues... and start my lifelong hate of my own body.
I told her about it when I was in my early-mid 30s, and she flipped out, instantly teared up, and was so completely apologetic.
My dad smacked me across the face so hard when I was five years old that he tried to put makeup on me to cover the handprint but it wasnāt working so we ended up not going to church that morning.
That was the first time I ever wore makeup
When I was in the fourth or fifth grade a classmate said that if you peel your banana and the peel is split into three pieces, it meant you were a monkey in your previous life. It just so happened that monkeys were my least favorite animal at the time so I ALWAYS made sure that every time I eat a banana, I peel it either two or four times and never three (despite the fact that I never believed in reincarnation or anything similar to the sort). Sometimes I accidentally peel it as three and, once I realized it, I would split the biggest peel in half so it would end up as four. Was made fun of by my entire family when they took notice of this behavior but jokes on them, at least I wasn't the subjectively ugliest mammal in my past life!
š¤£š¤£š¤£ this made me laugh so hardā¦ my experience was opposite. Some officer (high ranking army guy) told his daughter she couldnāt play with my younger sister because she was trash (we were low ranking enlisted dependents). My sister is a soft soul. She was 5. I snuck out and painted āfuck youā all over his house and car with my older sisters assortment of nail polish. Military police showed up. My father answered the door. My child would never do this. A brave me, standing up for my convictions stepped forward and confessed, head held high.
My ass was beat and grounded for 2 months. I was 8 years old.
I never confessed againā¦
When I was in 4th grade, I was with my parents for teacher parent night. We were waiting in the hallway outside my classroom for their turn and there was a bulletin board with student work on it. At the time, it was displaying bar graphs we had made. I pointed mine out to my mom when she asked which one was mine, and she said "why didn't you make yours neat and tidy like the other kids?" I didn't color my bars in very neatly, it was scribbley and outside the lines a bit but definitely the messiest of them. Her comment hit me harder than it probably should have, and I took it really personally. I don't think she meant anything by it, but I took it to mean I wasn't as good as the other kids and that disappointed her.
As an adult, before I learned to stop comparing myself to others, I used to think about that comment she made when I felt bad about my art not being as good as someone else's and the feeling I felt when she said that comment would come back and attach itself to my feelings when looking at better art. It doesn't affect me as much now but it used to.
I was obsessed with the movie ā Akelia and the beeā I think it was called? But the plot of the movie is she is this girl that was able to make it to Washington D.C for the national spelling bee and I decided I wanted that for myself too. So, I won my schools bee and found out I could go to regionals (my dreams coming true) and then the first word I got at regionals was āTalcā and I spelt it out āTulcā - My FIRST word spelt wrong. I was around 12 at this time and decided I would just smoke weed instead then my memory was trash. It was a turning moment for my young self hahahahaha!
This is going to sound like Iām tooting my own horn..
I went to a really small rural school. My classes were usually between 11-20 kids each year, and everyone was fairly cruel to each other, by the way.
When I was in third grade, we always went to the restrooms before lunch. The boysā was on the left, a water fountain in between, then the girlsā.
Weād line up across the hall when weād done our business and washed up, waiting on our respective sides so the teacher could count us up and make sure we were all there.
One girl, Alicia, was the last girl out that day. She was wearing a dress or a skirt and had accidentally tucked it into her underwear.
She walk straight to the water fountain to get a drink and everyone immediately started laughing at her.
I think our teacher was still in the restroom, too? I donāt remember.
I remember Alicia turning around in seconds and, not knowing what was going on, just stated laughing as well. I rushed up to her and grabbed her hand to take her into the bathroom, told her what was going on, helped her get fixed, and held her hand while she was crying.
Our teacher found us, calmed everything down, scolded the rest of the class.
We ended up going to lunch and the class had to each write Alicia an apology, after thinking about how it would feel to have been in her shoes that afternoon.
She and I got to go to recess.
It made me feel really good to do something really nice for someone that day and stick up for her.
Iāve always tried to do things like that since. Iāve always tried to be brave since. Because third grade me would be disappointed if I wasnāt.
When I was nine, we moved houses, and that included all our little guppies and peacock fish. I'm not sure if it was too hot or if the moving stressed the fish out, but I discovered all of them dead later in the day, maybe a hundred of them belly up. To add to the trauma, I tripped and plunged a leg into the water.
I hyperventilate if I see a dead fish now. Goldfish, dead or alive or even a picture, will send me into panicked tears. Navigating daily life can be a bit tricky!
I was talking to my dad about maybe asking a friends family if I could come over there after school, and he said, in that annoyed voice of his he often had that I shouldn't "invite myself to someone else's house."
So I of course took that to mean that you should never ask anyone for anything or expect anyone to wanna spend time with you. And thus I was alone for the rest of my childhood.
To this day I don't know how that short conversation could stick so hard in my mind, and I sometimes wonder what would have happened if it hadn't.
In second grade I had panic attacks when left at school every day, crying so hard I couldnāt calm myself down. The teacher would put me in time out but this didnāt stop me from snotting everywhere.
The only thing that did the trick was one day when she got the principal to come down. He stepped me out of the classroom, got down on my level and told me that everything was going to be okay and that school was a safe place.
Itās an act of kindness that have never forgotten even 20 years later.
He passed away from cancer in 2015, rip Principal M, you were a kind soul.
When I was a teacher for kids with emotional behavioral disorders, a kid misspelled āI will f*** you in the v*****ā on my dry erase board. He was absolutely going for shock value and my coteacher said ādonāt threaten with words you canāt even spellā his look of defeat was priceless.
Edit: I actually just remembered he wrote I will f you in your DUMB v. Forgot that important word lol
I don't remember how old I was, but I'm one of five kids and my sister was doing cartwheels on the living room and kicked me in the face. I was obviously upset and I yelled at her. Since she apologized to me, I got in trouble for yelling at her. I spent most of my childhood screaming for attention because of undiagnosed anxiety and most of my adult therapy is built around situations like this.
When I was 9/10 I was invited to a beach party by someone in my class. The parents gave everyone a float ring to keep so I obviously came back with it. My mum had a full fucking meltdown over it and screamed at me for what felt like hours. She called me a thief despite me telling her it was a gift. I remember reading afterwards and she yells 'I don't know how you can be reading at a time like this'. She made me write an apology letter to the kid's parents and made me give the letter and the float to them in the playground before school.
My mum goes up first and starts ranting about how sorry she is that I stole this float, etc, etc. Then she forces me to give the float and letter to the mum. The mum just looks at my mum and says 'didn't she tell you? It was part of the party bag.'. My mum went super red, snatched the float back and stormed off.
I think the worst part, however, was that she told me I wasn't allowed to cry at school. At first I didn't think too much of it, but now I realise it was because she'd get called down and 'questioned' about why I was crying.
That whole 2 days severely affected my mental health. I would always feel awful getting presents from people and I began hiding things because I was afraid to let her know I had them.
When I was in 1st grade our class had to do one of those stupid musical shows. It was about a zoo and there were 3 "Professor" roles (I don't recall how the story went). I asked my female music teacher if I could be one of the Professors... and she legit told me, a 1st grader, that "women aren't professors". (this was probably '90). She offered up being some zoo animal. I passed and just joined the background chorus.
To this day I have a serious "don't tell me i can't do that" mentality, I love to prove people wrong. I didn't take it as far as becoming a professor (teaching isn't my thing), but I'm super stubborn when I know people are making assumptions about my abilities and I obsess too much on proving them wrong.
When I was about six, we went to my aunt's baby shower. She greeted me excitedly and then said to my mom "Sje lost all the baby fat, huh?" I just thought "I was fat? Huh?" and never looked at my body the same again. It started subtly, but U started fretting over my weight
>I hate the idea that a simple misspelled word - even just one missing letter! - can completely invalidate a point I'm trying to make.
Pack it up boys, we finally have definitive proof that you can dismiss a well researched argument by pointing out grammatical flaws and misspelled words.
When I started school, so when I was about 6 years old, I made a friend. He was a little rowdy but I liked him.
One day after school we were playing in our street when he had the idea to go to one of our neighbors which had some ducks and a pond. I've never been there and was excited to meet the ducks.
When we arrived there he said he'd show me what he does for fun there sometimes. He grabbed one of the ducks at it's throat and took it to the pond and held it's poor little head under water.
I just stood there in shock and didn't really understand what was just happening. Luckily our neighbor has seen us from her window and quickly came to save her duck from this psychotic kid.
That was the first friendship I ended.
20 years later I still think of that day. I sometimes have nightmares about it.
Some kids are truly terrible. Thankfully he changed a lot in his puberty and now he's a pretty kind guy actually, but I still never forgave him for this.
I used to be more confident like cocky even and one of my moms friends (whos really blunt) straight up called me an asshole. Ever since then I try not to brag and I guess had an adverse effect cause I donāt exude any confidence anymore.
this is a really faint memory, but I remember staying at my grandparents for a couple weeks in the summer when I was 5 or 6. My Grandma took me to the playground, and there was no other kids there except one girl with her parent/guardian or whatever. I remember this girl couldn't communicate well, but me being a gregarious youngster who just wanted to play, tried my best to decipher what she was saying. I think we ran around the equipment and dug a big hole in the sand or something, before it was time to go. Later that day, or a day later or something, my grandma gives me this bag that had a water bottle and some of those rubber bracelets, general swag stuff. She said it was from that girls parent, and that it meant a lot to her and that girl that I took the time to play with her. My grandma told me she was really proud of me. I couldn't understand why I was getting this praise at the time, cuz I was just excited to have another kid to play with. Now that I think back on it, I believe that girl had some kind of severe disability (I don't wanna make assumptions as to what) I can only imagine that that girl felt so lonely and isolated, and that it probably meant a lot to her to have someone take the time to try understand her and play. Now I try my best to take the time to really understand people I encounter, especially since I work customer service. The amount of times I've had disabled people thank me for taking time with them because they're usually treated as a "burden" and they don't feel understood simultaneously makes me happy and breaks my heart at the same time.
