Stories from Childhood (402 hits)
Category: HumorRating: -1.55 on 9 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Tyklo (View user info) at 2009-01-19 06:51:00 EST
The following are just some random stories and much loved memories from childhood, with most coming from the golden days of elementary school:
My friend Pascal, whose desk was right next to mine in grade 3, had a bunch of pencil-topper animals and figures that fit over the eraser and would play with them constantly. The topper he used was a monkey in a tuxedo holding a banana, which doubled as a mic, who hosted "The Monkey Show" which was our estimation of what a pencil-topper day time talk show would be like. Most episodes invariably ended in a Springeresque brawl over the morally depraved actions of the guests/host.
Pascal and I regularly played a game called "The Hunt" at lunchtime for years in which we systematically searched the school for our classmate Doug, who was our prey and whose job it was to run at hide from us. He was quite adept at it as he was coincidentally the smallest and thus quite wily kid in our class. Upon finding him we would punch and kick him for a while before demanding he flee again or face further injury. This continued as I said for years until one day we beat him too hard and he told the counsellor. While this was clearly a sadistic, mean-spirited game I do at least remember that, when we tried to hunt our other classmate Eric, who was very smart (and in medical school now...), he simply refused to run and thus by denying us the sport was quickly left him alone and that Doug was well aware he had done this but didn't use the tactic himself probably enjoyed the game at least in part.
I went to school with Doug from kindergarten through to graduation. He was born prematurely and his growth was stunted, so he was always the smallest kid in class. His dad was also an insanely strict disciplinarian. As a result of this, as well as perhaps The Hunt in some small, near inconsequential part, he has a severe case of Small Man Syndrome and was always incredibly easy to enrage and particularly violent. He was very angry and vicious, which is probably why we picked him for The Hunt in the first place, and was a dangerous little scrapper. His anger persists and just a few years ago in a Grade 11 Oceanography class I simply called him "Count Dougula" and with no other provocation he viciously stabbed me with his pencil.
Another time in elementary school Doug's family decided for some reason to hang a Mexican flag from the flagpole in their yard. Because of this, Pascal and I convinced our entire class that Doug was a Mexican spy named Senor Bergo who was here to subvert national interests. A Hunt ensued with at least 20 people looking for him and upon finding him, he was dragged to the sandbox at the far field for trial. Justin acted as the Judge, myself and Pascal as the Special Prosecutors, a shrub as Doug's appointed defence attorney, Athena as a hot dog salesman and Robbie as the Bailiff. Twenty-odd kids looked on as a sham of a trial took place in which Doug was convicted of treason and thrown to the mercy of the on looking mob, who then pelted him with pinecones.
My entire clique in grade 5 or 6 invented a game called "The Plug" wherein a good ten to fifteen kids would leap down the wide, spiralling slide on the big toy at the same time in order to "plug" it. Everyone was intertwined with everyone else, squirming fruitlessly and clogging the slide half way up. It was then the job of the last person to jump down the slide as hard and fast as they could to kick the furthest back kid as hard as possible to unclog the slide all at once. Everyone invariably laughed their ass off and rolled out on top of each other in one huge mass. I recall quite clearly that it was my favourite game even though the unclogging was quite often painful. Everyone loved it and played for months until the lunch lady made us let the kindergarteners play, who got hurt, cried, and ruined the game for everyone else.
My elementary school Principal Mr. Moore was a super-keen, likely gay, always grinning, very colourfully garish clothes wearing and all around idiotic guy. One day he was wearing pink running shorts that cut off at his mid-calf while showing us the route our class would take on a biking trip that ended in a group lunch at a park and when he was finished I instantly raised my hand and said, "But my Mother told me never to go anywhere with a grown man in pink shorts, Mr. Moore,", which turned his goofy smirk to an embarrassed frown. None of my classmates laughed, which was nice, because it let my teacher's desperate attempt to stifle himself be heard, which made Mr. Moore blush. I remember this very well, even though I didn't find it overly hilarious at the time, but can now many times over appreciate the joke.
I once shouted out "Mr. Grumman likes little boys!" in the middle of a grade 9 Science class... I was suspended for three days.
On April Fool's Day in grade 4 my friends and I convinced our entire class plus a few others, about 30-50 kids overall, to hide in the woods outside the school and not go back in after the bell. After about thirty minutes the lunch lady found us and apparently our parents and the police were all called and it was quite the debacle.
Our lunch lady wouldn't let us eat our snack food before our sandwiches and was a real bitch.
We had the code phrase "The grass is growing..." that meant the "lunch lady is coming" to give ourselves warning when up to no good.
