I remember one odd thought that I had as a child. It regarded objects & motion. I didn't see cars driving down the road as moving in a real way as long as they weren't changing in a physical shape or appearance

When I was about 6 or 7 years old, I asked my sister what caused thunder.  She told me that thunder is caused by clouds banging together!!  The scary thing is, I actually believed her for several years!!  It was only when we studied weather in science that I realised her explanation didn't make sense.

Another story:  When I was about 14, my Dad bought our first Windows computer with AOLinternet connection.  In those days, with AOL you could have up to 5 separate screen-names per account.  When I was in a chatroom one day, I saw that someone had the screenname Sweetie.  I decided that I liked the sound of that name because it reminded me of sweets/candy, so I set myself up the screenname Sweetee.  I didn't realise that the name has a second meaning!  Everytime I logged on, I was bombarded with instant messages from strange boys/men wanting to chat to me.  My Dad asked me why I had chosen the screenname Sweetee, and I said it was because I like sweets!  In the end, I had to block all incoming instant messages, because I didn't want to have to change my screenname.

We don't use AOL anymore though.  Once I reached the age of 17 or 18, I began to find the whole thing rather irritating.

I remember being at a car boot sale when I saw this amazing thing! It was a wooden square block that got a bit smaller towards the top. It was green with carves in it, a bit like a circuit board. Amazed, I asked, "What does it do?", and the man at the stall replied, "It doesn't do anything, it's just an ornament". And I was like WTF? It looks really cool but it doesn't do anything? He said, "It just sits there and looks nice".

At primary school we were going to have test. I hadn't prepeared very much for the test and I almost didn't really know what the test was all about. One of the questions were something like this:

Do you know what an adjective is?

And then I got a genious idea, write just what someone who knew the answer would have written, make a white lie. So I wrote:




...




"Yes"

And I honestly did, I was just uncertain if had mixed it up with nouns, but I couldn't really explain anything with my bad social skills at that time, especially not on paper.

Replace the word "clouds" with "mollecules" and your sister wasn't that far off the mark!

This thread made me remember something that happened like 15 years ago, which I can't explain and still find kind of creepy. It's not really an anecdote since no conclusions can be drawn from it, but I'll share it anyway...

When I was like three or four years old, I was in the living room at night and it was completely dark in the room. I went over to the window and looked up at the sky, and there were green, glowing clouds in it. I'm totally serious. I watched the clouds for a couple minutes, and then went out into the other room to ask my mom about them. She said they were "dew". I don't know what that means, but now whenever someone mentions dew I think of the glowing clouds. It's really creepy.

This kind of reminds me about a time when I had a French test at high school.  I was always in the top set for French, but one week when I was about 13 years old my family and I went on holiday during term time, which meant that I missed a couple of French lessons.

Anyway, on my first day back at school after my holiday, we had a French test where we had to translate the names of articles of clothing from English into French.  Due to the fact that I had been on holiday, I had no idea that we would even be having a test, and I had missed the lessons where the teacher taught the class about clothing.

So I just had to muddle through the test as best as I could.  I had no idea about the answers to most of the questions, so I made up French-sounding words for the items of clothing.  For example, for "a jumper" I put "une jumpere" with an accent on top of the 1st e for extra effect!!   I knew it would be totally wrong, but I thought it was better than putting nothing at all.

I got a really low score, about 3 out of 10, which was amongst the worst in the class, but the teacher must have realised I was away the previous week.

At uni (all right - this isn't, technically, a "childhood" anacdote, but we're talking about "tests", right?) I was studying King Arthur at Tasmanian uni (now called Unitas because they want to be trendy and upbeat, or something.) And the question was how does this or that Arthurian movie relate to Australian history.

Anyway I remember this was almost the same day as the Republican election (which failed. ) and so I somehow managed to string together this crap about how Monty Python & Holy Grail is a challenge against the monarchy and how this was relevant because Aus was challenging the monarchy at the time.

(The lecturer seemed to like it.)

I also had no idea what to write in some psych exam essay so I spouted some kind of stuff I'd learnt in Ancient Civs that year about how Aristotle thought that women and slaves were incapable of higher reasoning. Can't remember the essay topic or how this was relevant, but the first year Psych lecturer seemed to like that as well and SOMEHOW I ended up with an A.

Still don't know how. Funny the things you can get away with in uni.