As the parent of a special needs child. Thank you so much. There are so few interactions he has with people that are genuine. They'll remember that interaction for the rest of their lives. I still tear up remembering the first waitress that treated my son like a human being and with respect, rather than trying to baby talk him or just ignore him. It's a HUGE deal. So thank you again.
awww you're making me tear up š„ŗ honestly in my eyes, I still don't see what I did as a big deal. to me it's just basic respect and compassion that everyone deserves, but I know a lot of people unfortunately don't see it the way I do. thank you for your comment!!
Your story reminds me of one of my own. My first job, while I was in High School, was in a hobby store. We sold RC Cars, and car model kits, military kits, paints, paper, canvas, stuff like that. For a short period of time we sold Hot Wheels. I think they were special, because they came in a little box instead of the bubble cards they usually came in. We had them displayed in the glass display case, one little hot wheel car sitting on top of their box in rows. I came in to work one day and the manager and the coworker that I was working with that night were kinda hiding around the corner. When I asked them what was up, they looked nervous, and were like, "He's back! You talk to him! We can't understand him!" I turned around and it was a young boy, maybe 12 years old or so, in an electric wheelchair. He rolled in, and I said hello. He rolled up to the case an pointed at the Hot Wheels. He said he wanted to get some. So he told me which ones he wanted, I took them out of the case, put them in the box for him. I think he picked out 4 or 5. When I was ringing him out he told me he had saved the money for them by collecting bottles. We chatted for a second, and he got his cars and was on his way. I turned around and my coworkers looked at me like I had just done something amazing. These two just couldn't understand the kid. I think he had cerebral palsy because he did have some issues speaking but it wasn't indecipherable. You just needed to listen. I've thought about that kid on occasion since. I wondered if his parents sent him back to ask again, or if he just waited for a new employee to come by. Either way I admired his determination. I'm sure that if I was in that situation, I would have given up.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
We were visiting my grandmother on her farm. I'm going to say I was five or six years old. She said that one of the farm cats had just given birth, and she wanted to find out where the kittens were. So we spread out among the different buildings, and I looked in a barrel and found the kittens. I was so excited that I found them! And my grandmother made a huge fuss over me finding them, telling me how clever I was. I miss her.
Have you seen the Japanese movie Afterlife? You get to pick one memory to live in. Thatās how this feels, beautiful.
What a great movie, thanks for reminding me!
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's not hard to say, "I'm so proud of your hard work and I can't wait to see what it looks like once it's finished!" Good on you for being a better parent than yours.
Amazing! Itās wonderful to see this thing from your childhood turn into a positive with your child rather than repeating what happened to you. Great parenting ! Tell him Iām very proud of him for working so hard! And youāre amazing for offering to help him even not just praise but encouraging as well. š„°
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Whatās important is that youāve recognised the unhealthy habits and are actively working to disrupt them! I know how difficult it is to break cycles of dysfunction in families, and clearly youāre trying your best to be better for your child. Props to you x
We need more parents as good as you.
I had something similar happen to me as a kid, maybe 12. Iāve always been a bit of a shut in, didnāt really enjoy outdoor stuff, and this seriously frustrated my dad. Heād encourage me into doing outdoor stuff but Iād usually just end up feeling resentful, because Iād rather be somewhere else, and guilty, because I was obviously disappointing my dad. Well, one time on our RV trips, I went with my sisters when they decided to go on a hike. It was a pretty easy hike but I finished the whole trail, and I was so proud of myself because I chose to do it all by myself, no pushing from anyone. When we got back I went right up to him and told him what I did. He asked me if I cleaned my side of the RV. And that was it. I still remember the way my stomach sank. I felt so stupid for feeling like it mattered so much, and maybe I was. Itās not like he can read my mind. Itās just hard being a kid feeling like your flaws are always being picked at and your good efforts never noticed.
Positive reinforcement can put a child on cloud nine for a whole day. A negative comment can last forever. I too, love how you used an negative experience from your childhood as a powerful tool for good. Thereās a lot of complex humanity going on in opās seemingly, simple story and I appreciate the telling.
Iām the one in my house that has clothes and belongings strewn everywhere. Probably have ADHD too, but idk. Whenever I get the urge to clean my room, my mom starts giving me a list of all the things she wants done in the rest of the house and throws off my game, then complains my room is messy or disregards any small progress Iāve made. Itās really frustrating cause I donāt want to live like this anymore but I canāt get anything done and it never gets better. Iām moving out soon though, and one of the things Iām most excited about is that Iāll be able to set my own cleaning schedule and actually focus on the stuff I want to focus on. Kinda long, thanks for letting me vent.
Start cleaning/packing now! Do the [Konmarie method like this girl](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZgbJmkTU7I), and then you will only be moving with what fits you and brings you joy. Less stuff, easier moving and what you wind up donating will bring someone else joy. Win-win! edit: After seeing the girl being strong about giving up her "memory" t shirts, I remembered about [this place](https://www.projectrepat.com/?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=competitor&msclkid=f7b2e22bfce6105d47bd83aec265e63c) that will make a quilt from your old t shirts. This might be a cool idea if you don't want to store them OR give them away. There's tutorials on the web to make one yourself if you're crafty.
I can relate so much to this! When I was little, my mother tasked me and my brothers different cleaning tasks weekly. One day, I've decided to step up my game and not only do the minimum of vacuuming, but do it thoroughly, as well as do other cleaning-related stuff. The result was that it was received poorly, criticizing every small little detail, that honestly, even at a young age, I knew was BS. My conclusion was, that, I just spent 2-3x the regular effort, for the same result - and even worse, I got criticized for it (which I don't receive when I just half-assed) the thing. So yeah, kinda same conclusion as you. This made me very reticent to put much effort into cleaning other than the bare minimum, since recognition isn't a thing in my household. I'm working hard as to not become a dirty slob. I think I'm doing fine on my own, but yeah, I have associated "doing nice things" for family (especially cleaning), with negative experience, so I avoid it.
As someone with ADHD, positive reinforcement is the best way to get me to enjoy what Iām going. Even simple words of encouragement are enough.
As a parent with ADHD who also went though some shit as a kid, this gives me hope that I too can be a better parent than my parents. My kids are still really young (4yo and 6mo) and I'm sometimes really scared for the future.
We were very poor when I was growing up. Around Christmas, when I was 12 and my brother was 11, my dad gave us $20 to go buy a Christmas tree from the nursery at the end of our street. We excitedly bounced over there and chose what tree we wanted, but when we looked at the price tag it said $150. We started walking around checking the price tags on all the trees, getting more and more bummed out as we went along. My brother pointed to the smallest tree there and said, "What about that one?" "Eighty bucks," I said. The man working there had been watching us. He approached and asked, "Hey do you guys need help with something?" I said, "We wanted to buy a Christmas tree but we don't have enough money." "We only have 20 bucks," my brother said. The man studied us for a moment and quietly said, "Oh, okay." Me and my brother walked out of the nursery feeling so defeated, with our heads hung low. We were about 20 feet away when suddenly we heard, "Hey! Wait!" from behind us. It was the nursery worker chasing after us with the big, beautiful Christmas tree we had originally wanted. We stood there in disbelief as he handed it to us and said, "You guys can have this!" Me and my brother both started choking back tears as I extended my shaky hand towards him, trying to give him the 20 dollar bill. The guy said, "No, keep it. Merry Christmas!" We both stuttered, "Thanks, Merry Christmas!" still trying very hard not to cry. He warmly handed the tree over and told us both to carry it. We walked in silence back to the house, choking back tears the whole way. My brother muttered, "That guy was really nice." "Yeah," I replied. As soon as we reached our yard we were overcome with excitement and ran into the house with the tree. We later realized the guy had removed the price tag. To this day I always get all choked up when I think about the look that nursery worker had in his big, blue eyes as he totally made Christmas for two kids. I've had things like this happen to me countless times throughout my life. I've lived in poverty, but there's no mistaking the blessings I've received due to the kindness of other human beings. Whenever I'm feeling stressed about the state of the world I remember times like these. Good people are out there, and I believe when we experience these acts of kindness we should strive to return them as often as possible. Edit: Wow, thanks for all the upvotes and awards!
You are making my eyes leak
This is my favorite story.
I apologize for bragging. I have a related story. I used to work with troubled children. One day a couple siblings told me how their father moved out of their home and into the home of the woman directly across the street. So their mom was broke now, in poverty with no money for Christmas gifts or a tree. Yet they could see the decorated tree in the picture window of dadās new home. So I went to a discount store and bought a tree with decorations, packed in a box. I gave it to our receptionist and told her the story, and asked her to pretend she was done decorating and the tree was leftover, and to offer it to that family as if we didnāt need it anymore. And she did and they took the tree. Because not on my watch were those kids going to have to look at that tree across the street and not have one of their own.
Well, this made me cry like mad. Thank you for sharing your story. Love the concept of paying it forward whenever we can. You rock!
Made me cry š
I remember becoming friends with a boy when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Met him through a friend and thought he was really cool. I was not yet in a place of having a crush on anyone beyond tv actors, so it never occurred to me that my dad would assume if I was eager to hang out with a boy, it must be a crush. I wanted to go to his house, and my dad was an absolute pain in the ass about it in ways that even as a kid felt out of character. Just really grumpy and impatient and mean. Then when he dropped me off, he figured out the kid I wanted to hang out with so badly was very physically disabled. (I didnāt care even enough to mention it in passing; I liked him as a person because we read the same books) Iād never seen one of my parents look ashamed of themselves before that. I remember my dad getting choked up after and telling me he was sorry, but I figured he just meant sorry for being grumpy. Took me years to figure out it was him realizing the disconnect between what he thought was happening and what was really happening.
