I have lots. I was cluelessly naughty. All of these here happened before the age of six, around 1985. Once upon a time I was a young child at church. As a child, perhaps you remember, we stand much closer to the ground and our vision has a lower focus than adults. This day, I was standing around while my parents talked (BORING) and a tiny green circle of plastic caught my eye. I picked it up and turned it all around in my hands. Finally, I bent it in half and it broke. It was useless to me then, so I threw the two pieces across the carpet and turned my attention elsewhere.
Suddenly, there was a cry out near me. "Oh! I've lost my contact!" I didn't know what a contact was, as my parents both wore glasses like normal 1-income people. I wanted to help though, as I was a kind child. "What is that? What does it look like?" You know what the answer was, of course. "It's a tiny green circle of plastic.... so expensive....I can't lose it.....I can't see out of that eye..." I felt like such a fraud, "helping with the search." Yeah, they didn't find it. This is the first time I've ever told anyone what happened, three decades later.
Another time, I was playing with my friend from down the street, Amy. Amy was a year older than me but we loved to play together. On this day, we decided we needed to do some art. Lord only knows where my parents were. My dad worked third shift and slept in the basement, but my mother's sewing room was down there as well, so either one could have been in charge, but they had to be down there or outside for this to occur.
My mother dabbled in art, and one of her supplies was a shelf full of tubs of powdered tempera paint. You just had to mix it with water and boom, presto, PAINT. ("Tempera paint is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigments mixed with a water-soluble bindermedium (usually a glutinous material such as egg yolk)" - Wikipedia).
Well, from what I recall and have been told, Amy and I mixed up several jars of paint and decorated the entire dining room table (standing on carpet), then left it in all its glory and went to Amy's. My parents still shudder, telling that story.
Another story that they shudder over and now I as a parent cringe at, is the time I sold flowers. Now, this was in the heart of Des Moines, Iowa. I lived on a street that was parallel to I-235, maybe 100-200 feet away. (Rollins for anyone needing precise maps)
Now there's a massive wall structure between the freeway and homes, but back then it was just a chain link fence. I was attending Hubbell Elementary for first grade (I skipped kindergarten so I was still very young), but it was across the freeway and we had to use an enclosed walking bridge and then cross a very busy street with a crossing guard to get there.
One weekend day, Amy and I got an entrepreneurial bug. We walked all over the neighborhood, picking flowers from yards, gardens, telephone poles with climbing vines, etc. Then we crossed the bridge and went door to door selling them, "for five or ten cents, whatever you want." We made a pocketful of change, then went to the nearest gas station.
The attendant helped us count out the money and we miraculously had enough for a soda and candy bar each (Bless you dude, you made our day). Amy and I carefully crossed the busy street on our own (who even needs crossing guards?) and went to the Hubbell playground to revel in our grownup behavior. And play, obvs.
After we were finally tired and bored, we walked home. As you can imagine parents might be after their six year old was missing for hours next to I-235 in Des Moines, mine were out of their minds with worry. For some reason I got spanked, grounded, and wasn't allowed to hang out with Amy for quite a while.
/mamajt/