When I was about 11 in Primary School we were made to play sports & I didnt see any use to knowing how to play (& I couldnt catch a ball if my life depended on it) so I just literally stood there doing nothing for the whole game. Id find ways to avoid doing anything, when we played Basketball/Netball Id just stand in the corner cos there was shade & if the ball came near me id just stick my hand out (I got that from Daria lol, it seemed like the perfect idea so I used it) & during cricket Id go & stand at the other end of the oval cos there was alot of shade. After a while the guys in my class knew I wasnt going to do anything so they made some1 come & stand near me to do my job, & since they had done that Id sit down in the shade & I even started having naps while they were playing lol.. 1 time the ball came right next to me & all the boys on my team were literally screaming at me to throw them the ball & I just stood there but after awhile their voices got irratating so I picked up the ball, threw it about 1 meter & yelled out I threw u the damn ball now leave me alone & I left & went back to the classroom lol... I was always so hurt that I got picked last for everything but now that I think about it I would pick me last to.

When I was in grade 8 at High School we had to take Health & PE & the teacher wanted us to play hockey & i just stood there the whole time, after awhile all the girls that had been bitching the whole time realised I hadnt even moved & they got into groups & started gossoping. About 15 mins later the teacher came up to me & said "Im so glad to see ur making an effort" & im fairly positive he wasnt being sarcastic lol. Then all the boys started yelling at the girls/me to play & we all got detention. I seriously think if the boys hadnt had a hissy-fit I wouldnt have got detention. It was the only time I ever got detention.

Oh another 1
When I was 10 at Primary School we had to play this game called British Bulldogs, dont know if any1s heard of it. I dont remember much about it cos I didnt care. Anyway my team was standing there (think we had to try & stop the other people from getting across the finish line) but nobody was ment to run yet. & this 13 year old grade 7 guy who was much taller then me started running, he was trying to be funny or something & the next thing I know I had grabbed the back of his T-Shirt, he was still running but he wasnt going anywhere & then he fell to the ground gasping for air.... Every1 was so impressed with what I had done & i didnt/still dont know how i did it? All i remember was facing 1 way & then the next second I was facing the other direction, holding some guys t-shirt & he wasnt going anywhere?? Thats the *only* cool thing I ever did during a sports game & I dont even know how. My sister was in grade 7 at the time & remembers it really well. It was so embarrasing, every1 was praising me & alot of them were patting me on the back & stuff. If they hadnt goten over it so quickly I dont know if I could have handeled all the extra attention...

I'm nine years old, and I've been dropped off at a private day-care. I sit in the kitchen, because it smells like diapers everywhere else and I can't bear to be there. I've stolen a book from my mom's bookcase, and I'm reading it. It's an autobiography of a girl who broke her neck and became quadriplegic. I'm rather proud of myself for reading an "adult" book in English (this was two years after I learned English), but I think the woman in the book is very silly. She's seventeen years old--almost double my age--and she doesn't understand what a fracture of the cervical vertebrae means, or that people don't automatically die if they break their necks, or that paralysis from a broken spinal cord is usually permanent. I read the book until the main character has gotten out of the rehabilitation center; but after that, it's all about her learning to accept her paralysis and find a husband, and that's boring; so I put it down.

Biologically speaking I wasn't a child when this occured, but in the written product that came from this I used the sentence "the child is dead", in the meaning that I finally had lost all natural bonds with my self as a kid. A part in this process was me arriving by train to Vienna (capital of Austria), going to a stand where they sold danish pasteries, in Sweden these are called Wienerbröd, implying that it is a Bread from Vienna (don't remember if I knew that they were called danish pasteries back then), I bought one or two, I quickly concluded that something was wrong with the pasteries. Shortly I was leaving Vienna as I had previously left Antwerp in Belgium and was to leave West Berlin very soon... These events all took place over a period of three days, early july 1986, and I had just turned 21.

Five years old. My family lived in a small mining town on the west coast of Tasmania (Population around 2000.)

I somehow got it into my head that I would take my one year old sister to the playground. So I did. We played around for a while and then I wanted to go home. So I said, "Let's go home." and my sister said, "DOH" (=No)

So I went home without her. Meanwhile my mum was frantically searching for my little sister when I got back. She said, "Where's your sister?"

My reply was - matter-of-factly - "At the playground."

My dad found little sister sitting by the slide and chewing the black gravel stones underneath.

Hahaha... You left the baby at the playground.

When I was 5, Mum got my 2 younger brothers and me some flowers and water so we could make flower arrangements while she fed the baby. We were going alright for a while and then my 2 year old brother ate some of the flowers. In the meantime, I had caught a large Andrew's Cross spider in a jar and was really excited and ran in to tell mum.

When she came out to look, the spider was not in the jar and I was looking frantically all over the place for it. It was then that we noticed my 2 year old had a couple of spider legs hanging out of his mouth.

I was wailing "he ate my spiderrrrrrr!" and it took ages to console me. He only admitted to doing it a couple of years ago when he was in his late 30's.