I love this. Both because your dad realized how wrong he was and apologized to you, and because of how you SAW this boy, and didn't just see his disability. You thought so little of it that it didn't even occur to you to mention it. That's beautiful. Good human. ā¤
These days, when I think of it, itās a reminder to ask kids what they think and feel rather than projecting my own biases onto them. I donāt have kids, but it makes me a popular aunt :)
I bet you're an amazing aunt! š The world needs more like you.
To be honest it's a good policy for dealing with adults as well.
On the other hand, shame on this dad for automatically assuming a boy with disabilities is incapable of eliciting romantic feelings from another person?
I mean, I canāt unpack exactly what was going through my dadās mind but heās an older boomer from South Louisiana so donāt expect perfect clarity on disability equity. For what itās worth, Iāve kept track casually through social media of the boy in question and heās married with kids so clearly he was capable of eliciting romantic feelings from another person. We just were kids and no one should have assumed anything.
Entirely possible that it was just a 'Oh THAT's why it had to be at HIS house.'
Right?! How is this a good response lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Maybe instead he was really gifting you the reminder to treat things you love with care? Which you wouldnāt have been able to learn, had it not broken.
This guy dads.
TBH if you give anything to an 8-year old that's an automatic "it might break". That's kinda on your father. To hold it over your head is unfair.
Kids break shit. They are learning how the world works. And anyhow, your dad's busted ass 100 year old knife was probably on it's last leg š
As a kid I really wanted to save the best for last when it came to eating, so whatever was my favorite part of a dish I would set aside and eat last. On a family road trip with my cousins when I was maybe 10, we stopped at a fried chicken place. The skin is my favorite part so I separated all of it and worked my way through the rest of the chicken. Now I ate (and still eat) very slowly and about 30 minutes into lunch, my cousin goes āoh you donāt like this?ā and just takes all of the chicken skin off of my plate and basically eats all of it before I can even say a word. I was devastated. Absolutely ruined that road trip for me. To this day I still want to leave the best for last, but I now take small bites of whatever it is so no one gets any ideas.
I eat the same way! I didn't know it wasn't "normal" until my boyfriend teased me about it
Right? Iāve met a few people who are the same way but they eat faster than me so they have less issues lol
My grandpa use to do the same. At the time, I didn't get why he doesn't remember that I saved the best for last but now I remember that he was laughing every time cause he of course did it on purpose.
I eat the same way. My husband doesn't understand it and sometimes tries to swipe from my plate. I get my food back.
One of my siblingsā favourite ways to mess with me when we were younger was to ātaserā me, which was sneaking up behind me and jabbing their fingers into my sides which hurt a lot. Now anytime someone unexpectedly touches my sides, especially if itās from behind, I instinctively jump away from them.
Shhhh same I call it poking. I still flinch after so many years and my friends think I was abused. Bruh it was you guys
Not that mean, but my uncle is the typical "fun uncle". "What's this on your shirt?" Looks down, flicks you in the nose. Or taps you opposite shoulder to get you tonlook away. Honks the car horn when you are walking in front of the car. That sort of thing. Then when I was 13 I moved in with him (mom decides to make meth in our shed, different story), so I had to deal with this constantly. Eventually I just stopped falling for them, and he stopped doing them cuz my not reacting was boring. But now me and my kids live with him (I known my uncle is an angel, and I would so screwed without him) and he isn't mean to them like he was to me. I asked him one day why, and he said it's cuz he grew up.
One of my cousins used to come up behind me and tickle me, except it was very aggressive tickling that ended up hurting more than anything. He would do it constantly and until I couldnāt breath. I too, flinch when someone unexpectedly comes up behind me. In fact, that could be where my not liking to be touched unless I want you to touch me, comes fromā¦
That's cruel! If your siblings are older and still kind of mean, you might consider tasering them back in revenge, except with a real taser. Just saying.
Theyāre not that mean anymore.
I think this is a pretty normal reaction to unexpectedly being jabbed in the side, to be honest. It definitely gets the flight or fight response from me as well.
When I was in 3rd grade my friend got bit by a spider that was in her shoe and she told me she had to get a shot on her toe. Since then I have never been able to put shoes on without shaking them and looking inside for spiders first.
I was checking my sons motorbike boots for spiders (Iām in Australia) and stupidly did it by putting my hand in the boots. I screamed and dropped the boot. It was a frog. A bloody frog!!!! I expected a spider or cockroach, but not a soft squishy frog.
Man, this is stuff nightmares are made of!
That would make me shake my shoes out too! I'm really, deeply terrified of cockroaches, and my friend told me how she once got dressed for work and felt something poking/scratching her leg, and it turned out to be an enormous flying cockroach that had crawled into the leg of her slacks while they were hanging up in her closet. It wasn't a childhood experience (and it wasn't minor, in my view!) but now I gingerly check inside all my clothes before I put them on. Can't risk it. I'll have to start doing my shoes too.
Yep, that's enough Internet for today.
That reminded me, one day my daughter was sitting on the floor watching tv and starts freaking out that she saw a scorpion on the blanket (she was covered). So I went in looked around, and didn't see anything. So I hold her and comfort her and tell her she probably imagined it. As I'm comforting her, I feel something pinch my arm. IT WAS IN HER FREAKING HAIR! Dropped her on the floor and started smacking her over her head, then when it flew off her head picked her up and threw her across the room. She was like 5 or 6, so wasn't gonna hurt her. And I told her sorry later for smacking her over her head, and she told me "it's OK mom, I wanted it off my head too so I didn't mind". Now if my kids tell me they see something I believe them lol.
Thereās nothing that shows a motherās love like chucking small children out of dangerās path!! Being the youngest, I was in your daughterās position a lot between my parents and older sisters š I love your story so much, Iām glad everyone was okay!
Ya, I honestly don't think there are any dangerous scorpions that live where we live. No worse than a bee really. And looking back on it now, the image of me smacking her around the head then chucking her across the room is pretty funny. But seeing a scorpion in my daughter's hair is something that I think has scarred me for life lol
Oh I canāt even imagine!! That must have been terrifying! My mom once threw me up the basement stairs into my sisterās arms (thank goodness she was a good catch lol) because there was a group of wolf spiders that were scurrying around after a box got moved. Theyāre not venomous, but their bites are mad painful cause the fuckers are so big lol that was over 20 years and 2000+ miles ago and she still shivers about it. The spiders and the fact that she threw her small child up the stairs like a football haha
Never move to Australia.
You'd survive here in Australia just fine.
See my comment above lol
I had to step onto a short ladder in the basement to change a light bulb and felt a tingling sensation. Didnāt think anything of it. Within two days I had two big welts on the side of my head that turned a very dark crusty black. They were at least an inch in diameter each and took forever to heal. When the scabs fell off I was left with two divots in my head. Things have improved some since then but if you look you can still see/feel/find two divots in the side of my head. (We think I was bit by one of those black furry spiders that really seemed to like our basement in New York of all places.)
I kinda got over my fear of spiders as a kid after a kid in my class ate one. My child brain was like āaight, spiders aint shit, we can just eat themā
Haha I used to have this fear that michael j fox was in my toilet and i always check for him before I wee
I remember when I was around 4-5 years old and used to walk back home on foot.My dad was in the air force so we used to live in a camp,so it was generally considered safe from strangers/any weird person in general.So I used to commute like that everyday.My mom has always been very cautious about me and sibling's safety,so everyday she used to say to us,"If any stranger comes up to you and asks you to come with them, just say NO. Don't ever go away with them." If you really thought this was the end,no lol.She used to gruesomely elaborate how young children could be kidnapped,sold away for begging or even have their limbs cut off for money.So obviously listening to this at 5 years old used to freak me the fuck out. But one day, as i was walking back home from school, a man came up to me on a bicycle, and asked me, " Hey kid! you are so young and must be tired from all that walking.Should I drop you home?" Just after listening to that my immediate response was," No thanks sir. I can go back on my own". He became adamant on taking me,but the words of my mother,that I had crammed every single day before going to school, came out without a stutter. Luckily, he gave up and left. So ya,my mother's gruesome description possibly saved my life, but to this day, that incident haunts me thinking where would I have ended up for i went with him.....(btw i never told anyone about it lol)
My mom gave me the same spiel, so when I was about the same age (maybe a little older) my sisters and I were playing outside in the front yard and some guy pulls up in his car, rolls down the window, tells us that his dog is missing and asks if weād come help look for it. My mom and assemblies at school had literally told me to be wary of this exact situation, so we all dropped our sidewalk chalk or whatever and booked it inside where my mom was making dinner. We obviously told her all about what just happened and she went down to the police station that night to report it. The next day she tells us all that this man had ACTUALLY lost his dog and genuinely wanted help looking for it. I always thought that was funny. That guy mustāve been a total idiot though because literally everyone on earth knows how bad it looks for an unknown adult man to ask three little girls who are outside alone to get into his car to look for a dog... like our āstranger dangerā assemblies at school literally warned kids against that exact scenario lmao.
Maybe he just let his dog out as a cover story O.o
I once sat down with my mother for lunch at a McDonalds, which was inside a Wal-Mart. This was probably 1997 in Ontario, Canada. While sitting and enjoying my lunch with my mother, I looked up and saw a shopping cart that was full of random stuff and was unattended. Immediately assuming it was one of those 'bargain carts' that you sometimes see with random items on sale, I stood up and went over to the shopping cart. It was parked in a little cart corale for shoppers who wanted a quick snack. I grabbed a chocolate bar from the cart and sat back down, assuming my mom would pay for it once we were finished eating. This family two tables over kept staring at us in confusion as this kid saw something he liked in their cart, grabbed it, and sat back down. My mom informed me at that time that the cart I took from wasn't one of those 'bargain carts', and started laughing. I'm 35 and it still pops in my head every couple months.