All the town's rich kids got into my school's French Immersion program and in grade 6 a rivalry broke out because we discovered that the grade 5 and 6 French classes both got week long field trips to a really nice summer camp while only the English grade 6 class got a shorter, less fancy trip. Our teacher, an apathetic and disinterested middle aged guy, put up no resistance when we simply didn't work and instead made giant protest signs and went about to the other English classes to talk to the kids. The strike was tolerated at school for a few days until my friend and I realized we could capitalize on being cute, innocent kids and drafted a carefully written editorial from "The Kidz in Mr. Funk's Class", that served to shed light on what was a legitimate issue beyond our own power to the town and coat it in press-friendly "childness" until the Secretary came back from lunch, figured out what we were doing and called the office into damage control before the Principal immediately disbanded and detentioned our organisation.
During our classes' sole grade 6 camping trip to Tribune Bay, I woke up in my tent one morning to pee and someone noticed my apparently slanted eyes. He woke the others while I was gone and when I came back was informed it was determined that I must be Japanese and while not necessarily a spy, the risk was too great for me to be permitted to continue sleeping inside the tent. I was ostracized for the day and for years after was occasionally reminded of the incident.
Once in 2nd grade I decided I wanted to touch the substitute teacher's boob. I went up to her while she was bent over talking to someone else, reached out and gave her ole teat a rather quick but obvious honk and when she turned to look at me dumbstruck I though to just act like I was just tapping her to ask a question.
I had this god awfully eccentric and completely incompetent English teacher named Mrs. Schaller in grade eleven who was into "progressive" and "relatable" teaching tactics, which were just pathetically zany and wacky antics indicative of her strange, awkward and bizarre self. Such is her stupidity that instead of writing a relevant answer to a considerably important essay question on a test about Lady MacBeth that I didn't have an answer for, I simply wrote a crazy story and hope she liked it enough to give marks. I wrote about a giant Michael Jackson attacking downtown London in the classic Godzilla fashion, the resultant thousands of fleeing Asians, and how he was eventually confronted and killed by a giant Lady MacBeth with a bloody dagger. She gave me not only full, but also extra marks, and I ended up with a %110 or something...
Mrs. Schaller once told a girl to dump ground up chalk in her coffee when she left the room to test the class on if we'd warn her or not and from there lead into a debate about morality... which I recall had nothing to do with what we were learning. It didn't really work and not long after the girl who dumped the chalk didn't give an explanation better than an awkward, "'Cuz, like you know... She's such a cow, you know? Like, oh my God, she like, totally deserves it. Like, you know?" when we asked why she'd done it, someone realized the entire affair reeked of Mrs. Schaller. Apparently she'd tried the same thing years ago in grade 9.
All of Mrs. Schaller's homework assignments on Lord of the Flies were copied of a website the URL of which was printed on the bottom of every page. We looked up the sight, found the answer keys in seconds, and the entire class got %100 on every assignment for about a month and she never suspected a thing.
My Grade 12 History teacher Mr. Rajotte was such a congenial, warm and friendly guy, that he was able to get away with hugging all of his students whenever he pleased as well as calling them "pretty/cute/love/darling/sweetie/etc" or just showing affection in general with completely unabashed openness. He's very smart, in his late 50's, a diehard liberal and spent his youth backpacking around the world. He had a tonne of stories for everything he taught, was an amazing teacher, loved his job and was loved and looked up to by all of his students. I'm a fairly detached, aloof guy and even I found emotional just how much caring and passion there was there. I was rather fond of him on a personal level, as everyone was, but less so than the truly devout, and even looked up to him quite a bit. Looking back, despite being only more detached and emotionally distant, I still find it touching and a true testament to just how awesome of a guy he was that as a grey old man he could hug the hottest girls in school and say "See you in twenty minutes, Sweetie. Love the new jeans!" in front of an office full of bureaucrats and administrators with no teacher, student, or otherwise observer, myself included ever thinking of his intent even remotely inappropriate or perverse.
I used to collect caterpillars at lunch with a girl named Heather in Elementary school. I loved caterpillars a lot... until one day one of the other kids I was babysat with came up to me holding a caterpillar in his hands. He lifted it to my eyes, gave a sinister grin, twisted his hands and pulled the caterpillar apart. I'm far from squeamish but to this day I can recall vividly the sickeningly dull but firm 'crunch' of whatever cartilaginous spine a caterpillar has being severed and the greenish-clear goo that globbed out onto the floor. It traumatized me to see, though more importantly hear, the innocent, furry little bugs I loved smooshed and killed in front of me. So I'm now deathly afraid of caterpillars. The way the walk, how their bristly hair sticks out, or worse their smooth, soft and plump skin glistens and the recalled sensation of them walking on your skin makes me shiver and repulsed. When I wrote the sentence describing the traumatizing "incident", I had to suppress my gag reflex and a cold shiver ran up my spine.
