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13 December 2007
Kid behaviors you still do:→[More:]Mine -
1. Take stairs two at a time when in a good mood.
2. Leaf-shuffle.
3. When walking on frozen puddles, looking for the frozen air pockets and crunching them
4. Swinging feet when sitting on a high-up surface
1. Touch walls, furniture, any exposed surfaces while I'm standing around and waiting (for an elevator, in line, etc.).
2. Make up silly sound effects for things going on around me.
3. Create conversations for imaginary characters and say them out loud (when I'm alone, of course).
4. Act very stupid in front of my cat.
1. I hop off/on to curbs every day.
2. I also jump up and down when excited. Even if I'm by myself.
3. I clap when I'm excited too.
4. I talk and sing to myself.
5. I still watch cartoons (And not just adult swim stuff. I love The Adventures of Billy and Mandy, as much as you can believe a cartoon about the Grim Reaper is a kids show.)
6. I still have to pet every cat or dog in the neighborhood. I know more pet names in the neighborhood than people names. (I know people by sight but not by their names.)
7. If I'm in a chair that swivels - I have to spin around in it. I HAVE TO.
8. I still get excited by knowing I'm allowed to check out bunches of books at the library.
9. If I'm in a music store I still have to tap out non-sense on pianos.
10. I still bounce on mattresses in stores...as well as try out all the recliners. This bugs the shit out of store clerks. Because if I'm in a furniture store I'm generally there for legitimate reasons and they can't really tell the 34 year-old to stop the silly behavior.
11. Silly behavior is one of my favorite things and I encourage it.
If I have a piece of cake (which is rare anymore but it happens occasionally) I will eat only the cake first and save all the frosting until the end. All of the cake needs to be gone before I can have ANY frosting.
1. Throw tantrums (still adorable)
2. Juice time!
3. Make "eye-game" with dots on windshield
4. Fidget with area
5. Porn in woods
6. Explode Smurfs (on ocassion)
7. Make fun of girls (cuz they're so dumb)
1. tie my hair in knots with one hand. either one, I'm ambi-knot capable.
2. think / walk / talk millions of miles a second when I'm excited.
3. avoid formality like the plague.
4. make things. once I sewed a deck of cards together to be able to do that card sharky looking entire deck between your hands thing. I still have it.
5. look at stuff to figure out how it's made. I chopped open a paint ball once on a friend's kitchen table to see if I could find a seam.
6. watch MASH, I Dream of Jeannie and Gilligan's Island.
7. I do the pine cone, acorn and dry leaf crunching too, msali.
But I've partially tamed this old habit. When I was 7, I shot 'em all over. And so I was always on the look out for fresh ones.
Now, I have 2 plastic buckets. One sits in the corner, 5 feet from my desk, and that location is the "target." The other sits on the left side of my credenza, in easy reach of my "gun" hand, so that I can kick back, when I'm on the phone, and mindlessly load and shoot. When the bucket in the corner is full, and the bucket on my desk is nearly empty, I switch 'em.
hellbient, you really need to be careful. i'm starting to feel like you're trying to turn mecha into a boyzone. and it's just not cool, this thing about "girls" being dumb. first of all, we're womyn. second of all, many of us are quite brilliant, at least if i count myself, and we do not take kindly to have our intelligence or our genders insulted.
i know, i know, take it to MeChaTa. but whatevs, man. i'm doing this callout IN THE THREAD, because i just cannot take any more of this sexist behavior.
Last night at the family Christmas party, someone got a bag of rubber bands for their white elephant gift. It was immediately ripped open and 17 people started shooting rubber bands at each other. Then younger brother assumed the patriarchal position and told us to stop. So everyone shot him until he retreated.
--
I was just comparing shop vacs prior to ordering one for Christmas for the family. It is good to read this thread.
Note to younger self: one day you will take that $100 from grandma and buy a shop vac for Christmas. A little part of you will die that day.
w/r/t rubber bands: I knew the world had completed its handbasket journey when I saw a Klutz kit for sale in the store, something like $12.95, which was the "Giant Rubber Band Ball Kit!" It came complete with rubber bands, and a book about rubber band balls.
- Feed ducks
- Color in coloring books
- Make things talk. I'm a freaking genius at this. LOLcats got nothin on me.
- Doodle
- Wear a blanket around the house
Everything, pretty much. I feel that I have only added to my kid behaviors with chronological adulthood, not taken anything away. Although I can stand in front of a room of people and talk without standing on one leg now. Barely.
You can buy rubber band balls at Office Depot for like $2 and they make awesome stocking stuffers. My kids get them every year and we have rubber band wars well into January.
The first snowfall of winter makes me jump up and down.
I climb stuff.
I still want to lick the bowl.
I get really excited when someone opens a present I made.
and the classics:
- snowball fights
- trampolines
- leaf piles
- sandcastles
- s'mores
When times are bad, I sleep like a child. When my father was dying, I started leaving on a light while I slept. And one night I awoke curled up, head under the covers to hide me from the monsters, my thumb planted tightly in my mouth. It was like being five again.