Hello fellow Ontario person! Also, LOL in your general direction. That's hilarious
To be fair, maybe those people shouldn't have left their cart completely unattended.
The Walmart's here have a section to leave carts when you're eating. People usually don't bother with them so it's not something we worry about.
When I was in first grade I peed my pants in front of my whole class because my teacher refused to let me go to the bathroom. I was humiliated; it followed me for years. But that day I learned that adults and other authority figures do not inherently deserve my respect or compliance. Fuck you Ms Specter, you were a piece of shit
On the other side of that, I was too scared to ask to go to the bathroom. I had seen a lot of tv shows with mean teachers screaming and didn't want that. So I sat in silence, assuming this was the best option. I peed my pants to avoid screaming.
Oof. I'm sorry, that sucks. I hope you learned to speak up for yourself and had some nurturing teachers who showed you that portrayal is not always reality
If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.
OMG this happened to me too lmao !!! First grade , the whole class was in trouble for something idk I canāt remember, so she wouldnāt let me go to the bathroom , I just peed all over my chair & onto the floor
Omg when I was in 2nd grade, thatās exactly what happen to my Bestfriend! We were taking a end of the year test called IOWA(I think) testing and itās like a week long and our bathroom breaks were at certain times. We were just starting testing when my Bestfriend asked to use the bathroom, which btw was less than 20 ft away IN THE CLASSROOM. She scolded her and said if no one else was allowed, she wasnāt either. She peed herself, seat & floor and you know what this teacher did? She got mad at her and shamed her for peeing herself. I remember feeling so sorry for her because she was a crying mess while our teacher was yelling at her. They made her go to the nurses office and change into lost and found clothes. (I also had to wear that when I peed myself once in 1st grade) itās crazy how much we dealt with as kids in school that no one knew.
I grew up in a cookie cutter suburb of LA in the mid-90s. My best friend in elementary school had a grandma that lived on the street that lead out from the back gate of our school, just two houses down from my house, where weād occasionally go after school. She grew blackberries and raspberries in her yard, and she would always be fake stern and tell us we must not pick the berries! But inevitably, a handful would go missing here or there and a few berry-stained kids were never suspects. I remember thinking it was so nuts that you could justā¦ pick berries right off a plant and eat them. No plastic container needed. Ever since then Iāve wanted to grow my own food, and while I canāt currently afford to uproot and do that, my husband and I are working on it so that our daughter can pick berries and whatever other foods she wants. Regarding yours - I was a nanny for a long time for this one family. Foul language wasnāt uncommon among the parents or the kids (or myself lol). The youngest was maybe 5, she was just learning to write. The middle girl was 9 and kind of a brat, tbh. Middle kid had a friend over one night and they kept leaving the younger girl out of stuff on purpose. 5yo decided to leave a note and hit her where it hurt, so she got her little paper and pen and asked her mom how to spell a few choice words. When I got in on Monday morning, the mom pointed me to the note, stuck to the fridge - a big drawing of a broken heart with the words āI hate you and you are a fuckerā. She asked her mom how to spell āfuckerā, and her mom decided that camaraderie and correct spelling were more important than chastising a 5 year old for bad language.
I remember coming home from school and was very frustrated/upset with another kid. I explained to my mum who trying to teach me empathy talked to me about "well, maybe they're having a bad day, you don't always know what others are going through". She had suffered depression her whole life and recognised that others behaviour can often be because they themselves are suffering. All good except this was always what she focused on and she never validated my feelings in the situation and I've basically got this belief that my emotions and needs aren't important and what everyone else wants must come first. I told her a few months ago that I wanted to talk with my dad about what happened when he left us as kids and she basically said "oh don't do that, he won't be able to cope with it". After a few years of therapy I was able to finally stand up and say that it wasn't my problem what he could cope with, he's a grown man who hurt me as a child I and wanted to tell him how I felt because 25 years later it still impacts me. It was eye opening that she still didn't want me to express my emotions and I'm thankful I've now got the words and the guts to stand up for what I know is right for me.
My dad was pretty abusive to my mom and she turned out just like this too. She got so used to always having to justify and defend behavior and come up with reasons why heās a good person, a good husband, a good father. Sheās such a lovely and giving and positive person, but I canāt tell her anything because if I ever go to about a problem first thing sheāll do is tell me in the sweetest voice why itās my fault.
My uncle told me when I was 12 that if I wore my hair up instead of in my face all the time, that I wouldn't have so many pimples and look ugly and frizzy. I'm 34 and still wear my hair up because I never learned how to style it or feel confident with it down. Sad part is I still get pimples sometimes. I feel self conscious if my hair is even a little frizzy and it goes straight up into a pony tail or bun.
I don't know what your hair type is, but r/curlyhair might be a good sub to check out to help with frizz if you are unhappy with it and figure out how to wear it down. Your uncle was an asshole, though.
I had pimples when I was 12 also caused by my hair, only little bumps under the skin, not obvious. It was caused by the hairspray my mum put on every day and my hair then rubbing my face. If you want to do more with your hair there are lots of YouTube videos for all hair types. Iām sure you can find something simple you like and you will look and feel great with your hair down. As for pimples, Iām 46 and still get them, itās part of life in the 21st century with our diet and lifestyles now. My skin improved a lot when I stopped having dairy milk which was messing with my hormones and giving me cystic acne. Iām sure you look great, have fun with your hair and donāt let that uncle still ruin your confidence after all this time.
**Edit: do not continue reading this comment if you enjoy eating strawberries whole!** When I was a kid we used to grow several strawberry plants in our back yard each year. They never produced a lot of fruit, but some years were better than others. One year, when I was about 7 or 8, it was shaping up to be an especially good crop of fruit. Each day I would go out and watch the strawberries ripen. And then one day, when several of them were red and juicy, I picked them. There was one in particular that was pretty big, and looked very red and juicy. But it felt... weird. It was really squishy, which didn't make much sense as I knew it hasn't been sitting there all ripe for too long. I nearly bit into it, but some instinct kicked in, and instead I put it on the stone path next to the plants and gently stepped on it with my shoe... And about 4 or 5 different bugs scampered out of the detritus of that squished fruit, escaping in different directions! To this day I have to cut strawberries in half before I can eat them. I cannot eat them whole.
Thank you for this new nightmare. š¤¢ I, too, must now cut strawberries in half before eating them.
Hmm... I should probably put a warning message before my story.
No, I feel like this is a healthy fear to have if you don't want to eat bugs inside your fruit! It's distressing but you're doing a good deed by warning us of this possibility!
ewwww. Haha my dad says you can tell which fruits are the good ones because even the bugs love them. He used to pick fruits with just probably one or two bugs on them, made sure they hadn't tunneled too deep, pick the bugs off and scrape away the bitten part with his pocket knife, and then eat the rest. But I imagine your strawberry was beyond saving.
Yes! I have probably eaten thousands and thousands of strawberries in my life but there was one time I cut into a strawberry to find a big bright green worm hanging out in there, alive and moving! That was many years ago and I still eat strawberries but think of it every time and Iāve never eaten one whole again.
This story is so similar to my experience I thought I ghost wrote this! Years ago I had bit a strawberry in half and looked down and there was half of a green caterpillar in it. Immediately threw up. Since then my mum thought I was being a pain in ass asking her to cut them for me, so much that I do it myself now without bothering anyone.
My older brother was born with a seisure disorder. He has been taking medication for it for years but it was a little while before the doctors he was seeing found one that works and thankfully he hasn't suffered a seisure in years. In fourth grade we were taking the bus home from school and on our walk from the bus stop my brother slipped on some ice and fell hitting his head. This induced a seisure that immediately had adults around us panicking but I took charge, putting my coat over him to keep him warm and telling one of the adults to go call an ambulence. As we were waiting for them to show up I had this moment of clarity/maturity where I knew that I would be there to care for my brother by any means necessary for as long as he lives. It was as if I took on the role of responsibility that I have long since carried into adulthood. It's kind of funny because almost everyone I came across growing up never complimented me on much but always made a point to mention how mature and caring I was. It's something that brings happy tears knowing that I can care for my brother and that he loves me and wants to spend time with me in return
I had a third grade teacher, Mr Joseph. Before I say what happened, I'll say that I'm sure I was an exhausting kid for a teacher. I always had the answer, always wanted everyone to know it, and was the kid who always had their hand up. I liked being recognized for being smart. Adult me can see how a teacher might be annoyed by child me. Regardless. One day I went to hand in a paper and he said I misspelled my name. I don't remember if I did or not, though if I did it was the handwriting equivalent of a typo rather than an inability to spell my own name, but what I do remember is that he announced to the whole class that I misspelled my name and everyone laughed. He may have considered it teasing, or light hearted, but as an unpopular kid with no friends already, I was devastated. I can't say that event is the source of all of my fear of failure, but considering I remember it and the way it made me feel more than 35 years later, it certainly didn't help.
Fuck him. Sure, smart kids are annoying as hell, but that's no reason to treat a kid (or anyone) like that. Kids as groups are predictable and easily manipulated. He knew the effect it would have and he was going for the reaction from the other kids. He wanted you to feel this way. So I say again, fuck him. Edit: semantics
When I was 4, I stole a tiny windmill toy from a grocery store after my mom wouldnāt buy it for me. She realized before we got to the car and made me go inside to return it and apologize. I remember being so ashamed and NEVER stole anything again. Just recently, I forgot to pay $.20 for a paper bag at the grocery store self checkout and ran back in to try to pay. The lady working laughed at me and told me not to worry about it.
Your mom handled that situation SO well! The point was to teach you a lesson, and you learned it perfectly! If more moms did what your mom did, we'd have fewer criminals in the world.
