I saw this meme somewhere during my whirlwind tour of NaBloPoMo blogs, and I can't remember where. So if you are the originator of the meme, I am sorry that I did not link to you.
Anyway, here are the ten most disappointing moments of my childhood:
1. Getting my period. No, seriously. That and realizing you have to wear a bra. Because I'm sure that I understood that these things meant that you weren't really a child, and anyway, they were a pain in the ass to deal with from the very start.
2. I'm not mean, I swear, but number two has to be the news of my brother's impending residency on this planet. I was seven or eight, and I don't remember much about it except crying, lots and lots of crying. I can't specifically remember why I didn't want another baby in the family except that I just didn't think it seemed like a great idea. It might have had something to do with the loss of the playroom, but I also can't be certain about that.
3. When I started CCD at the local Catholic Church and became convinced I was going to hell. That really sucked a lot. I thought that because the catechism teaches kids (or it did when I was little, anyway) that not going to church every week is a mortal sin. My family didn't even go to church on holidays, okay? We were going to be roasting the minute our little souls departed this world. I was terrified, and I'm not sure I'm remembering correctly, but I'm thinking I made some sort of effort to get my family to go to church every week, because I really didn't relish the idea of hell.
4. When the cat went ballistic on me. I think it was mostly disappointing to me as a five-year-old because I had to get a shot. In the ass. I don't remember being very fond of that. And of course, Smokey went away then and never came back. Oddly enough, I don't remember feeling sad about that, and I don't remember being in pain at all. The whole thing is sort of bewildering to me now, because I really only remember hating the shot. Of all the things to hate about the incident, it was the shot.
5. The abrupt cessation of my best-friendship with EH. I don't know when it happened (fifth grade? fourth?) and I still don't precisely know why it happened. I know that her dad used to be best friends with mine, then they weren't, and then we weren't. As an adult, I know the basic causes of the rupture between the two men, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why I stopped seeing EH, even as an adult. (I did briefly renew that friendship, after she sent me a letter, but then her second letter tried to "save" me through Jesus Christ, and that was the end of that. I was already dealing with that whole problem daily in high school, and I didn't need to deal with it in person and by correspondence. That's another story though.)
6. Dropping the pizza on the Super Bowl banner. In 1985, when the Bears went to the Super Bowl, my mom and dad had a party. I was in charge of coloring the banner (well, Kate and I were), and somewhere along the way, I dropped a greasy piece of pizza, cheese-side down, onto the banner. Boy oh boy, did that bother me.
7. When Katie's balloon popped. We may have been over this before, so here's the short-hand: Vacation Bible school. Balloon animals. Baby-sitter. Her balloon pops. Mano sad. I just felt so sad, so unbelievably sad that I had something that Kate didn't. Kate couldn't show the balloon to mom and dad when they came back from wherever they were, and I wanted to make it all better for her. Incidentally, this is a story I tell all the time, and in some small way, it must still represent how I feel about Kate. This is also the story I plan to tell as her maid of honor, if she has me. (Right about now, Kate is rolling her eyes.)
Seriously, I can't think of any more. I don't know if I just have a bad memory, or if my childhood was so happy that I was never disappointed, or what. I can think of forty million things that have been disappointing in adulthood. But no more childhood disappointments. I can think of something that should have been disappointing, but somehow wasn't, and that was the great cake debacle. My sister climbed onto a chair and started eating frosting off of the amazing 3-D CareBear cake my mom had made. I'm sure you've all heard this story too. But I don't remember being upset, I just remember my mom being upset. No one died when I was a kid, no one had major surgery or got majorly hurt, my family was intact, I don't remember feeling let down by the elimination of Santa, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy (after all, we kept that charade alive for a long time after I knew because of my little brother), and I just don't remember feeling all that let down. About anything.
Maybe I've blocked the bad memories. Maybe I'm looking at things through rose-colored glasses. Kate, you got anything?
Ugh. The whole getting-the-period thing was the *worst*! I remember how adults used to go on and on about how special it was and how it was a wonderful turning point in life - HA! More like a gigantic pain in the (messy, nasty) ass.
Posted by: comebacknikki | November 08, 2006 at 07:19 PM