Yesterday Noah was ultra-poopy-feeling and I was mildly poopy feeling. Today he is mostly ok and I feel absolutely awful. And as a result I feel angsty and whiny and fussy. The internet is not doing sufficient tricks.
So, tell me a story? Could be funny/silly/random/sad/deep/superficial, whatever you are in the mood for. I just wanna feel like people will do the pat on the head thing when I feel icki and Noah is off doing that work thing. 🙁
When I was a child, I was pretty good friends with one of the girls in my girl scout troop. Her name was Heidi, and she towered over me by a good four inches (surprising, as I towered over all the kids in my class, despite being the second youngest).
She was bright and funny and altogether FEARLESS. She climbed my redwood tree and broke the tip off as a souvenir just because a boy told her that girls couldn’t climb trees. Up she scampered like a squirrel on speed, while the boy and I stood at the bottom of the tree horrified that she would fall and break her neck. She taught me a lot about courage, and taking dares, and never giving up, and not taking crap from boys. I often wonder what ever happened to her – I don’t think I’ve seen her since I was about 12.
I’m sure wherever she is, she’s thriving.
It amuses me that a couple of people chose “brave girl” stories. 🙂 Yay brave girls!
I can’t think of a story right now.
*pat on head*
when i in 3rd grade class there was this girl named “Janet.” she was *really bad* in a kid-delightful way, always speaking loudly out of turn, carrying on, and making the rest of us laugh.
her favorite trick was to take the back of her skirt and tie it around her neck like a cape and run jumping around the room with her arms held above her head while she shouted “I’m SUPERgirl! I’m SUPERgirl!”
she moved away at the end of the skool year.
Janet was, and still is, one of the coolest girls i ever met.
now-a-days, they’d ruin her with Ritalin.
Ritalin is an awful thing and honestly one of the reasons I want to keep my kids out of public school.
There was a boy, once. And he knew a girl. He was very fond of the girl, but he was fond of a lot of girls. She was sick, and sometimes wasn’t able to do everything that needed to be done to take care of herself. This made her fiercely determined to do those things anyway, and she would often reject her friends’ attempts to help her, even if she really needed that help. Ironically, the boy had an unfortunate White Knight complex, and at the same time he found that independent streak amazingly attractive. So he was wary about the way he felt for her, because he knew both of those things and he was trying to grow into a more balanced and healthy person.
One day, soon after they met, the girl went away. She found a place where it was easier to take care of herself and less expensive to live. And the two of them wrote, and talked, and he visited on occasion. And eventually, he found the resolve to tell her how fond of her he was, because over time he was becoming more and more so.
She was accustomed to boys being fond of her. And she was wary, because usually boys were fond of her to the extent that they wanted to get her into bed. Which was nice in its way, but not what she really wanted. And so she thanked him for his honesty, and told him she wasn’t interested.
And he still talked with her in email, and on the phone, and he still came to visit.
And her new home *was* much less expensive, and it was easier for her to manage her life there. But she didn’t have a lot of friends. And one day something awful happened to one of her friends. And everything about her new home reminded her of the awful thing. She decided to return to her family’s ancestral home. And she did a very brave thing. She asked the boy if he would help her make the trip. And he did.
Her ancestral homeland was not as friendly to her body as her previous home had been. And although it was nice to be in contact with her family, there was not a lot of contact, and she felt nearly as lonely there. And the boy still visited, and they talked, and she began to think that he might be Something Real. And he had been fairly certain for some time that she was. And they talked about how she needed to live somewhere with friends, as much as she hated that need. And they talked about the places she knew where she had friends. And they talked about a lot of other things, but that’s not important to the story. And she said “I need to come back, and move back to your town. And perhaps when the dust settles we can see if we are Something Real.”
I hope I can eventually tell you how the story ends.
Should I be crossing my fingers?
I certainly am. I think the boy and the girl would be good together, and I think they both deserve it. Besides, who doesn’t like a happy ending?
When I was 9 years old, my family and I were in Ankara, Turkey where my stepfather was working as a translator for some military mission. Well, the morning we were supposed to leave, I we were running late and In the rush to get to the airport to catch military transport, they took off from the hotel without me.
