Weird things you did as a kid

Post Reply New Topic

Let me count the ways...

As an infant, making "wringer-type washing machines" (at least they were supposed to resemble washing machines) out of Lego. Ironically, I was terrified of the wringer washer at a family friend's house for some inexplicable reason.

Running my index fingernail down one side of my teddy bear, whilst saying "Strawwwwwp" - often followed by tossing it up into the air whilst exclaiming "Toossie!" ("oo" as in "foot", not "boot").

Drawing car dashboards in detail (although not precisely to scale). In small-town New Zealand in the late '70s/early '80s, people would leave their car doors unlocked; sometimes I'd peek inside their car without their permission to study the instrumentation.

Having a pathological fear of seeing a chimney cowl suddenly move (obviously due to a change in wind direction, although that didn't occur to me as a young child). Likewise, fearing using unfamiliar bathrooms, in case the toilet flushed too loudly, or a near-deafening electric motor somewhere started up ( I'd assumed it to be some fancy flushing mechanism; I now know it must've been hand-dryers).

Hearing the phrase "You're hanging around like a bad smell", and, without understanding its meaning or context one iota, visiting our elderly neighbours across the street and saying that phrase in front of them, simply because I liked the sound of it.

The sound of a music box made me cry.

At the end of grade three, the teacher had the class over at her house right next to the school it belonged to the education department). She handed out "noisy balloons" to all of us. Well, I was utterly TERRIFIED of them! Kids were soon letting the air out of them - EEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeee - to scare me.

Near the end of grade four - my last year at that particular school - telling other kids the grassed courtyard was going to be converted into a tarpit the following year, purely out of my imagination.

Stared at the golden hills in summer and imagined they were lions.

Peeled things - like stickers, laminate, and labels. I still do that.

Chewed things - mostly my Barbie doll feet (my mom loves to tell that story).

Taught myself to play the accordian - mostly Simon and Garfunkel.

Memorized every line from the Wizard of Oz. Don't know how I did that. It was before the days of VCR's, let alone the internet and DVDs.

Explored creeks and tide pools - creepy crawlers, Big Foot, et al.

Ate brown sugar and raw pasta.

Read every Time-Life book ever made. (Pre-1977) WWII and Anthropology haunt me to this day.

It might be easier to count all the normal things I did as a kid, so eccentric was I. But here's some highlights....

- I already mentioned in another post liking to watch records spin while they were playing. At age 5, this began translating into my designing my own "record labels" on paper, complete with made-up record companies, groups, and song titles. (My first record company was called Babu in honor of the family cat. In the late '70's I featured a "group" called Bird Brain, who cranked out 11 albums in 3½ years.) A little later, I became even more specific with the layouts by including catalog and matrix numbers, and I even developed an elaborate system for calculating these based on the date of "release."

- In 4th grade, as my social isolation and my first major crush on a girl put me on emotional edge, I enacted TV game shows on the playground by myself and - entirely from my own curiosity, without any outside suggestion - started playing selected records backwards ... and ended up liking some of the songs that way as well as forwards (and in certain cases, even better). I eventually came to view these backwards renderings as "foreign language" songs that were mine and mine alone, and they are as much the soundtrack of my youth as the top 40 was for your regular NT kid. The last such "hits" "charted" in 1982.

- In 1976, I began making cassette tape recording productions in which all the "people" featured on them were really me but under an endless array of aliases - I was fundamentally uncomfortable with using my real name in them out of a sense of self-embarrassment. I drew inspiration for this from learning of the story of the woman named Sybil, the one who had multiple personalities - a TV movie of her story was aired that year.

- I began reading William Shirer's epic-length The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich - 1600 pages - at age 12 and pretty much had it read by age 14. My interest in that subject inspired me to start taking German classes in 9th grade; I stuck with it for three years and then let it fade, as by age 17 I had moved onto other topical interests.

And my peers thought me weird enough even without ever knowing most of this stuff.

I would sing during school lunch break. I remember an older boy asking why I was singing.

I was the definition of weird as a kid. Where do start?

As a toddler, I always walked on my tiptoes. It was distinctly a sensory thing, I got such a rush by lifting my heels upward. As well, I had an imaginary friend named Mrs. Elephantanus. Yeah, you heard me. I found the word "anus" in a medical book and thought it sounded cool. Around this time I was also petrified of the MGM lion.

Grade two-four...I had an obsession with women's bathing suit backs...my weirdest interest ever. I had a system for all of the different varieties too, arrnaging them by category and then sub-category. My favourite one was one I dubbed the "Crosswind" -the one shaped like a T or Y, and I'd tally them whenever our family went to the beach.

Grade 7-8...I memorized and then reinacted skits from "Saturday Night Live" with some old school My Little Ponies and videotaped them.

^Nah... it was pretty obvious that we were all pretty damn nuts.
It was great fun, though.

^ haha yeah I remember Lambchop!! Once during lunch my friends and I marched single file around the school yard singing Little Bunny Foo Foo.

1. Hug my cats

2. Talk to my stuffed animals and dolls

3. Run around my yard for about an hour.

4. Take pictures of insects.

5. Hug and push my face into my pillow. I like the smell of my pillow...

6. Making recipes out of plants growing raw outside such as sweet grass, clovers, greenbeans, and such. Then eating them.

7. Chewing on pepper leaves.

8. Had an imaginary friend I'd talk to named Shannon.


I'm sure there's a lot more....

When I was 4, Phil Collins was my hero. I was obsessed with him. I dictated fan letters to my pre-school teachers to send to him. I (apparently) told everyone he was coming to lunch one day.