Sunday, December 19, 2010

Random Short Stories

When I was little, we got a new pastor at church. I went up at the front of the congregation for his first Children’s Hour. At one point, the pastor made a grand, sweeping gesture, then dramatically put his hand on top of my head. I made a face and he responded with “Well, yuck!”

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My cat Isis once wrote to Socks the First Cat and received a signed photo as a reply.

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I had never driven through a toll road until five years ago. I didn’t know what to do and accidentally didn’t take the ticket. I fretted the whole drive that I was in huge trouble. When I got to the part where I had to pay, I apologized and asked what I should do. The bored attendant told me I just had to pay $5. I felt like an idiot for worrying.

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According to my parents, while we were at a restaurant celebrating my first birthday, I ordered the lobster. Mom said from then on, she knew I would have expensive tastes.

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After an ice storm coated everything in a slick layer of ice, I thought it would be awesome to slide down the road from the top of the hill on our old-fashioned metal sled. After hitting a bump that sent me flying into a snowbank, I had to wait for 20 minutes before my brother and his friend to come along and untangle my arms and legs from the rope.

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I often came home from the bus stop soaked to the bone and covered in mud because I couldn’t resist jumping in the biggest puddles I saw.

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I was an avid tree-climber as a kid. When I went to college, I would climb trees on campus, but people thought it was weird so I stopped.

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During college, I used to make tiny little flags with “Spain” or “Cleveland” written on them. Then I’d put them in random places all over campus, claiming land for Spain and Cleveland.

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My second year of college, I stole the dorm’s lounge piano and put it in my room. Naturally, I did it on a dare. I returned it the next evening.

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One day during my second year of college, I got the flu. A friend asked if I needed anything from the dining hall and I said “just a spoon” because I was going to eat soup in my room and had no utensils. Somehow, everyone else found out I needed a spoon and half the people in my group brought me a spoon that night. It became a “thing” and every day for two months after, someone would bring me a new spoon. I had about eighty of them by the time Christmas break rolled around.

At Christmas that year, dad got me a cordless drill. I went back early because I was taking a winter term class and since I only had one class and only a couple friends were around, I got pretty bored fast. For some reason, I decided an excellent boredom alleviation would be to drill a hole into the bowl of each of those spoons I had. Over the next semester, I slowly reintroduced the holey spoons back into the cafeteria. I could always tell when someone got a holey spoon because of the puzzled look on the person’s face when the soup drained out.

I still have one of those spoons.

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I used to try to impress people by lifting my car off the ground. Half of them realized it was just a Geo Metro and it was nothing special. The other half asked for help with moving.

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When my brother was a toddler, I taught him how to make a soda can fort with all the empty soda cans. The best part was when I convinced him to let me encase him in a soda can pyramid and then jump out when mom came into the kitchen.

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I learned in second grade that the utility access hatch in our attic is not a secret passageway to another room and should be avoided at all costs.

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When my brother was in kindergarten, I convinced him to play Cowboy X, wherein he used a sharpie to mark an X all over the log walls of our house. My parents were not pleased.

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When a moderate earthquake hit the New Madrid in 1990 (1991?), it rattled some dishes and tilted a picture on the wall. I thought that was so hilarious that for a week, I went around the house tilting pictures and trying to convince my parents that we had more earthquakes. It did not work.

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