Ten things: Childhood

I was tagged by Jacy to write ten things about me. She suggested I tell the marble or the tongue story, which gave me the idea to do ten things about me: childhood.

1. My mother claims to have found out she was pregnant with me in February, but I wasn't born until December, just before Christmas. Yeah almost 11 months! Which, by the way, is the same gestational period for whales. Coincidence? I think not.

2. My first friend, when I was four, was the boy across the street, Bradley. He used to call on me every day. Often getting me out of bed in the morning. We did everything together. Sadly we moved away and our friendship ended. I remembered him so fondly that I named my cat after him. Unfortunately, it seems that this may have been my best relationship with a male.

3. My favourite pants when I was five were pink paisley bell bottoms. My mother and I had huge fights about what I was going to wear until I was eight when she finally gave up and let me wear what I wanted. Believe it was for the better. She tried to stick me in some God awful hand me downs. I recall a hideous blue kilt dress thing that I had to wear with pre-lycra itchy bulky leotards that ended up at your knees by the time you got to school. My first running shoes were North Stars. I still remember my Dr. School sandals and my first pair of clogs. It was my father who got me my prized blue Adidas tracksuit. Fashion was important to me even as a little kid.

4. I was kicked out of kindergarten on my first day in the class. I came after the school year had started because I had moved into the area. I arrived in class right at snack time. All of the children were seated in a big circle. In the centre there was a tray with one mangled, picked at and rejected by everyone, orange slice. The teacher told me that I was to eat that last wedge of mashed up orange. With all of the children's eyes on me I told her that no, there was no way that I was going to eat that orange. She took this as an attack on her authority and insisted that, oh yes,
I was going to eat it. But I have always drawn the line at food. No one, no one, is ever going to make me eat something I don't want to. I lost it, screaming and yelling that I wasn't going to eat that orange. I don't exactly know what happened but at one point I was upside down and then out in the hall. My mother had to come and get me.

5. Continuing with the food theme: I quit eating meat when I was eight. In one of my father's finer parenting moments, he decided that we should take a trip to his aunt's farm and that I needed to watch the butchering of some pigs. He was trained as a butcher and grew up on farms and didn't think that there was anything wrong with this. Upon return from the Stratford Massacre, I refused to eat my meat, thus beginning a year long war with my father. I can't tell you how many hours I logged at the dinner table with my meat while my sisters laughed in the other room to Happy Days. I also endured many a spanking over this. (which just proves that spanking doesn't work). The man had hands like baseball mitts! I developed all sorts of tricks to get rid of my meat: put it in my pockets and flush it down the toilet, stick it in nearby houseplants and if possible, feed it to the cat. Tricky, because it was easy to get caught doing that one. Finally he gave up. I spent the next several years eating cottage cheese instead. I have only started eating meat again in the past few years.

6. The first records I bought were 45s. Tell Me Something Good, by Rufus and The Bitch is Back by Elton John. I have always loved music and sang fluently in German until I started school. I can still do a great version of Muss Ich Denn.

7. I begged my mother for two years to get my ears pierced. She said I had to wait until I was twelve. On my twelfth birthday my friend and I went downtown on the streetcar and I got my ears pierced at Ostranders Jewellers. They used metal studs and a gun. It hurt like hell but was so worth it. That was the beginning of my love affair with earrings. I feel naked if I don't have any on. Later that evening we went to the movies: Tommy. I was really freaked out by Tina Turner as the Acid Queen.

8.I used to watch Mr. Dressup faithfully. It was my secret hope that one day Finnegan would talk and I had to be watching when it happened. Poor Finnegan, he had to endure that suck up Casey and couldn't talk!

9. My favourite story was The Little Red Hen. It really bugged me that all those farm animals refused to help in the baking of the bread, but all wanted to eat it once it was baked. My first word came from that book: pig. Funny, given the meat thing later. My sister said I was obsessed with justice as a child. Couldn't stand it when I thought things weren't just. I think it started with that book.

10. It is really hard to choose between the tongue and the marble, so I will do them both. Age four, under a dare from my sister, I shoved a marble up my nose. It got stuck and I couldn't get it out. My mother freaked when she saw it. It took me three hours of pushing in downward from the outside before it came out. I think that it contributed to me badly deviated septum. Same year at the park got a monkey bar under my chin and when I went to yell for my parents who were leaving to wait for me, i bit down on my tongue, almost severing it off. It was on by a centimeter. I remember all of the blood on my father's shirt as he took me to the hospital. Once there I was strapped to a stretcher and given blood. The doctor told my mother that they couldn't sew it back on and I would just have to wait and let it grow back together (can't tell you how much it hurt!). I was to eat soft foods only. "Great" I told the doctor, "now I won't have to eat my mother's hamburgers any more.". Always saw the silver lining in every cloud.