Random childhood memories

Chapter 1 of “The Cool Jacket Journals” published this fall by Knopf.

I am what I am

[quote]He was desperate and he just wanted my coat.

That's only after he looked at your ugly sneakers.

Was it a Members Only jacket?

That’s what desperate men do when they see angora.

I was expecting a sex/rape story …

I am 71 years old and when I had just turned 3 my bother and sister had taught me how to swim, without telling my mother. Our next door neighbors had a big in ground pool and I remember the day my siblings and I were visiting my 3 year old self was standing on the diving board preparing to sail off into the deep end. Just as I ran down the diving board my mother walked through the gate to tell us to come home and she saw me on the board. She screamed bloody murder as I flew off the board into the water and swam to the side of the pool and grabbed onto the side as my sister pulled me out of the water. The life left my mother's body that day for a few moments. But my siblings finally told her they had taught me how to swim so I wouldn't ever drown if I fell in a pool when no one was around.

To summarize, he said, "Show me that pecker" and a friendship was forged?

I learned how to kick when I was 8 yrs old. I mean KICK!

Was it lynx, OP?

Stroller length ?

Shitting in the cafeteria?

That's a random memory, OP?

Ann Miller posting at R9

OP I take it you did not go to a parochial School.

I remember the fire alarm in Catholic School being a steady buzzing alarm. We had 5 minutes to exit the building. The nuns were screaming " remember the Lost souls in Chicago" referring to the Lady of Angels fire that happened at least 10 years ago from then. Our school was modern built on an open concept with external hallways, multiple exits and single level nothing like the fire trap the Lady of Angels School was. One of the many inconsistencies I noted starting at age 7 attending Catholic School.

Ann miller is r12

I walked in on my uncle doing the conga dressed up like Kay Thompson. Pretty ugly dress.

Good for you OP!

You held your power and spoke your truth. But next time, there's a better hill to almost die on - just and over your pink Disney Princess jacket with the rhinestones around the collar. You could've bought another one at WalMart.

R7. Why was your mother trespassing on your neighbor's property.

When I was in the first grade, one day one of the school's secretaries came to the class and asked to speak to the teacher outside. When she returned, her face was ashen and she was clearly upset. She told the class to line up and we were going to the multi-purpose room IMMEDIATELY and scared the hell out of all of us. I was second or third in our two-line procession down the hall, and for some reason I said "It's a bomb!" because there had been bomb threats to other schools — it was on the news — and the teacher just screeched to a halt, turned around and leaned over into my face screaming "Where did you hear that? Who told you?" and I said I made it up. She turned around and hurriedly lead the class toward the room, but as soon as we arrived and seated, she grabbed me by my shirt and said we're going to see the principal.

It didn't turn out well. There had been a bomb threat to the school, and they thought I knew who it was because a 6 year old wasn't capable of putting two and two together, apparently. I kept telling them I saw the stories on the news and thought this was the same thing. They didn't believe me, of course. Parents were called, father had a shit fit, and I learned to keep my mouth shut.

[quote] Why was your mother trespassing on your neighbor's property.

Trespassing? Have you never had neighbors who were close personal friends? In 1956 people didn't even lock their doors when they went away overnight.

R22. No. I was born in mid 1980s. Don't even know my neighbors names.

Fingering myself under the table

A trash bully chick had it in for me in the 5th grade. She had a bleached perm at that age poor thing, and wore flat hard soled pumps. She chased me around the playground and I just knew she was going to slide and fall in those things and I would be afraid to laugh. It happened. Later she tried to get me to walk up the school stairs in front of her. “I won’t do anything” she said. I’d had it. I turned and walked right into the principals office and told on her. My teacher said “Joyce won’t be bothering you any more.” Of course I’ve never met anyone nice with the name Joyce.

I was called to stand up in class for some reason and I happened to have a hardon at the time.

Something about a bowl of pineapple and a mother whose youth and beauty flashed before her eyes. Also, something about stealing her man and me being a pint-sized prostitute??????

I was jail bait

As a toddler at the beach being overwhelmed by a wave as my parents held onto each hand. I remember them laughing at me drowning!

Did he make you perform a degrading dance, or display your puny cocklet?

My cousin was very hot. He was 2 yrs older than me. Once we were working in my uncle's shed and using rubber cement. He said "Haha, this looks like jizz." I was 15 and did not know what jizz was, so I asked. He laughed and said he'd show me, so he jerked one out while I watched. It was so hot.

In 6th grade I accidentally opened a neighbor's quail cage and all the quail flew away.

I drew circles all over my grandmother's bras when I was about 4.

[Quote] He got up, called me a fucking bitch

Well, to be fair, you are a fucking bitch

We were standing in line for ice cream at the St. Louis zoo. My grandma stepped on a stray ketchup packet which squirted all over some queen's white shorts. He screeched "I'll never wait in line for ice cream again!."

After Christmas vacation my 2nd grade teacher asked everyone in class to tell what they did for the holidays. I lied and said I went to (far off) Pennsylvania, mainly because I thought it was a beautiful name and, therefore, probably a beautiful place to visit. A couple weeks later my mom told me, "Mrs. Lane asked me if I enjoyed our trip to Pennsylvania." I was really pissed off that they had somehow figured out that I had lied, but I didn't really take the "no one likes a fibber" lesson to heart. Years later, when I saw "Ordinary People," I felt that my fantasy of a folksy Pennsylvania Christmas was at least the equal of Beth's dream of a Dickensian Christmas in London.

I remember mamma

Was it a rescue jacket?

A couple weeks later my mom told me, "Mrs. Lane asked me if I enjoyed our trip to Pennsylvania."

Is there no schoolroom confidentiality?

