Why Kids are Dumb
A Dumb Kid
One morning, long ago when I was in year 1 of infants school my friends and I were in the playground before class started. It was just like any other morning, running about being Ninja Turtles no doubt, cowabungering this, Kranging that. Then we found a cash register in the bushes.
We all froze mid Bebop. It was like we were all thinking the same exact thing… We’re rich! We were excited. We began discussing how much money we thought was going to be inside. $100′s? $1,000′s!?
We spent the next 15 minutes in deep discussions about how to split the money. I saw it first versus but your parents are already rich versus rochambeau. We were so caught up in our windfall that we hadn’t heard first bell go and everyone else had gone to class. The time we took deciding how to pull off our heist, or lack there of, raised suspicions and once the teacher noticed we were missing they came looking for us.
I can’t imagine what the teacher thought when she stuck her head into the bushes and saw us there, 4 boys standing around an opened cash register playing rock, paper, scissors over who gets stuck with the coins.
We got in trouble for not reporting what we’d found immediately. As if we were the ones who had in fact stolen it.
My poor, young mind went crazy thinking i’d be going to jail for it, for what exactly I have no idea, but I was terrified none the less (and this was before i’d seen HBO’s Oz).
So, instead of finding the cash register, reporting it to a teacher and being heroes we instead got greedy, got caught and were seen as criminals. Meanwhile our playground reputation went through the roof. We had all the girls, red frogs and handball squares we could handle. We lived like kings.
Now, the reason I called this post Why Kids are Dumb is because never mind the fact that no one steals a register only to leave it full of money. Or the fact that there is no way a 7 year old is being sent to prison for finding stolen goods (I mean, the kids in Stand By Me found a body and they didn’t get done for murder). Or the tiny, obvious detail that the cash register was clearly already pried open & empty. Just forget all that, we didn’t for a moment care, our dull child minds simply went: cash register in bushes = free money.
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Hey baby
An artists interpretation of me holding a baby
I have never held a baby before. Ever. Not once. I have no interest in it. It scares me. I feel nervous about handling my iphone 4 let alone the product of someones own biology. If someone dropped my phone, it can be replaced. If I were to drop someones baby I don’t think my offer of sleeping with the wife to replace it would really work out.
The heads freak me out. Not being able to lift their own head is just odd. I feel if I hold it wrong the head will pop clean off and roll awkwardly to the feet of the parents, shaking their heads in disbelief, knowing they shouldn’t have let “Uncle Mitch” near their child.
On the weekend I visited my mate who has just had a baby himself (well, his Mrs did the hard work but he helped). After politely declining a few time to hold the baby I was saved by the arrival of my mates parents, the babies grandparents. I took this window of opportunity to leave while the grandparents were distracted playing with the baby. Then I heard the Grandad say this:
Grandad: *baby goo-goo talk*… Huh. His hairs still a little red, isn’t it… I hope this peach fuzz grows out, we don’t want a ranga in the family.
Me: I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Grandad: *Looks up at me* Whoops, didn’t realise we had one here…
Me: Yup.
Grandad: Sorry?
Me: Never mind, happens all the time.
Maybe, own one day, I will have a child of my own and maybe I will hold it, but it’s more likely I’ll just hug them when they’re 6 years old or a nice pat on the head or something… If they aren’t one of those unfortunate rangas that is.
Sock Hands Part Duex
When we last left our hero he had just placed his hands onto a hot stove and lost his grip sending him falling to the floor… Let’s pick up the action there…
I remember feeling as my hands felt as if they were on fire! Were they on fire? Mum, still on the call, stuck her head in to see what I was screaming about,
“What’s going on in h… *sniff sniff* Who’s cooking chipolata’s?”
She took a moment to register what she was seeing… A small boy crying his eyes out with his hands out in front showing off his hands that resembled something of a grilled steak. You know that faux vegetarian food shaped like meat that comes with the grill lines on it? That’s what my hands looked like.
The next part is a bit of a blur. A quick dash to the ER. Some bandaging. Some more crying. Mum drinking lot’s of wine.
What’s not a blur is the next month or so I had to spend with socks on my hands. Socks soaked in smelly burn cream. Thankfully it was the year before I started kindergarten but still, my small developing ego took a smashing blow as everybody, toddler to teen, grown ups to the elderly, would laugh their arse’s off as I wandered by, sock on my hands up to my elbows.
Even my friends couldn’t keep me company. Between not being able to go outside, not being able to handle toys properly and the smell of the cream I was an outcast.
Attempts were made to turn the socks into puppet creatures to keep me company during this most lonely time but I just resented them and let them talk amongst themselves. For a whole 6 weeks I was a depressed, paranoid and isolated critter.
