kiddie snark

I was wasting some time online, checking out one of my least favorite LiveJournal groups (girls_with_ink, for those "interested") and one of the posts caught my attention. It was a "Show Me Your..." request for childrens' books related tattoos and it really brought me back to when I was a kid. People had the normal stuff - Harry Potter, Peter Pan, Winnie the Pooh - and I thought to myself, "damn, I never read those books when I was little." Instead, I read a lot of really obscure things... like the Clown Arounds.

And then I realized this is why I probably hate clowns now (well, those books and the "Unsolved Mysteries" episode about the boy who sees a floating clown in his room).

But I'm figuring out, as I get older, that a lot of the things I did as a kid really fucked me big time. So behold... my Top 10 childhood memories that reveal why I'm a leeeetle bit special now.

10) I got a Teddy Ruxpin for my first birthday... you know, the creepy ones that spoke and when its batteries wore down, it sounded possessed. There's a home video (one of few, since my parents didn't own a video camera) of my cousin opening it for me and me throwing a temper tantrum. In retailiation, years later at one of her birthdays, I opened a bunch of her gifts.

9) I got hit by a car when I was three. Isn't that enough said?

8) Sheena and I were obsessed with the Lion King soundtrack as soon as the movie came out (the movie, not surprisingly, we hadn't seen in theaters... my grandma bought us a bootleg copy of that and "Pocahontas"). My dad had a work friend over one night - a large, looming man that I didn't like (for reasons I can't remember) and her and I put on a rousing theatrical performance of "Be Prepared" to scare him away. Again, not surprisingly, I haven't seen that guy since.

7) My best friend Shannon and I were in Brownies together and, after doing a horseback riding unit, wanted to own a horse. We saved up money for weeks... until we realized it would be more fun to just blow all the money on makeup.

6) My parents would often take Sheena and I to Sylvan Beach (it's a little amusement park on Oneida Lake... very tacky and run down now). Right around this time, Red Hot Chili Peppers came out with "Under the Bridge" and I remember singing the chorus and thinking "OMG, they totally wrote this song about Sylvan Beach."

5) My grandma burned me with a cigarette when I was four. I remember it being at a family function at my old house on Dix Road (yup, Dix... oh, the irony) and it was on my upper right arm. My mother insists this didn't happen since "no one smoked in our house" but she lies - there are pictures of my father smoking on the couch, and furthermore, I have a scar there. Or maybe that's from chicken pox and I'm holding a wrongful grudge against my grandmother...

4) The first time I ever had a substitute teacher was the Friday before Easter in my kindergarten class. I shouldn't remember this, but it was a momentous day - we had to color pictures of rabbits and I colored mine rainbow. The sub told me I had to do it over and boyyyyy did I wail. And not color another one. RABBITS CAN BE RAINBOW COLORED, ok?

3) I LOVED Barbies. I had tons of them. Normal for a little girl.... except my Barbies rode around in a Tonka Truck. I also pierced them with my mom's earrings and gave them tattoos with gel pens.

2) My favorite book as a child (not the Clown Arounds, though those were up there on my list) was "An Elephant in the Living Room." A quick Google search revealed that the book wasn't merely about a nice, sad elephant stuck in an old lady's house... it was actually about alcoholism and addiction. Dear mom and dad - WHAT WERE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME?

1) I'm sure I listened to a lot of music very young (I already mentioned the RHCP song, but that took place later in life) - I vaguely remember a little Fischer-Price radio with built-in microphone that always had Kid Songz in it ("up, up and away in that beautiful balloon"). But my first memory of music is riding around in my dad's blue van. It was rusty and the color of robin eggs and only had two front seats; my mom would sit on a folding chair in back. His doors didn't lock and you didn't need a key to start the ignition - a screwdriver worked just fine. As soon as he turned that Phillips head, a very loud, metal song would scream out of the speakers. This song? "The Lumberjack" by Jackyl. There was a chainsaw solo. It was ten times of frightening and it scarred me for life. When we moved to our current house, my dad misplaced the cassette tape (a mix, recorded from songs on the radio).

...One day I'll find that cassette and it will reveal to me many more disturbing, repressed thoughts about my childhood, I'm absolutely sure of it.