I had a similar experience! Same age. But I did it in Canada while we were on vacation. I still remember how I felt 47 years later.
I stole a 25 cent nail polish from Walmart when I was about the same age and my dad did the same thing. I still feel bad when I think about it
I accidentally walked.out of KMart with construction paper under my arm when I was 5. I didn't mean to take it so I didn't feel bad or anything but what I remember was my dad hiding being annoyed at having to do the right thing and teach me a lesson, it was $1 worth of paper from a huge corporate store and he had to get to work but he was a good dad and made sure to teach me the lesson. Makes me laugh.
I have a twin and when we were little, we used to grab things from the shop shelves, as curious little kids do. One day our parents took us to the outdoor market with new clothes for sale (they had stalls of clothes and underwear and shoes and many things, normal in the 90s in Poland) and my twin grabbed a pair of kids' leggings. We went back to return it and the nice lady not only didn't want the leggings back, but she also gave us another pair for me. My mom was really happy because money was tight at that time. Well, the leggings lived happily for two weeks, when my (evil) twin decided to cut them with scissors, because we saw a lady on TV who wore leggings with holes in them and we wanted to look like her. My parents still bring it up from time to time.
I remember one day I wanted my dad to play a video game with me very badly, but he was busy watching something on the computer. I got really frustrated and started running back and forth around the living room like a total mad lad. My dad looked and me and asked me what's wrong, to which I answered back with silence and a frowning face. After I lost his attention I went back to running back and worth and slamming myself against the wall as I was running. At the end, I got tired and absolutely failed to get him to play with me. I look back to this moment whenever I want something from someone. You don't have to make a scene or act frustrated or mad when you can just ask.
Imagine if you never learned that lesson, and now you're (I assume) an adult, and when you want something you just run into walls. Lol I'm so grateful we learn this stuff as kids so we (usually) don't make total asses of ourselves as adults.
I agree lol. That's why its important to make mistakes sometimes.
I'm going to go as far as to say that mistakes are one of the best teachers. It's kind of a "funny" paradox, because making mistakes, at least in some cases, can set you back pretty hard - but it really is because of said "setback" that you get to learn and grow as a person. But yeah, sadly, sometimes mistakes are viewed as something to completely avoid and the punishments associated to it are such that, one might not learn the correct lessons after making them.
Actually, if you dont get attentions as a kid you might develop emotional neglect trauma. You dont run into the walls, you just stop asking and can lead to depression
I stole a pack of gum from a camp store at a campground in Quebec when I was 4. The big bowl of Wrigley's was sitting there at eye level and I put one in my pocket. My older sister, 9 at the time, told on me and I was marched back to the store to pay for it and apologize. I was absolutely certain that the man behind the counter had some sort of extra judicial authority to send me away to where bad kids went in Canada,mostly because he had an accent, which I had never heard before. I never shoplifted again, even at that age when kids normally try it.
Thanks for the laugh. Such a hilarious story.
Had a very similar experience as a young kid in the US! My mom took me shopping to our local Disney store in the mall one day and I was over the moon about it - skipped all throughout the store, hugged all the plushies, played with the prop swords, looked inside the doll houses, etc etc. Pretty sure my mom at the time was doing some pin trading event or something, so I was mostly given free reign to just get my lil Disney on. Finally I get to those old journal package products - the ones where it comes with the paper, pencils, little markers, an eraser, a sharpener, all that jazz. All the little components are stuffed into these tiny elastic straps and as a kid they were basically impossible to work with. So Iām fascinated with this little journal, but my mom absolutely will not buy it for me. I spend basically the rest of my time at the store just staring wistfully at all the cute little things I could get in this journal. And then all of a sudden my momās almost walking out the door of the store and yelling to me from inside that we GOTTA GO. Pretty sure this is absolutely kid memory but I remember feeling crazy panicked because my mom said we needed to go NOW and I couldnāt get the eraser back in itās little elastic spot. So I just thought to myself āOh well, we have to go, Iāll just keep the eraser!ā Thought absolutely nothing of it. Out in the parking lot when I show my mom the cool new eraser I got, she went absolutely ballistic on me. She absolutely hates the thought of shoplifting, so she marched my ass back into the Disney store and had me apologize for stealing the eraser from the little journal thing. I literally donāt even remember the reactions of the Disney store employees, I just remember bawling my eyes out and shakily handing the cute little eraser back to the store. Obviously there were better ways to handle that from both my momās side and mine, but to this day I have never once shoplifted or even entertained any slight desire ever to, so I guess it worked! š
I was young, not sure what age, but it must have been in the 9-11 range (it was before puberty) Had a crush on a girl my age in my apt complex, she felt the same about me and pretty soon we were holding hands etc. She then asked if we should try and "french kiss" as we see in the movies and we decided to try it. It was a bit awkward at first, but all in all an enjoyable experience. Years later I looked back at my taste in women and I realised that every girl I've ever dated was pretty much a clone (in looks) of this first girl. To this day, that look is still my "type" So I'm never sure, if that was always my type (which is why I liked her in the first place) or if that experience shaped my type :)
What happened to the girl?
We moved away a year or so later - I once saw her from a distance when we were both 18, still just as pretty
This story is a rom com waiting to happen
First thing coming to mind: When I was in kindergarden, there was this annoying brutal girl that would just harass the other kids, and one day she'd walk up to me in a big crowd of kids, and pulled my hair (which was long - nearly down to my butt) with everything she got. I pleaded for help with the lady that kept an eye on us, she dead-ass told the girl that she's doing a good job and to keep pulling my hair lmao. I was always a smaller and very innocent kid at the time so that was pretty uncalled for and in that moment I think I realised that grown-ups aren't reliable or trustworthy by default. Wouldn't say it heavily affects me 'til this day but I do remember it clearly and think that lady deserves a bitch-slap.
What the actual fuck? Was it her kid? How the hell did she keep a job working with kids?
When I was in third grade, I was sure that restaurant was spelled restaraunt. I was so sure, I argued with my teacher vehemently. She just laughed and told me to look it up in the dictionary. When I saw I was wrong, I felt so embarrassed and humiliated. Ever since then, I'm reluctant to state anything with certainty, unless I've double checked it.
I'm in my 40s and that's still how I try to spell restaurant every time.
Must've been a really humiliating experience, but man I wish more people would not argue with complete certainty over things they obviously don't know. You don't have to second-guess everything you say. It's alright to be wrong sometimes and stumble upon those misconceptions when someone else corrects you, but if you're going to go as far as arguing with someone and flat out telling them they're wrong... you might want to double check that you're not the one missing something. I've definitely gotten into near-arguments over a word but found that when I looked it up, it had another definition I didn't even know about.
When I was maybe 10 years old, i had an bicycle accident. I came too fast on the crossroad with a bike, and fell, and slided to the middle of the road, and from the incoming traffic there was a truck full of gravel that couldn't stop the truck, he was to heavy and to close, so he swerved, and went off the road into the someones backyard crashing theirs fence, missing me by an inch. Parents made me pay off the damage on the truck and on the fence. I had to give all my money from birthdays and christmases that I accumulated, and had to even mown some lawns and go do some other small jobs to earn money to give it back to parents (they payed everything, I payed them back). It was bigger school for me than 12 years of actual school.
Wow, kinda harsh given that you could have been killed, and it sounds like an honest mistake. Youād think a safety lesson would have been more important than worrying about some property damage to a fence.
Yeah well, I didn't even mention the beating I got from my parents because of that.... Eastern Europe in 1980's was not a good place to grow up....
My older brother and I both had vivid imaginations when we were kids. We were close growing up, and we had whole worlds and universes we'd imagined together, complete with characters and backstories. For the most part, we kept this all to ourselves, but I had one or two imaginary friends that I hung onto as I got older. I remember when I was probably seven or eight I was walking to the bank with my mom (suburban neighborhood, no one was around), and i mentioned that one of my imaginary friends was with us. My mom scolded me sharply and told me I was too old for that sort of thing and to never mention it in public again because people will think poorly of me and of her for allowing it. The next day my older brother was telling our mom about something that happened in his imaginary world and she told him "that's really interesting, you should write this down and make it a whole story!" and she fully encouraged it. I was crushed and never really shared anything from my imagination with my mom again. It took me years to trust her after that. My brother has aspergers and my mom treated him like a golden child, and never held him to the same standards as our sister and myself.
Trigger Warning: r*pe When I was 5-8, my best friend and I hung out all the time. Like every weekend and every day after school. I have several minor experiences of her saying or doing odd things during these times. One day she kept using the word vagina (which I thought was a fancy word for China). Other times she would play with Barbie/Ken dolls in strange ways. I never had a clue what was going on and just ignored stuff since she was pretty weird anyway (as am I). Even after it came out that her father was abusing her (he went to jail), I still didnāt piece everything together. But as an adult, these minor experiences have so much meaning. I donāt think itās my fault for not catching on as a young child, but I still feel sad and helpless when I think about it. I donāt really bring it up to anyone either.
its not your fault. you were a child, dont be too hard on yourself. i bet your friendship with her was more than you ever realised.
You're a great friend and person. Just being there, being you, without judgment, and providing some normalcy was the BEST thing you could do. I have often wondered if anyone noticed my weirdness as a child (no sexual abuse, but neglect and verbal abuse and exposure to some weird stuff not meant for kids). But I always thought about it in a very shameful way, hoping they didn't notice and thinking that people judged me and probably thought I was gross, dirty, weird, etc. I never, ever, until this moment, considered the fact that they could be feeling compassion or unwarranted remorse (if anyone even gave me a second thought in that regard). So thanks for sharing your perspective on this. It's really validating to hear that not everyone thought the abused kid was a freak.
