Story Time

For this week, I want to relax and just tell you guys some stories about me. So sit down, grab a cup of cocoa (get it?), and allow me to just talk about myself for a while.

When I was about three years old, my mother and I lived in my grandmother's house after my parents split up while my mother was job-hunting. The architecture of my grandma's house was an interesting one. Downstairs there was the kitchen, the living room, and a bathroom, and upstairs there was a bedroom and a bathroom. However, in order to get upstairs, you had to physically leave the house, and take the staircase that was built off of the front wall, through the outside of the house. So one side of the stairs was the wall, and the other side was wide open for a free fall into the trees. This is all background information for you to get an idea of why I, as a 3-year-old toddler, was not allowed on the stairs alone.

So one day, my mom was in the kitchen, and I came in asking for my pacifier. "In a minute," she said, because she was busy. A while later I asked again, and got the same response. Then again. Now keep in mind that this story was told to me by my mother, so it's from her point of view. After a while, she noticed that I had stopped asking, so she went looking for me. I wasn't in the kitchen, I wasn't in the living room, I wasn't in the bathroom. She walked outside, and I wasn't out in the garden either. She looked up and saw, with her own two eyes of a single mother, her baby, about 20 feet from the ground, crawling backwards down the stairs (so my butt was pointed towards the bottom of the staircase leading the rest of my body), with the pacifier in my mouth. I was not injured.

Another time, I was about the same age, we were living in the same house, my hair was getting long. Now, let me tell you that before I was able to voice my opinion on it, I had a very Dora-like hairstyle. This meant bangs down to my eyebrows and shoulder length hair in an almost bowl-cut fashion. My mom hadn't had time to take me to get my hair cut, so my bangs were starting to fall into my eyes. One day she says, more to herself than to me, "When I take you to get a haircut, I'll trim just a little bit on the front, and just a little bit on the back." As time went on, I became more bothered by my hair on my face. One day, my mom walks into our shared room and sees me, sitting on the floor, holding a pair of scissors, with hair all around me. When I saw her I said, "Look Mommy! I cut just a little bit on the front (I gestured towards my nonexistent bangs) and just a little bit on the back (I gesture towards the random cuts I did on the back of my head without looking)." I was also not injured, but my mother had to wait two months for my hair to grow enough in order to take me to the salon to fix it.

My last anecdote happened a little bit before the other two. I was two years old, when my parents were still together, and they were trying to teach me to swim; more specifically, to hold my breath long enough for them to immerse me into the water completely. They had talked to some friends who had kids who gave them this advice: you tell the child you're going to lower them on the count of three, count to three, and do it. After a few times they'll understand they're supposed to hold their breath. Listening to that advice now, to me it sounds like bullshit, but my parents had to try it, they had nothing better. Oh boy, and tried they did indeed! Two hours in the pool everyday for three days, and all they managed to do was make me choke on the water and cry. They even tried demonstrating what I was supposed to do by holding their breaths, but I just didn't want to. One day, my father tells my mom that he has an idea. So before they tried the whole ritual again he turns to me and says, "If you plunge into the water, I'll buy you a lollipop," and without missing a beat, I sucked in my breath and threw my head into the water. I, yet again, was not injured nor did I choke or cry.

Now, even though I kinda wanted to tie this all into a message along the lines of "if you want something, go get it," I won't do that. These are just some funny anecdotes about how I was like as a smol bean, and how I hope some of that spirit has remained with me today. I also hope this brought a smile to your faces, and feel free to share your own funny personal anecdotes in the comments and we can all laugh at how silly babies are!