My friend Justin, with whom I was really close up until around Junior high, was always just ahead of me in things and as such we were friendly rivals. While he beat me in things at a ratio of about 4/1, I did manage to beat him at cheese twice, Risk four times and Trivial Pursuit once. He also beat my second highest score on the English 12 Provincial Exam, the hardest and only exam the entire student body has to take, by %2 at %98. What a bastard. The kid ended up getting the two academic honours of my graduating class and a full scholarship to University, where he is now studying Political Science.
Once in Middle School my class was being particularly cruel to a substitute teacher who clearly was either new at the job or just hopelessly detached from and unable to communicate with her students. She was a fat, 40-something hippy lady who wore sarongs and native American leather-type clothes. By the time she'd sent about kids to the office and was visibly quite shaken, I hadn't said a word or done anything wrong. When she went to rage at another kid for laughing moments later at her, I out of the blue jumped into the argument and by rather calmly and articulately stating that while it's appreciable that she shouldn't tolerate disrespect from her students, laughing is a healthy thing for a child to do and she both shouldn't punish someone for taking a simple pleasure in life nor forget that it is at root her inability to keep order, do her job and teach properly. Such a different approach from out of nowhere caught her completely by surprise and she instantly changed, walked slowly over to me and bent down before saying with tears in her eyes something like, "Why are you making this so difficult for me?" before bursting into tears and fleeing the room. It was the first and only time I made a teacher cry and won me high praise from my classmates.
I once made this annoying girl who had a crush on me and showed it with endless harassment cry when I finally snapped and ranted in front of everyone about how ugly, pathetic and hopelessly stupid she is. Now, our association long over and myself with an objective view point, I'm able to say she truly is incredibly ugly, pathetic and stupid. I don't normally take sadistic delight in the misfortune of others, but there's just something about this girl that makes me honestly want to hit her with a stick. She offends my senses.
...
Also, the picture is unrelated.
Is it just me or is it kind of perverted and gross?
User Reviews
Submitted by Jeanneee (user info) at 2009-01-19 12:40:23 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
This reads like it was translated from Urdu to Portuguese and then from Portuguese to English. Not good.
Submitted by Snark (user info) at 2009-01-19 12:39:42 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
I'll never dance again
Submitted by Wildman (user info) at 2009-01-19 10:39:32 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
This is really really really bad.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2009-01-19 10:37:30 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Submitted by 8track (user info) at 2009-01-19 06:53:34 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
got through about one tenth of this shit, skipped to the end, gave it the rating it deserved.
next time you dig up memories, make them interesting. make them up if need be.
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you know, except with less gay.
Submitted by bozznc (user info) at 2009-01-19 10:28:12 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
My elementary school Principal Mr. Moore was a super-keen, likely gay, always grinning, very colourfully garish clothes wearing and all around idiotic guy. One day he was wearing pink running shorts that cut off at his mid-calf while showing us the route our class would take on a biking trip that ended in a group lunch at a park and when he was finished I instantly raised my hand and said, "But my Mother told me never to go anywhere with a grown man in pink shorts, Mr. Moore,", which turned his goofy smirk to an embarrassed frown. None of my classmates laughed, which was nice, because it let my teacher's desperate attempt to stifle himself be heard, which made Mr. Moore blush. I remember this very well, even though I didn't find it overly hilarious at the time, but can now many times over appreciate the joke.
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Horrible grammar and word choice, but the above passage made me smile. I've had a teacher like that and made similar comments. Without the above, it's a -2.
Submitted by F.J.Bell (user info) at 2009-01-19 09:41:49 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
-2 Monday
Submitted by redskieslookfake (user info) at 2009-01-19 09:30:07 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
Awful.
Submitted by sexualchocolate1984 (user info) at 2009-01-19 09:13:02 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
I tried to read this, give you the benefit of the doubt, but alas.
WTF I'm not reading all that!
Uber is not the place for long ass boring posts. i couldn't give a fuck less about your childhood. Unless you got raped or something.
Submitted by 8track (user info) at 2009-01-19 06:53:34 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
got through about one tenth of this shit, skipped to the end, gave it the rating it deserved.
next time you dig up memories, make them interesting. make them up if need be.