It is really hard for me to sit anyway but cross-legged (called Indian-style when I was a kid).
FYI, it turns out that sitting cross-legged is considered uncool at formal dinners, client meetings, etc.
I still sleep with my head wrapped in a blanket, which other people find a little weird. I use my blankie when I'm at home, and a FinnAir airplane blanket when travelling. (I enthusiastically endorse FinnAir's and SAS's airplane blankets for this purpose.)
Heh. Me, too. I've taken to walking around behind Little Izzy saying "What's up, Li'l Punkin!!!!" in a high, cartoony voice. She doesn't find it nearly as funny as I do.
I have a woobie that I need in order to sleep (very soft, old t-shirt). I do the leaf-crunchy thing. I growl, whuffle, act totally obnoxious and wrassley with my friends. I play with my bath toys. I play with my food. I read kids' picture books aloud to myself.
And I'm sure there are many things that I'm not aware of...
- take stuff apart and put it back together. Uh, usually.
- get really excited --- hand-waving and breathless --- when talking about SCIENCE!
- want to know why stuff works the way it works, and mistrust grown-ups who pretend to know everything or tell me "you wouldn't understand."
- get really really hungry right now. during the school year, I carry a granola bar or a piece of fruit leather in my backpack to avert melt-downs, just like mothers carry packets of Cheerios for toddlers.
- cut my pasghetti (fixed that for you dano)
- walk on curbs
- crunch leaves
- make faces
- do silly things with the cats/dog (sing, talk, make faces, chase down the hall, etc.)
- eat the cake part before the frosting
- play with the rubber duckies in the tub when I take a bath
- check out the toy section of any store I'm in
I let my fingers/hand bounce off a fence (chain link is best) as I walk past. I also sometimes stick my hand out the window when on long boring car rides and then complain that someone's stuff is TOUCHING MY SIDE!
It's very hard not to collect all the perfect acorns that I run across. This seems to be genetic. My 5 year old niece has amassed a nice collection, completely independent of my influence. (yeah, baby!)
Oh man, the collecting thing is so ingrained in me I didn't think to mention it. I'm forever picking up pretty pebbles, feathers, seed pods... My house is filled with birds' nests, driftwood, rocks.
If I have a piece of cake (which is rare anymore but it happens occasionally) I will eat only the cake first and save all the frosting until the end. All of the cake needs to be gone before I can have ANY frosting.
Well, duh - doesn't everybody do that? No? Oh, OK, just us then, huh?
I rip the labels off of bottles and jars that are on the table during meals.
I don't do it during meals, but I do it when drinking. I Just. Can't Help. It.
You know how people are always quoting Desiderata as a recipe for a successful life? I don't really have a problem with any of it except that whole "surrendering gracefully the things of youth" or whatever it says part. Keeping as many as possible of the things of youth is what stops us turning into old fuddy-duddys.
I let my fingers/hand bounce off a fence (chain link is best) as I walk past.
Oh that is the BEST.
wait... you mean that's a "kid" behaviour? man, I've done that forEVER. I thought it just helped one think whilst walking. Sometimes I'll use a stick for added clatter factor.
Sometimes I do this on my bike, but my usual MO on the bike is reaching up to grab leaves off overhanging branches to fling/scatter them at my ride companions or stick them in their cables.
the whole bike thing... hey aren't bikes considered kid's toys in the U.S. anyhow? If I had to sit here and enumerate all the daily potential I have for dirt, blood, scars, speed, glee and danger, we'd be here till next year.
I also have managed to retain my affinity for any available opportunity to engage in activities involving Nerf darts, Lazer Tag, paintball guns, rubber bands, paper wads/airplanes, you get the idea.
My love of all things explosive, reactive, flammable, ballistic and generally chaotic has only been exacerbated by working around a bunch of chemists. The guys made Mentos bombs in the wayback parking lot last Wednesday... o and don't even get me started about dry ice and spud guns.
Basically if I could wear out the three college students I used to live with, I'd consider it a good day.
I'm almost recalcitrant to comment here, because everyone who knows me well, knows I:
- skip and jump a lot
- make up silly rhymes/games/voices/stories/songs (remember Story Time on IRC? I sure do!)
- talk to inanimate objects/pets/Christmas trees
- talk to myself with my head down walking down the street
- want to wear ridiculous clothes to any occasion
- walk on curbs like on a ship at sea
- make up nicknames for everyone who's a friend
- come up with ludicrous theories to explain things
- come up with ludicrous scenarios that would never happen (i.e. what would you do if I were an elf?)
- when asked to break down boxes, I will build a fort instead (this happened once in an office I used to work in, in a hallway:
CO-WORKER "Hey Steve - what are you doing?"
STEVE: "Building a fort!" *bright smile*
CO-WORKER "un hunh."
- have this said to me constantly: "Focus Steve, focus."
photo by splunge
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photo by Kronos_to_Earth
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