Weird stuff you did as a child

I did that in college English class. We had to keep a journal and write at least two one-page entries a week in it. One entry came up a little short, so I used that Calvin and Hobbes line as filler. The teacher loved it.

When I was seven, I melted a Barbie's hair with a lightbulb and ended up almost setting her on fire. I said that she got too close to Venus.

• When I was in fourth grade, this weird hole in the ground opened up just a ways off from the playground, and I was scared of it for some reason. So, I started a myth; there was a giant, stone-eating snake who lived down there who would grant good luck to whoever fed it rocks. And everyone actually believed it... I really wanted that hole filled up, okay?! It was creepy!
• On my fifth birthday, I vowed to myself to commit suicide the moment I turned thirteen because Teens Are Monsters. Things got a bit awkward when I remembered saying that when I actually did turn thirteen...
• When I was six or so, I kept telling everyone, "Hey, I'm a compassionate insect!", thinking it was some kind of apology.
• I had a large number of imaginary friends, enough to make a whole city that I pretended my bed was an elevator to, until I was fourteen. I... kind of miss doing that, but I just plain lost the ability.

edited 8th Mar '14 3:05:18 PM by BaffleBlend

I used to write letters to fictional characters and leave them on my bed. I did this as late as age 12. Surprisingly, they were always answered...

@Baffle: Damn, that snake thing could be a legitimate ancient myth.

I went up stairs on all-fours until I was almost nine years old. I talked to myself a lot, and smeared make-up all over the faces of my My Little Ponies.

Here's one that my sister did.

She was adopted and raised in a single parent household, so she never knew who her real dad was. But somehow around the time she turned five, she had decided that Randy Travis was her dad. And that he drove a yellow car called the Ocabador. So every time we passed by a yellow car on the road, she would get excited and say that it was her dad, Randy Travis, in the Ocabador car.

Back during my elementary school days, I used to feed a rabbit some trix cereal.

Stick sticks into trees with open cuts just to see the sap ooze out.

Then watch the sap as it inevitable swallows a few ants and beetles along the way.

I was a messed up kid.

Interesting. Did you have any bouts of severe illness as a child? Were you at all given to spending long periods alone?

Oh, look who thinks he's high and mighty.

No.

If he thought that, Jones would just insult him.

I'm curious because the whole 'vertical transport to a different place full of interesting new people' thing is a recurring theme in a lot of cultures, particularly those who practice what we 'civilised' sorts refer to as shamanism.

People who end up being into that sort of stuff in later life tend to have been quiet children with a history of health problems.

I certainly was.

True. I don't mince my words.

edited 18th Mar '14 6:52:12 AM by InverurieJones

...
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...I already reported the post to the mods... o_o
I'm sorry, I thought you were trying to call me retarded without outright saying it. It really sounded like that. I sent another holler telling them to disregard the report and apologizing for wasting their time.

Well, anyway, I was and still am kind of a recluse, yes, but I wasn't sick for long periods of time. I have a permanent headache and joint pain now, but that's a relatively recent thing.

edited 18th Mar '14 6:56:15 AM by BaffleBlend

Nah, if I were trying to call you retarded I'd just say 'Oi, retard!'. I'm kind of straightforward like that.

I can be sarcastic sometimes but when I am, you'll notice it.

Anywho, childhood imaginary friends and such are a subject I'm quite interested in, particularly the more outlandish ones. I wonder if they are always simply imaginary or if the more...real ones may be a sign of some kind of talent in the child?

edited 18th Mar '14 6:59:14 AM by InverurieJones

I was always horrible at coming up with original physical designs for them. They were always the pokémon or neopets I was raising at the time. But they did feel like they were taking on lives of their own. They all had different habits, personalities, viewpoints...

It's that kind of imagination I wish I still had because I'm trying to write novels right now.

edited 18th Mar '14 7:07:04 AM by BaffleBlend

I remember being very depressed/paranoid about the Sun eventually destroying Earth… in 5.4 billion years.

Yeah, I got that, too. Just the idea that all the birds and trees and even the sky would all be gone one day, no matter how distant in time, was a horrible shock.

I used to write to "the fairies" when I was a kid. My whole family encouraged it. I would leave the letters in the garden and one of my parents would leave a reply for me to find the next morning. I don't remember how long we kept that up but I did believe in fairies quite strongly for many years.

I also used to pull out my eyelashes.

I still am scared about that, along with the eventual Heat Death of the Universe (which is so far-off that it has to be written in scientific notation). Not so much that I'm scared of it happening, but the concept of... When that happens, no matter how far we've advanced, all life that ever existed won't even have a trace left on the subatomic level. Nothing will ever have mattered.

My fear of that's a pretty significant reason why I'm religious - If Heaven exists, it's in another parallel, safe from supernovas and proton decay/energy saturation, and I want to have mattered to someone after humanity's gone.

I'm sure the Netjeru will pull something out of the hat and the Enemy will never get its way.

My feeling is that by that point, we'll have figured out how to MAKE universes. The heat death of the universe will cease to be an emergency then as we'll be able to escape to other universes, if not prevent the death of our own.

Of course, there will be an alternate universe in which none of that happened.

Isn't string theory wonderful

Yes.

Except in the universe where it isn't.

Say, didn't Isaac Asimov write a story about that? Scientists made a supercomputer that they hoped would figure out a way to prevent the heat death of the Universe. And then the machine turns into God.