When we went barefoot at school and someone said of my feet - It's the missing link!

I have a lot of class. Always have. Even as a tot I was well aware of what constitutes good taste. Gifted. That’s what I call it.

Walter, the boy across the street, would take me behind the garage. He taught me a game where we'd take our dicks out and rub them together while chanting, "Wieners necking! Weiners necking!"

New Jersey in the mid-60s was strange.

Walter is a creepy name

I was a good Catholic boy with a prized mini statue of Mary that was phosphorescent. I swapped it for a look at my neighbors penis. I think he got the better deal.

Two children in my neighborhood got run over by a street cleaner. I don't know why they didn't just move out of the way.

The popcorn man lied

OP, did he make you perform humiliating songs and degrading dances? Did he sneer at your puny cocklet?

R47 = R30

We had an earthquake in the early hours of the morning and I thought it was my older brother moving my bed back and forward.

R43, you think his name is what’s creepy in that story?

Mini Bazooka Joe comic inside individually wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubble gum.

Going to a public pool during summer, being in a men's locker room for the first time. It was crowded with lots of naked men. I saw the penis of an adult man that grossed me out. I thought it was deformed!

I later learned it wasn't deformed, just uncircumcised.

I was an altar boy and got to serve at a funeral where I turned my red mini-cape around to show the black underside.

During the Sylmar quake I yelled out for my brother, decades later I still called out for him if awakened in the middle of the night by a quake...my husband finds it amusing, I'm not even close to my brother.

r54 were you ever bed partners?

My grandmother walking very carefully with one hand on the railing and one on my seven year old shoulder for fear of slipping and falling on the blindingly slick polished floors of the Venezuelan Army’s HQ outside Caracas circa 1959. Not wearing heels, I didn’t understand the danger.

r55, bunk beds, I was around 9, brother 12.

I had a friend over and we hid in a dark cupboard together. I reached over and felt he had brought some marbles for us to play with then realized I was cupping his balls.

r58, How old were you? 15 or 16?

[quote] I thought it was deformed!

R52 I had a similar experience, but I thought the tip had collapsed into the penis!

These days, I think WE’RE considered to be the deformed ones!

I helped my father get water samples from nearby creeks. I don't know why he wanted them.

The nuns had an afternoon tea for pupils and we had to bring cake. I brought my favorites but wouldn't give them up.

I don't think they make them anymore, but in the 1960s children could buy little assorted Valentines Day cards that sort of punched out of bigger sheets so you'd have enough to give all your classmates. I begged my mom to buy me some, and I laboriously filled them out with the names of all my classmates. On Valentine's Day things must have gotten hectic around my house in the morning, and I forgot my cards. When the time came to exchange cards and i realized that I had forgotten them, i just sobbed inconsolably. I'm not sure, but I think the teacher might have even had the principal call my mom. I was probably in 3rd grade.

I was minding my business, playing with my Smurf figurines when this big monstrous retarded neighbor came towards me on his bike saying he was going to eat me and my Smurfs. Heart pounding I went shrieking down the street.

Not childhood memories more early teen memories but I hung out with a bunch of "Cheap awful girls" The one I always called the Queen Bee her mother would invite her girlfriends and me to decorate Christmas cookies, Puppy Chow, etc, Listen to Christmas music, the apt was old right out of 1940. It was nice and cozy. Being a bunch of giggly cunts one of them took a pic of me holding her New kids on the block Danny Doll. A few years later they teamed up against me and took the pic and put red around my lips and gave me blue eyeshadow, wrote Transvestite all over it and put it in an envelope and dropped it off in my mailbox. I was terrified! Terrified that's how my mom and Alzheimers riddled grandmother would find out I was gay.

r63 you poor thing. I can just imagine being a child and having that happen to me.

I used to hide under the house with my dog.

My bedroom had a skylight rather than a normal window. When I left it open spiders crawled in.

R67 Lucky you.

Swinging on a tree vine in the forest behind my childhood home like a young, gay Tarzan. My Purple Rain soundtrack cassette blaring loudly from my Panasonic boombox. My friends yelling at me to hurry up so they could have their turn to swing on the vine. As I recall, all of this happened during this time of year exactly 40 years ago.

[Quote]playing with my Smurf figurines when this big monstrous retarded neighbor came towards me on his bike saying he was going to eat me and my Smurfs

r64 perhaps he was role playing Gargamel?

Your brother was a real tough one, OP.

Didn't your mom hear all this from the kitchen?

playing in a muddied storm drain in my new white shorts. My mother was horrified.

r1 How lucky you were to have such caring siblings. Your poor mother lost 1/4 of her life that day.

My fat aunt farting.

The time I set my hair with my mother's curlers.

My parents were divorced before my first birthday. My dad worked at many different faraway job sites but my Mom made sure I visited him when I could. Those handoffs would grow increasingly tense throughout my childhood so that when I was about 7 or 8, they would send me between the two of them on my own so they would have NO interaction (think, a kid being sent out a restaurant to the waiting parent's car).

When I was 9 my mom took me to the airport to put me on a plane to visit my Dad. I had flown solo many times before, but this trip was going to be the longest, farthest away and for the greatest length of time. After I checked in and checked my bags, my Mom went to the payphone with a purseful of quarters to make the long-distance call to update my Dad on the flight info and ETA. Sometime during that call he said something stupid, my Mom reacted stupidly and he hung up on her.

"You wait here! I have to go get some more quarters!" my Mom told me. She came back, fed the payphone, my Dad picked up the phone and she hung up on him.

insisting on only using Farah Fawcett Shampoo by Faberge when I was six years old. My mom ordered it for me by the case.

We had a turtle who scraped its shell repeatedly trying to get under a wooden gate that was too low for him.