I survived on A Charlie Brown Christmas, Transformers the Movie (old 80′s animated of course) and My Pet Monster, the only friends who wouldn’t laugh at me.
The End
PS This is the last story I can think of that involves me mutilating my own hands. Promise.
Sock Hands
So my hands have been dry and cracked lately and someone suggested I sleep with Sorbolene soaked socks on my hands I was suddenly & horrifically reminded of a long repressed memory from my early childhood…
I must have been about 5 and I was out shopping with Mum. I was dressed in my usual outfit, Spider-man, and I was swinging all over the place doing heroic deeds. My mum did not appreciate my antics and she became extremely frustrated with my efforts to bring down the dastardly Doctor Octopus. She resorted to a bribe to calm me the fuck down. While most upstanding heroes wouldn’t even blink at a bribe I had been offered a shiny new Matchbox car in exchange for my co-operation. I concluded that I’d done all the saving of innocents I’d needed to for the day and that even the most selfless of heroes deserve nice things. I agreed to the offer and reverted back to my mild mannered secret identity. I remained calm all the way home in anticipation of receiving my new toy.
Soon as I got home I demanded the prize that had been promised to me only to have Mum tell me that I first had to eat my lunch, no doubt something gross like egg and lettuce sandwich or something (I was a picky kid). The Matchbox car was placed on top of the oven, well out of my reach, while mum prepared the boiled eggs. I was angry, this wasn’t part of the original deal. I was getting screwed over.
As I stewed on the floor of the lounge playing with my older, more boring toys the phone rang. Mum was forced to abandon her position at the stove to answer the call. I saw my window of opportunity and took it. Getting to the toy with my spider-like abilities would be easy.
It was a pretty straight forward operation. Push the chair to the stove climb on to the stove, to get to the oven to reclaim my rightful prize. Simple right? Only my infant mind forgot about the cooking of eggs that had occurred mere seconds before. I placed my little hands on the stove to pull my self up I was suddenly overcome with an intense burning sensation in my hands. I screamed and fell back to the floor.
Will our hero survive? Well, yes, I am writing this after all… but check back Friday for the exciting conclusion to Sock Hands!
To be continued…
My First Car
It was my 8th birthday. Yep, no typo, not 18, 8th. I ripped the wrapping paper off my biggest present to reveal the best gift ever, the Ghosbusters Ecto One! For those who don’t know, the Ecto One is the car that the Ghostbusters used to drive around town busting up ghosts in (pictured left). It was about the size of a shoe box, so all the Ghostbusters action figures could ride along in side. It was by far the coolest toy I had ever owned (and I once owned a My Pet Monster doll!).
I was so proud of my new car (toy) that I insisted on driving it (taking it) to school with me that day to show off. Show and Tell day or not, it would be shown! At the time, bringing your own toys to school was not encouraged. I guess they’d had some incidents of theft, breakage or choking or some such, but to hell with them! My ride would be seen!
My class mates were all a gasp at how cool my new wheels were (I was sure I’d be giving a girl a tour of the back seat later on). I was the coolest kid in the class. I couldn’t wait for recess to take it out and do doughnuts in the car park and impress my new found (albeit shallow) friends but as the recess bell sounded and I ran (drove) towards the door Mrs Smith (nothing ambiguous, she was just that simply named) insisted I not take it out into the yard in case I broke it, she didn’t want to be responsible. I reluctantly handed over the keys and went out to little lunch, all the time anxious to get back to my shiny new car.
When recess wrapped up I ran back into the room to claim back my pride & joy but was met with the thick smell of.. *sniff sniff* burning plastic?
Click image to enlarge
My eyes locked onto the old school wall mounted gas heater in the corner. Mrs Smith had put it down on the heater while we were all out of the room. During the 20 minutes alone on the heater the car had melted into a unrecognizable white lump (ironically not unlike like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man at the end of the first Ghosterbusters Movie). The two action figures inside, Peter and Egon, were melting out the car doors as if they had tried to flee. It was horrifying.
I’m not exactly sure what happened next, I think I must have blacked out from the shock and the fumes, but I awoke expecting it all to be some horrible dream and my car would be there waiting for me, I was the birthday boy after all, I was invincible. But alas, it was all too true. I had come to school with a beautiful white car and left with a lump of melted plastic.
Mrs Smith had tried to prevent me scratching my new ride and in the process had burned it out. She never did replace the car and I was left with my most empty & depressing birthday on record. I still well up every time I smell burning plastic.
The End
PS Yes, my infant school uniform was brown & yellow…