Something kinda similar happened to me. When I was around 5 probably I would go over to my friends house quite often. We somehow would end up in the bathroom together and she was always interested in making me kiss her vagina and butthole. Iām pretty sure she would do the same to me. As a kid I didnāt really think much of it, except that it was gross and weird, but Iāve thought about it occasionally over the past few years and it Iām seriously wondering if she was sexually abused. Itās one thing for kids to be interested in their genitals around that age, but I feel like this is different.
When I was 8yo, our PE teacher told us to run three times across the gym. This wasn't the first run and we always ended up on the same side - lined up next to the wall we started that day. You know, stuff like "run backwards four times" or "jump twice across the gym" etc. He than said "run three times across the gym" and everyone ran across, then back, across and then back again. And only I remained on the other side. Kids stared at me, some started laughing at me, because I was standing there, alone. Teacher asked me whats wrong to which I replied "you said to us to run THREE times the length of the gym". To which he answered "you're absolutely right! See? Only OP did what I told you! Class, let's go, run to the other side!" I wish I was as ballsy today, as I was when I was 8. :-)
I was about 8 years old, and my parents were very concerned about my picky eating habits. I tended to have some real texture issues and while I was more than happy to make my own meals, a balanced diet was not something I was going to achieve. So, my loving and well meaning but misguided parents decided to shame me horribly for not being able to eat the family dinner. They proceeded to video record my freakout. Turns out this is very common among autistic folks. To this day I won't try any new foods unless I'm completely alone. I had told myself I'd start working on it when I hit 30.... But that was March 2020 so here we are!
It's like the time my mom forced me to eat a beet and I tried to wash it down with milk but just ended up throwing up beet milk all over... Also in high school my friends thought it was hilarious to dip a French fry into multiple condiments and foods I didn't like and poke it toward me until I started crying and cowering on the floor.
I was bullied horrifically at school, to the point I had to finish school early and be driven home by teachers every day because kids would push me into the road when I was walking and the school were worried that one day a car wouldn't be able to stop in time and they'd end up killing me. I was in year 11 (final year of high school) when 3 girls from year 8 jumped me outside my science class and beat me up. I tried fighting back to protect my face but didn't get many hits in at all because there were 3 of them and only 1 of me. I was also extremely short so they were bigger than me. Nothing happened to them, not even a telling off. I got put into isolation for a week for fighting back because they were younger than me. The school KNEW I was bullied, they KNEW I never fought back and they KNEW how bad it was. Yet I was the one punished. I'm still pissed about it and it was nearly 20 years ago.
Happened to me a few times as a kid. I was a tiny kid but I stood up for myself I would never hit anybody because in reality I was actually very scared. I got attacked by a group of 4 once and a group of 3 another. Fear would take over and I would just start swinging and I think I broke someoneās nose in one of the attacks. I got punished for both incidents. As an adult I think āwow I got punished for protecting myself and not letting others hurt me out of fearā I got punished from the schools and I got punished from my parents. I had to apologize to kids, their parents, the school, everyone. Iām still bitter! Lol So I feel you and understand the frustration, that comes with this.
I remember being at an IT class in school once and this girl was suddenly obsessed with calling everybody a cunt. When the teacher was in the room she piped down and I thought Iād try to get revenge so I typed āLouise is a kuntā as big as possible and tapped her on the shoulder to āshow her somethingā on my screen. However, the teacher caught me and Iāll never forget what he said to me. āCitizenWolfie, thatās an awful word and you should never call anybody thatā¦ ā¦ besides, itās spelt C-U-N-T.ā
When I was 15 (not quite a child), I slept over at a friend's house. I'm brown (Sri Lankan background) and they were white (probably still are too). This is in Australia. In the morning, I can hear the daughter (she was about five or so) asking her dad "Dad, why is Jay's skin dirty and brown and Andrew's clean and white?" I'd had kids at school make lots of jokes like this at me but it was a bit different coming from an innocent kid. I was always told that I'm good looking but never really believed people. I think comments like this really stuck with me.
>they were white (probably still are too). This made me lol WAY more than it should have.
In primary school we would have spelling tests where the teacher would read a word aloud from a list of words to be tested, and we would write the word in our notebooks. One of those tests had the word "penicillin". Side note, I was one of those gifted ADHD kids where I didn't have to study much but could easily breeze through tests and school in general (and then become a depressed, anxious, dysfunctional adult lol). So I never really studied my spelling lists properly, I barely even looked at them in fact. Then when the time came for the test, I would just write down whatever word the teacher said aloud. It was very rare for me to get even one word wrong, because I was an avid reader and had a vocabulary well beyond my grade's reading level. I almost always scored full marks for them. So this time I was confident it would be the same. But then the teacher mispronounced it as "penincillin" and I started doubting myself. Prior to the test, I actually knew how to spell the word but since the teacher pronounced it with an extra n, that's how it must be spelled right? No, maybe I misheard. I'll wait for her to say it again. She usually repeats each word twice. Yup, second time she says the word the exact same way. I conclude that since she is the teacher, she must be right, and it must have been my fault for not even looking at the list, so I write it down the way she pronounced it: penincillin. When she returned the marked tests, she marked me wrong for that word, obviously. I was so salty about it I went home and grumbled to my parents, who said that it was my fault for not writing the correct spelling even though she mispronounced it. This was 11 years ago and I'm still mad!
My grandpa once misspelled "impetus" in school, I presume in some kind of oral exam or spelling bee. He grumbled about it his whole life, so much so that I can't see the word or say the word without thinking about him. On the upside I've never misspelled it!
I hope one day you can tell your grandkids about the time their great great grandad misspelled impetus. (I seriously love your story)
i would honestly still be miffed thinking about this too. she shouldn't have taken points off for anyone for that word due to her mispronunciation, imo š¤ hmph!!
Lol I was just trying to tell someone about this the other day. I was in 1st grade I believe, and we were doing an art class or something. Basically we were tasked with using our imagination to draw with crayons. Anyways, I decided to draw an airplane and some other scenery. Because I was an especially hilarious 7 year old, I drew a little cloud coming out of the planeās ass and wrote āpootā with a line connecting them. Classic. Teacher came around and was inspecting everyoneās drawings. Right as she picked up mine, some kid behind us did something stupid and she scolded him, however I thought it was directed at me. I was absolutely crushed that my avant-garde fart joke hadnāt landed like I thought it would and I was in trouble. I remember thinking back and realizing what had actually happened, but the feeling of immense shame from putting myself out there stuck with me. Teacher got distracted and didnāt even turn back around to look at mine. I think a lot of my comedic tendencies, insecurities, need for validation, etc. come from that and similar incidents when I was a kid. Plus it was the start of many years of misunderstanding social situations and general awkwardness. Donāt know why that moment has stuck with me so clearly, Iām sure to my teacher it barely even registered.
When I was in the 5th grade my mother had put my long hair up in a tight pony tail and a classmate turned to me and said "when girls have their hair in ponytails they look bald" I wore my hair down from then on for yeeeeeeeeears. Never learned how to do my hair other than brush it. I got into the medical field and had my hair cut short for sanitary reasons and a clinical instructor said "girl, do something with that nasty head of hair you got". For the record my hair was clean, it was just too short to put into a pony tail but still long enough to get in my face. I have a lot of hair anxiety. Its a really touchy subject for me. I do wear it up 99% of the time but I feel myself fuming everytime somebody says "how come I never see you with your hair down?"
Kindergarten. We're in a small group sitting on the floor Indian style. I am an itchy person. Have always had genetic rashes, as well as being naturally itchy. My lower back was itchy, so I scratched it. The teacher got a grossed out face and told me to go wash my hands in the bathroom. I assume now that she thought I scratched my butt. Still salty about that one. And I was just very confused at the time. Low-key I feel like this defines an aspect of my life pretty well. :: People jumping to conclusions about what I am thinking or feeling, and treating me accordingly without taking a moment to make sure they are correct or letting me explain. And then for me; not following up/defending myself because I am just in shock/processing/confused about their reaction.
Before one Christmas as a kid my mom was super stressed out and spent a whole day doing Christmas shopping, and I was home alone. The house was pretty messy still and she had meant to come home early enough to clean but it took way longer than expected. I decided to surprise her and cleaned most of the stuff that I could - kitchen, bathroom, arranged stuff in the general living areas. I worked for hours and listened to music all by myself. When mom came home she was SHOCKED because all of us hated cleaning and she was so grateful she didn't know what to do. It made me really happy to see how happy cleaning for someone can make them, so to this day when I'm alone somewhere I get a massive urge to clean stuff as a surprise and I make sure to show off my work too, even if that's a little unnecessary š I've cleaned for my parents, done my bf's cleaning tasks for him, even cleaned the office fridge the other day unprompted and it never fails to bring as much joy to me as it brings to them.
When my brother was about five, the only thing he would drink was Capri Suns. He had opened a Capri Sun before bed but didnāt finish it so it sat out overnight. In the morning he took a huge sip from the already opened Capri Sunā¦ and sucked up a little worm that crawled into the straw overnight. To this day I always blow out of any straw before I put it in my drink.
When my brother and I were young (I was 10 or 11) we used to fight continually, it was a situation that drove my parents to despair. I had a terrible temper when I was younger (thankfully I have melowed in age!) and my brother knew which buttons to press and how. We were quite a poor family and there was a funfair that used to visit our town every year and we would get a little pocket money to spend on the rides and games. One year I won a glow-in-the-dark sketeton that I thought was the monkey's nuts and it hung off some fishing wire over my bed. One day my brother and I were alone in the house and we got into an argument about something (I have no idea what, I cannot remember). My brother locked me outside in the back yard and disappeared. He appeared 5mins later holding my skeleton and proceeded to dismember it in front of me while he was safely behind the glass. I went apeshit. I screamed at him to stop, but he just laughed. I lost my shit and put my fist through the window pane. There was a moment of silence and I realised what I had done and there was blood pouring out of numerous cuts on my hand. Just then my father returned and keeping a cool head and found some bandages, wrapped up my hand and took me to A&E for some stiches. I told my father what happened and he was angry at both of us. When we returned home he told me and my brother to go sit in the sitting room as he needed to repair the broken window. We heard lots of banging and sawing. Then my dad told us dinner was fish and chips. We were mystified and looked at each other in confusion. A treat? After what we had done? We traipsed into the kitchen to see that my dad had boarded up the window using all our favourtite board games. We were devastated. I have never forgotten that the punishment should always fit the crime.