I watched the cab drive away waiting for brake lights, or the screetch of tires, or any sign that they noticed I wasn’t there. But they rounded the corner and were out of my sight in moments. I stood there for a while. Then i sat on a bench outside the hotel for a while. They never came back. I knew they would notice I was gone at the military base when they went to get on the plane. And I know I would be in trouble for making us miss the plane. I knew I would be hit for it. my stepfather was like that. So I cried a little. I cried off and on for a couple hours, I think. Then it slowly dawned on me that they weren’t coming back for a while. So, I went in the hotel to go to the bathroom and get something to eat.
I actually had my own money, so I bought a sandwich and a coke and a comic book, and sat there for another couple of hours. They weren’t coming back.
I went to the desk, and they freaked out. Everyone was yelling and screaming, phone calls were made and more yelling ensued. I drank my coke and watched the show. it was like the three stooges movies. And I waited.
After a while, the manager told me the talked to the people at the military base and they told him to send me to the American embassy, which was in Istanbul. it was a couple hundred miles away, so he was going to put me on a bus. And I should ask someone how to get to the embassy when I got there. I nodded silently, because I was a really good kid. And well… stoic.
As night fell it got cold, and I was in shorts and a poloshirt. So they bought me a set of warm clothes and a jacket, a bunch of comic books and some candy. They were really nice to me, even if they didn’t speak english. And they put me on a bus later that night.
It was a loud, stinky bus and many people tried to talk to me, though I had no idea what they said. I simply repeated, “american” as I knew is was phonetically the same to them. They smiled and left me alone and the one time an older guy was bothering me too much a couple older women chased him off and fussed over me. They smelled bad, but fed me lots of food.
I got into Istanbul in the dark early hours. I don’t know when, but it was hours until sunrise. I stood in the street as the bus driver locked up the bus and walked away. It was dark, it was cold, and I had no idea where to go. I walked over to the shack which was the bus ticket sales booth, but no one was there. I shuffled my feet to keep warm and walked around, but it was a dark, dirty place and I didn’t speak the language. So I crawled between the wall of a buidling and the booth and sat down with my back against the booth. It was out of the wind and I fell asleep pretty quickly.
I woke in the morning when a fat, angry man was kicking me and screaming at me. I grabbed his foot and pulled, throwing him off balance. He hit the booth hard and fell down. I crawled out the other side and was going to run. My paper bag tore and out came all my comics and candy. I was scooping it all up when he came around the booth, his lip split and blood flying as he screamed at me. I knew I was in for a beating, as I had seen that look before in my father’s and stepfather’s eyes. So, ready for the pain, i squared my shoulders and looked up defiantly. He came up short and eyes wide stareda t me. He asked me something that had the word amerikan in it, so i repeated the word. He scratched his balding pate and asked me something. I shrugged. He grabbed my arm and yanked me into motion. He marched me to a shop out on the street and thrust me inside, yelling at the man behind the counter, who yelled back.
more later…
Goodness gracious.
When I was three years old my family went went to this resort where we stayed in a cabin. It was pouring rain and we were inside, looking out the window. Suddenly, I saw a small limb fall off of a tree in the storm and got really upset. I started to cry because the limb was “dying” and I begging my father to go and “save” it, wanting him to plant it in the soil. He kept trying to explain to me that planting the limb was going to bring it back to life, etc, but I just kept insisting and crying out, “Please Daddy! Please save it’s life!” Finally, he angrily went outside, in the pouring rain, cursing, and planted the little branch in the soil.
Three year old child: 1
Parent: 0
Awesome. 🙂 It’s good to push for what you believe is right. 😉
i once took a lifeguarding class, where i was taught that you can make a life vest out of your pants. you take them off (and take your other clothes off too, because they are heavy and create drag) and then you tie the legs of your wet pants together near the bottoms. you put this over your head with the knot behind your neck, scrunch the waistband up in your hands, and blow into it to inflate the pants. then hold it closed. eventually it will lose air and you will have to reinflate it. that is how you should survive, if you are stranded in deep water with your clothes on.
When I was little I took a swimming class and we were lectured mightily on how we *had to have a life vest on whenever we were on a boat*. This was this huge deal. I asked why–cause I’m a brat like that. We were told that if the boat capsized we would be unable to put on a life vest fast enough. I asserted that *I* could. So they put me in one of the wave pools and gave me some short amount of time, I can’t remember how many seconds, and lo-and-behold I did it. The teacher hated me after that. 🙂