I just thought of another one today!  This happened when I was about 10 years old, during the school holidays.  My Mum took me out with a couple of school-friends.  They were my best friends at primary school.  We went to a local cafeteria for something to eat.  

I've always been a very clumsy eater, particularly when I was younger, and at most mealtimes I spilt food down my chest.  At the cafeteria, I kept spilling food down my clothes even worse than usual.  I was laughing and my friends were laughing too.  My Mum then said, "Shall we buy her a bib?".  At first I thought she was joking.  She often used to say that.   But this time she wasn't joking at all.  She took us all to a kids' clothes shop and bought me a bib.  It was bright red, had a drip-catcher and looked really babyish - the sort of thing a 5 year old would wear.

When we got back to the cafeteria for desserts, my Mum put the bib on me, in front of my friends and the rest of the customers/staff.  I felt so embarrassed, and I started crying, begging her to let me take it off.  I can't remember much of what happened after that.

I asked my Mum about it a while ago.  She can still remember it, and she said that she did it to try and shock me into no longer spilling my food.  Until recently, I still had problems with spilling food, but luckily I was never made to wear the bib in public after the incident at the cafeteria - that was just a one off, although for a few days afterwards I did have to wear it at home when I was having dinner, but that wasn't quite so embarrassing.

When I look back at it now, it makes me laugh!

I think I have talent for drawing. I can with some time draw what I see down on paper identically when it comes to lines.

Once at primary we were going to make a doll-theatre and we were to make the dolls of thick paper and sticks. For my group's doll-theatre there were several characters, one of them was some kind of fantasy horse.

One of the group's members was really into horses, she rode horses and liked to draw them, but she was sick that day. So I went to the school's library, gathered a book about hooved animals, drew a horse and added wings to it so that it looked like a pegasus. When the girl came back some few days later and she was a little sad because I was better at drawing horses than her.

I used to be extremely hyper when I was younger. I remember when we used to go to church, and we had to go in the other section by the entrance away from the main church bit (with the people and priests), and in this section there was a speaker so you could hear the priest talking. I basically just ran around and talked as usual, every now and then my mum would tell me to stand up or bow to the prayers etc.

At each mass, someone would ring the big church bell, and this one time, I must have been about 6, I tried to ring it myself. Usually it would be tied to a hook on the wall until the right time to ring it, but I almost managed to untie it and ring it right in the middle of the priest's sermon! My mum told me, looking really worried, that if I rang it it would make God angry, so I didn't ring it.

When the people came to ring the bell at the right time, I tried to stop them because I thought it would make God angry...

I've just thought of some more stuff to add to this topic!

When I was at high school, I was a member of the school choir.  Therefore, I took part in the school concerts at the end of each term (also the school orchestra, soloists and other musicians from within the school could take part too).  There was room for about 200-250 parents and teachers to watch.

One term, these 2 really awful rock bands, made up of senior students, each performed a song in the concert.  The lead singer of one of the bands couldn't sing at all and he had a really squeaky voice.  Everyone in the choir and orchestra kept laughing and sniggering throughout the song (even when we weren't performing, we still had to sit at the front of the hall, facing the audience). I couldn't stop laughing, but when I looked at the teachers and parents in the audience, they all had really straight faces - they didn't find it funny at all.  For some reason, seeing the parents' and teachers' stern faces made me want to laugh even more.  I was worried that the teachers were going to tell us all off after the concert for laughing at the rock bands, but luckily they never did.


Another story - when I was 17 or 18, I was looking for a part-time/summer job, so I went down to my local JobCentre.  They had touchscreen computers where you can search for jobs and print out descriptions/contact details of the ones you like.  Then you had to take the printouts to an adviser who would phone the employers and ask them to mail you an application form.  

One of the jobs said "Own transport required", but I liked the sound of it, so I printed it out anyway.  The adviser looked at it and said, "Can you drive?".  I replied, "No, but maybe if it's not too far to travel I could walk?"  She then looked at me and said, "Well, it really does say you need your own transport" and before I could respond, she screwed up the printout and threw it in the bin.  She then moved on to my next printout, which luckily didn't mention anything about transport.

Being very literal, I thought that walking was indeed a method of transport, and it didn't say on the printout precisely where the job was based, so for all the adviser knew, it could have been not far from my house anyway!

I reckon walking is a method of transport. (Job agents can be quite stupid)

When I was seven or so, I came home from school, and said to my mum, "I learnt a really rude word today. BOG!"

My mum said, "Yes, that isn't a very nice word, is it?"

Then I said, "And I know what it means too. It's when your car gets stuck in the mud and you can't get out!"

The same brother I talked about earlier who ate my spider also had some very interesting insults for people. One day he told my mum he would throw her "down the dunny can" because she did something that annoyed him.