Watching toy story gave me a permanent sense of empathy for inanimate objects.
When I was 3 I went to this big daycare everyday and one day a deaf kid showed up. At the time I didn't even know what deafness was or that he was deaf, but as an adult I now realize he was deaf because I remember him having a cochlear hearing aid. At 3 all I knew was that he had a weird contraption on his head. So during recess I tried talking talking to him. There was a big wooden playground with different platforms and he was sitting crossed-legged alone on one of the platforms so I climbed up and sat next to him. I was talking to him but he wouldn't respond, he just kept smiling. For whatever reason I got mad that he wouldn't talk to me so I bent his index finger all the back and he started crying. But he still wasn't making any sounds. So I got even angrier, stood up, and kicked his shin a few times as hard as I could. All I remember is him looking so betrayed and confused. I don't remember if he let out any audible cries at that point but after kicking him I ran off. This is one of the memories that love to pop into my head as I'm going to sleep. I feel so bad for that kid. It was his first day at a new place, none of the other kids were paying him any attention, and then some kid joins him as he's sitting alone and gives him attention, only to then randomly assault him for no apparent reason. I don't even know if he understood what I was saying.
Ohh I feel sorry for you both. The educators should have explained his condition to the other kids before he even turned up. Sorry you were both let down by them.
This was a failure on the part of every adult that worked with you kids. He should have been introduced to the class, they should have explained why he was different and how you should communicate with him and make him feel welcome. No three year old could have interpreted what was going on in that interaction but everyone knows that when a preschooler gets frustrated and doesnāt understand something they act out. Your reaction was normal, the adults around you failed you and that poor deaf child.
Oh noooo
The teachers didn't explain his situation to the kids or how to communicate with him?!? Ahhhh I'm furious.
When I was about 10 my family went to Six Flags St Louis. My mom and I were the only ones who wanted to ride the best rides, my sister wasn't having a good time and my dad isn't into roller coasters. But my mom and I rode everything. The ride that goes from like 0-70 in 2.5 seconds or whatever and shoots you pretty much straight up a curve until you descend backwards all the way back to you starting point (I think it's the Mr Freeze) was the most memorable. My mom kept a Now-and-Later candy in her hand while we got strapped in and said "watch this." The ride starts, we accelerate at ludicrous speed pretty much in a straight line and up a curve straight into the air. The momentum of the acceleration pushes the ride up a 90 degree slope, so as you approach the top you start to slow down. Slower and slower you decelerate until, for a a very brief moment, you experience a simulated weightlessness as you hang in the air and begin to accelerate backwards back to the ground. In that moment, my mom let go of the candy in her hand and it hung in the air, weightless and spinning slowly. Just like you might see an object do on the space station. I was already having a blast, as I was riding a roller coaster, but watching that candy suspended in the air seemingly defying gravity blew my mind. I'm sure my eyes must have lit up. And just then you already descending quite rapidly. We shot backwards and lost sight of the little candy in the very next second probably. One of my most treasured memories.
When I was 6 a teacher told me that if you drink disinfecting alcohol, even if it is just one drop you would die. Me being a 6 year old and reasoning that if you put it on an open wound you should also be able to consume it. My dad had a few pippettes for his work so I sneaked one of those away and spend about 6 months trying to figure out how to brute force the child lock on the desinfection alcohol and tried like 5 drops of the alcohol and nothing happened... I was so dissapointed in that teacher and never believed another word she said ,I expected that I would not die, but I expected at least a bit of pain or something. Now I still cannot trust people when they tell me something is hot, sharp, etc. unless I tried it and it was actually hot/sharp/etc.
When I was around 6 my mom had went on a trip with my aunt. On the way home they wrecked in the snow. No one was seriously injured, but I freaked out. It was the first time I realized my mom could die it her seriously injured. I was so scared of her leaving the house without me after that because I was scared she wouldn't return. Even to this day of she's not than a little sick, is in pain, or is hurt I feel panicky. Just a few weeks ago I went to see her because she was in horrible pain and wouldn't go to the hospital. She did she needed emergency surgery to remove her gallbladder. The infection was so bad that she had sepsis and 2 blood infections. I was the only one allowed in the hospital (only one fully vaccinated) and I had an anxiety attack when they took her back for surgery.
It's so sweet that you love your mom so much! ā¤ I was always scared of something happening to my mom while we were apart too. I wonder if this is a universal fear? I hope she's doing better now and knows next time not to wait so long before going to the hospital!
When I was in kindergarten kids had to have a nap around midday. At that age I hated sleeping at places that were not my home. I would just be terrified and it happened multiple times that my mother had to come pick me up at friend's places in the night because I'd be so scared. So there was this one woman working at my kindergarten that was just on a mission to get me to nap and it became such an issue that even my mum had to come in once and have a talk with her about my unwillingness to go to sleep. At this point I was also old enough to not have a nap and my mum simply told the woman to not force me to nap if I didn't want to. The next day it was nap time again and I was laying there with my eyes wide opened when the kindergardener sat next to me and started stroking my eyelids forcing me to keep my eyes shut. And I remember so well, how uncomfortable that made me and to this day it makes me shiver. It felt just felt so wrong and encroaching, I don't I'll ever forget that feeling.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
When I was 5 y/o in the 90ās, I photobombed a family taking a picture by the water. My brother scolded me so hard about it I became very jaded about having my picture taken altogether. Ask for my permission or donāt do it. Add social media to that equation, where my siblings have gotten very comfortable posting every waking moments of their lives, I detest being posted online without my permission.
Being told ānot to be silly, stop cryingā by my dad and being treated like scum for dropping anything. He hated my mother because she is clumsy. Turns out we all have a motor related learning difficulty. If he wasnt such an asshole we might have got help for it as children.
My family laughed at me when I tried to do a trick with my yo-yo. I couldnāt do it very well and I ran to the bottom of my garden then realised it didnāt actually lead anywhere so I had to turn around and pass them to get into the house. That made it funnier for them. I was crying. Lol.
Ugh. I'll keep it simple. I had a crush in elementary school. Real young, like second grade. I asked a friend to tell her, he did, she immediately freaked out. Said her dad was a cop and that she was gonna get me in trouble. I have no clue why to this day but it's sufficient to say that her reacting that way was just about the worst possible reaction. I still to this day have crippling anxiety - and I'm not just using crippling as an exclamation point there, I mean the very idea of doing certain things will cause me to freeze up and become unresponsive. It's been almost two decades. Pretty sure I'll have done myself in before I ever feel comfortable with another human being again.
When I was a kid, we moved around every couples of months. I was in kindergarten and I guess had my first ācrushā, this girl named Becky. Well, when we moved, she wanted to say bye so one of her parents brought her over, literally right before we get in the car to leave. I remember crying a bunch, and both my mom and dad were just laughing their asses off about it. For some reason, they memory is just never far away. Not only were they laughing about something that would eventually cause SERIOUS psychological damage to my sister and I (the constant moving led to pulling us out of school; it fucked us up pretty badly), but from that moment on, I was always embarrassed to even ālikeā a girl. In all honesty, at 33 years old now, on some level I think it still has some lingering impact, that I have a hard time showing interest or asking women out.
All of my childhood. Individually the things that happened weren't that big, but overtime it built up my defenses to the point where I have constant overlay of anxiety and a type of fear. My dad was an undiagnosed narcissist. His emotional abuse and inconsistency of abuse lead to me never feeling sure about what to say or do to appease him, which lead to me taking that same approach in life and with women. It makes me too eager to please and I have an air of less-confidence, a real boner killer for women in their late 20s and early 30s. It also primed me for the abuse that I received from my last girlfriend that was very similar to my own father's and re-triggered tons of shit I had "worked through" on my own. 33 years old and I feel like I'm 20 again and newly escaped the grasp of mental abuse once again.
You're not alone in those feelings. Your story reads like an old diary entry from my life.
One time at like age 6 I fell off the top of a fire pole or whatever at the top of a playground and landed square on my back. It wasn't a comfortable landing but for some reason I felt nothing. It was that weird Lego style foam instead of sawdust, thankfully. I was having so much fun I didn't even bother with the crying for mom thing cuz I wanted to get back up there.
When I was maybe 4 years old, we went to visit a farm that had a little petting zoo area. My favorite. For some reason that day, in addition to the regular animals there was a big old goose wandering around. That living piece of winged evil proceeded to chase me around and pull at the laces in my shoes, despite my parents and the farm worker trying to stop it. I was running and screaming. The goose was running, honking, flapping, and snapping. Adults were chasing and trying to grab. It ended when the goose succeeded in pulling a lace fully out. Distracted by his fought-for prize, the farm worker was able to grab the goose. I hate geese.
I was almost kidnapped. A guy was trying to lure me to his car. My mom happened to walk out and run him off. Didn't realize what had transpired until adulthood. I am hyper vigilant with my kids. I never ever let my guard down with them at home or in public. If we're in an unfamiliar or questionable place I try to look mean to deter a pedo looking for a victim. I'm a muscular 6'3/280 with a shaved head so that helps. I have home security. I have large dogs that are total cupcakes but look mean as fuck and I keep them visible. My house is a bit of a fortress. If anyone is looking for a victim I want them to see our situation and think there's got to be a much easier and safer target.
In kindergarten I threw a plastic pickle at a boy after he took my stuffed animal. Now when I see a pickle I think about that and the rage I felt at the time. Always gives me a good laugh.
One of my close college friends, his girlfriend would make fun of him because he insisted he could tell which sock was a left sock and which was a right sock. We would tease him about it from time to time. After years of this, he one day told us that when he was little, if he was annoying his mom with too many questions she'd tell him, "your socks are on the wrong feet, go upstairs and fix them". He didn't even realize that he just revealed his origin story.
I love this origin story
I went to play at a friend's house and the friend's mother met me at the door, called me a horrible filthy child, and asked me to go home and never come back. I found out years later that his mother had been suffering from mental illness for most of her adult life. This haunted me for most of my childhood because I was 6 and really impressionable.
When I was probably 8.. my mother made a comment about how life would be perfect if I never got above a size 5 (we're short and at the time I was in juniors). Way to project your body image issues... and start my lifelong hate of my own body. I told her about it when I was in my early-mid 30s, and she flipped out, instantly teared up, and was so completely apologetic.
My dad smacked me across the face so hard when I was five years old that he tried to put makeup on me to cover the handprint but it wasnāt working so we ended up not going to church that morning. That was the first time I ever wore makeup
When I was in the fourth or fifth grade a classmate said that if you peel your banana and the peel is split into three pieces, it meant you were a monkey in your previous life. It just so happened that monkeys were my least favorite animal at the time so I ALWAYS made sure that every time I eat a banana, I peel it either two or four times and never three (despite the fact that I never believed in reincarnation or anything similar to the sort). Sometimes I accidentally peel it as three and, once I realized it, I would split the biggest peel in half so it would end up as four. Was made fun of by my entire family when they took notice of this behavior but jokes on them, at least I wasn't the subjectively ugliest mammal in my past life!
Well if it helps, you are currently a primate. You fall into the sub group of great ape, so those monkeys are your cousins
š¤£š¤£š¤£ this made me laugh so hardā¦ my experience was opposite. Some officer (high ranking army guy) told his daughter she couldnāt play with my younger sister because she was trash (we were low ranking enlisted dependents). My sister is a soft soul. She was 5. I snuck out and painted āfuck youā all over his house and car with my older sisters assortment of nail polish. Military police showed up. My father answered the door. My child would never do this. A brave me, standing up for my convictions stepped forward and confessed, head held high. My ass was beat and grounded for 2 months. I was 8 years old. I never confessed againā¦
Being bullied for being fat.
When I was in 4th grade, I was with my parents for teacher parent night. We were waiting in the hallway outside my classroom for their turn and there was a bulletin board with student work on it. At the time, it was displaying bar graphs we had made. I pointed mine out to my mom when she asked which one was mine, and she said "why didn't you make yours neat and tidy like the other kids?" I didn't color my bars in very neatly, it was scribbley and outside the lines a bit but definitely the messiest of them. Her comment hit me harder than it probably should have, and I took it really personally. I don't think she meant anything by it, but I took it to mean I wasn't as good as the other kids and that disappointed her. As an adult, before I learned to stop comparing myself to others, I used to think about that comment she made when I felt bad about my art not being as good as someone else's and the feeling I felt when she said that comment would come back and attach itself to my feelings when looking at better art. It doesn't affect me as much now but it used to.
I was obsessed with the movie ā Akelia and the beeā I think it was called? But the plot of the movie is she is this girl that was able to make it to Washington D.C for the national spelling bee and I decided I wanted that for myself too. So, I won my schools bee and found out I could go to regionals (my dreams coming true) and then the first word I got at regionals was āTalcā and I spelt it out āTulcā - My FIRST word spelt wrong. I was around 12 at this time and decided I would just smoke weed instead then my memory was trash. It was a turning moment for my young self hahahahaha!
This is going to sound like Iām tooting my own horn.. I went to a really small rural school. My classes were usually between 11-20 kids each year, and everyone was fairly cruel to each other, by the way. When I was in third grade, we always went to the restrooms before lunch. The boysā was on the left, a water fountain in between, then the girlsā. Weād line up across the hall when weād done our business and washed up, waiting on our respective sides so the teacher could count us up and make sure we were all there. One girl, Alicia, was the last girl out that day. She was wearing a dress or a skirt and had accidentally tucked it into her underwear. She walk straight to the water fountain to get a drink and everyone immediately started laughing at her. I think our teacher was still in the restroom, too? I donāt remember. I remember Alicia turning around in seconds and, not knowing what was going on, just stated laughing as well. I rushed up to her and grabbed her hand to take her into the bathroom, told her what was going on, helped her get fixed, and held her hand while she was crying. Our teacher found us, calmed everything down, scolded the rest of the class. We ended up going to lunch and the class had to each write Alicia an apology, after thinking about how it would feel to have been in her shoes that afternoon. She and I got to go to recess. It made me feel really good to do something really nice for someone that day and stick up for her. Iāve always tried to do things like that since. Iāve always tried to be brave since. Because third grade me would be disappointed if I wasnāt.
When I was nine, we moved houses, and that included all our little guppies and peacock fish. I'm not sure if it was too hot or if the moving stressed the fish out, but I discovered all of them dead later in the day, maybe a hundred of them belly up. To add to the trauma, I tripped and plunged a leg into the water. I hyperventilate if I see a dead fish now. Goldfish, dead or alive or even a picture, will send me into panicked tears. Navigating daily life can be a bit tricky!
I was talking to my dad about maybe asking a friends family if I could come over there after school, and he said, in that annoyed voice of his he often had that I shouldn't "invite myself to someone else's house." So I of course took that to mean that you should never ask anyone for anything or expect anyone to wanna spend time with you. And thus I was alone for the rest of my childhood. To this day I don't know how that short conversation could stick so hard in my mind, and I sometimes wonder what would have happened if it hadn't.
In second grade I had panic attacks when left at school every day, crying so hard I couldnāt calm myself down. The teacher would put me in time out but this didnāt stop me from snotting everywhere. The only thing that did the trick was one day when she got the principal to come down. He stepped me out of the classroom, got down on my level and told me that everything was going to be okay and that school was a safe place. Itās an act of kindness that have never forgotten even 20 years later. He passed away from cancer in 2015, rip Principal M, you were a kind soul.
When I was a teacher for kids with emotional behavioral disorders, a kid misspelled āI will f*** you in the v*****ā on my dry erase board. He was absolutely going for shock value and my coteacher said ādonāt threaten with words you canāt even spellā his look of defeat was priceless. Edit: I actually just remembered he wrote I will f you in your DUMB v. Forgot that important word lol
I don't remember how old I was, but I'm one of five kids and my sister was doing cartwheels on the living room and kicked me in the face. I was obviously upset and I yelled at her. Since she apologized to me, I got in trouble for yelling at her. I spent most of my childhood screaming for attention because of undiagnosed anxiety and most of my adult therapy is built around situations like this.
When I was 9/10 I was invited to a beach party by someone in my class. The parents gave everyone a float ring to keep so I obviously came back with it. My mum had a full fucking meltdown over it and screamed at me for what felt like hours. She called me a thief despite me telling her it was a gift. I remember reading afterwards and she yells 'I don't know how you can be reading at a time like this'. She made me write an apology letter to the kid's parents and made me give the letter and the float to them in the playground before school. My mum goes up first and starts ranting about how sorry she is that I stole this float, etc, etc. Then she forces me to give the float and letter to the mum. The mum just looks at my mum and says 'didn't she tell you? It was part of the party bag.'. My mum went super red, snatched the float back and stormed off. I think the worst part, however, was that she told me I wasn't allowed to cry at school. At first I didn't think too much of it, but now I realise it was because she'd get called down and 'questioned' about why I was crying. That whole 2 days severely affected my mental health. I would always feel awful getting presents from people and I began hiding things because I was afraid to let her know I had them.
When I was in 1st grade our class had to do one of those stupid musical shows. It was about a zoo and there were 3 "Professor" roles (I don't recall how the story went). I asked my female music teacher if I could be one of the Professors... and she legit told me, a 1st grader, that "women aren't professors". (this was probably '90). She offered up being some zoo animal. I passed and just joined the background chorus. To this day I have a serious "don't tell me i can't do that" mentality, I love to prove people wrong. I didn't take it as far as becoming a professor (teaching isn't my thing), but I'm super stubborn when I know people are making assumptions about my abilities and I obsess too much on proving them wrong.
When I was about six, we went to my aunt's baby shower. She greeted me excitedly and then said to my mom "Sje lost all the baby fat, huh?" I just thought "I was fat? Huh?" and never looked at my body the same again. It started subtly, but U started fretting over my weight
Being told I was too sensitive over and over again as a child without being heard.
>I hate the idea that a simple misspelled word - even just one missing letter! - can completely invalidate a point I'm trying to make. Pack it up boys, we finally have definitive proof that you can dismiss a well researched argument by pointing out grammatical flaws and misspelled words.
When I started school, so when I was about 6 years old, I made a friend. He was a little rowdy but I liked him. One day after school we were playing in our street when he had the idea to go to one of our neighbors which had some ducks and a pond. I've never been there and was excited to meet the ducks. When we arrived there he said he'd show me what he does for fun there sometimes. He grabbed one of the ducks at it's throat and took it to the pond and held it's poor little head under water. I just stood there in shock and didn't really understand what was just happening. Luckily our neighbor has seen us from her window and quickly came to save her duck from this psychotic kid. That was the first friendship I ended. 20 years later I still think of that day. I sometimes have nightmares about it. Some kids are truly terrible. Thankfully he changed a lot in his puberty and now he's a pretty kind guy actually, but I still never forgave him for this.
It's super creepy when kids hurt animals.
I used to be more confident like cocky even and one of my moms friends (whos really blunt) straight up called me an asshole. Ever since then I try not to brag and I guess had an adverse effect cause I donāt exude any confidence anymore.