The mind picture of a little 3 year old picking up a grown lady and throwing her in a can had me in hysterics!

My mother often complained that she'd taking me shopping and show me dozens of "beautiful dolls" but I had no interest in them.  When I got school age, the school had an order form with all sorts of really cool science toys. I went nuts begging my parents for the ant farm, the Visible Horse (you assembled the internal organs), gyroscopes and an electric motor you assembled yourself. After my parents gave me a microscope, I started bugging all their guests to let me take a sample of their blood for my slides.  

My father got in trouble as a little altar boy because he corrected the priest's Latin.

Mother was amused by my blunt statements at a baby shower.  Everyone was making a huge fuss over some baby being passed around. When they showed it to me I shrugged and said quite sincerely, “If you’ve seen one baby, you’ve seen 'em all.”  I watched silently while people went “oooh” and “ahhh” over a parade of cutesy gifts. At the end I observed, “Babies apparently require a large quantity of paraphernalia.”  They seemed to think that was terribly funny.

I've just remembered another funny thing which happened during my childhood.  Actually, it bewildered me for most of my childhood.

Every few weeks we used to go to the local fish and chip shop for our meal.  There was a sign on the wall near the counter saying: "Credit will only be given to people over 85 years of age - if accompanied by both parents."  Above the text was a cartoon-like picture of an elderly man flanked by his shrunken even-more-elderly parents!!

Every time we visited that fish and chip shop, I always used to be confused, as I took the sign literally.  Even though I was only young, I knew that for someone to live to 85 was in itself quite an achievement as the average life expectancy was about 70-something back then.  Then I would think to myself, "But surely even if someone did live to 85, it would be extremely unlikely that both their parents would still be alive.  If they were, they would both have to be well over 100.  And men usually die younger than women, so even if the mother was still alive, it would be very unlikely the father would still be here.  So how do they expect anyone to qualify for credit?"

I asked the other people in my family what the sign meant, but they didn't seem to know either.  It wasn't until I was older (ie in my teens) that I realised the sign must be a joke and should not be taken literally.  The owners of the shop probably thought it was a funny way to say that they're not willing to provide credit to anyone.

I don't think the sign is there any more though, as the shop was taken over by a new family several years ago.  However, it still makes me laugh to think that the sign confused me for all those years!!

Has anyone else ever seen a sign like that?

I had a gang of parents in my school wanting me to be locked away for being dangerous.

Nuff said :p

Another thing.

When I was in year 11, I was an awesome discusser' athletically speaking.

I was practicing the discus out on the field, and the only place I could throw was near the track which was about 30 meters away, the PE guy said it was reasonable as 'I would never throw that"

Anyway he starts sending people running around and I throw my discuss determined to prove him wrong and it lands right in front of people on the track, 31.7 meters from where I was standing.

When he came over and had a go at me about how I could have killed someone.

"I cant help it if I am better than you"

Yet another thing.

When I was about 3 years old, my playgroup/nursery organised a trip to one of the local parks for all the children and their parents.  At the park there was a big paddling pool (it was built into the ground, not one of those inflatable ones).  I was sitting with my Mum by the side of the pool, when all of a sudden 3 young boys dashed across the pool, completely naked!  I'd never seen a naked boy before, so I asked my Mum "Why have they all got little sticks near their bum bums?!"  My Mum was really embarrassed and I think a lot of the other mothers laughed too.

hehe. Before, after, or during the service?

Truthfully, I never had much interest in dolls as a kid either. Or flowers. Still don't.

I know I'm digging up a really old thread, but I've just remembered another funny story from when I was younger.  The memory of it was triggered by a weird dream I had this morning - I dreamt that there was a baby in our house and it was sitting on our sofa.  I have no idea who the baby was, but it reminded me of a funny true story from when I was 14 years old.

My sister and 2 nieces came round to our house one evening.  At the time, the younger niece was just a few months old, and the older one was 4 years old.  When I was younger, I had a strange phobia about calling people by their names, so I used to do anything to avoid it, including making up silly nicknames for people and using long-winded descriptions to describe the person I was talking about.

Anyway, when I was talking to my sister, I referred to my nieces as "the babies".  My sister told me off for that, and she said that I should refer to them by their real names, or even call them "the children/kids".  I replied that I called them "the babies" because it's easier than saying both of their names.  As I was still a child myself at the time, it would've felt strange calling them "the children".  Afterwards, I felt a bit silly and I didn't understand why my sister was making it into such a big deal.  

However, now I'm at the grand old age of 27, and I look back at this funny incident, I can definitely understand why my sister found it strange that I should refer to my 4 year old niece as a baby!  Looking back, I can see that calling a 4 year old a baby is really stretching the definition of the word "baby" to the limit! After all, she was old enough to be at primary school!