askchapo

At age 13, sitting at the dinner table late one afternoon with my older sibling explaining socialism and subsuquently starting my journey to become a communist

Quite young, probably 7 or so. On a little gravel shore by a lake, my family were fishing, but I was too busy setting sticks as ladders up against a flat rockface, recreating the opening scene with the roman invasion of Astrix & Obelix in Britain

Crete, having walked way too far with my grandma, I was probably 9 or so, drinking out of an ice-filled bottle in probably 30C heat, getting ready to turn around and go back to the hotel

A specific angle from my first childhood bed, room only lit up by the glow of my lamp, I see my closet and a box of toys, probably one of my first core memories

Being 6, walking through the dimly lit gem vault at the natural history museum on a quiet day and wanting to curl up on the carpet and sleep in there

Shoplifting 3-packs of Bic lighters, then throwing them at a concrete barrier to make them explode. Broad daylight, alone.

This girl I met online when I was like 14. We were in the same forums and kinda developed crushes on each other. Eventually we both realized we'd probably never meet IRL, and we both had more feasible options in town. We opted instead to help each other land the ones we wanted. Which, in the end, wound up being just a case of picking each other's brains about how teenage boys and girls are.

I think she wound up dating her local crush for a bit. Mine turned out to be gay.

Mid September, 2001. I asked my dad if "everyone is sad about 9/11" includes the cows in the field. He looked at me and said yes, even the cows are sad.

Regularly played soccer in the parking lot with a few friends and one of their dads. The dad would play us 3v1 and say that if we won, he'd buy us each a pack of Pokemon cards. He let us win, but we didn't know. He offered us triple or nothing. We took the bet, and he hustled us and told us not to be greedy and press our luck.

I remember some kids stopped bullying me in third grade because they learned I could draw dinosaurs pretty well

Autumn of 1969, sending encrypted letters to the Chronicle.

Opening a new savings account after a family move (back then, people encouraged children to save their pocket money to teach the value of thrift)

I mentioned to the banker were I had had an account in the old city, and he told me that they were in a lot of trouble. It was part of the Savings and Loan fiasco of the late 1980s.

getting facts-and-logic'ed into admitting to myself that I was not straight by a like, very overbearing junior or senior, as a freshman in hs.

I just like, wouldn't hypothetically rule out dating my friend or something and I guess lack of visceral disgust was an immediate tell. She was kind enough to not blab about it. I asked if my friend felt the same way eventually, after much prodding from her. It was a no. I think I cried, which was very rare back then. And I told nobody

I am queer as fuck it turns out so ig she kinda nailed it. I often wonder what happened to her, we only really talked for like a few months freshman year but it was a very formative time.

I saw my mother naked at 7yo so I started crying and pretended to have fainted (because I saw that in a cartoon), then my grandpa told me I will see more naked women in the future while laughing

At an arcade for a friend's birthday, my dad told me and my friend that if anyone made fun of friend's brother's condition, we could beat the shit out of them and he wouldn't tell anyone.

I took a sip of my own piss because the doctor had me pee in a cup during an appointment. I had no concept of urinalysis and just assumed he was thirsty, leaving me with the question "well does it taste good?"

I think I was four at the time.

Renting video games and movies at the local version of Blockbuster, and then watching all those stores shut down as internet access became widespread. I still remember the store, crappy red carpet included. They even tried Blu Ray rentals, including a Blu Ray player or PS3 rental, as a last ditch effort to stay in business, but went bust anyways.

Also remember riding my bicycle up the steepest hill in history as a five year old. Went back to that hill as an adult decades later. It actually barely was a hill, I was just a weak and small five year old.

Me and my friends throwing a giant dildo on top of the roof my friends house, we never retrieved it

seeing my mom's used maxi pads in the trash and calling 911

I learned how to hawk loogies and one day at lunch, I did it on the jungle gym at lunch. Hit another kid right between the eyes. He looked so upset and I felt terrible

Same year, there was one boy who was bigger than the others and he liked tickling others. One boy was on the ground laughing so hard and I tried to pull him off because I hated being tickled. The bigger kid threw his hand back and hit me and I saw a flash of stars for the first time.

I did a cartwheel in class during a dance party and crashed into the corner where we piled the desks.

A kid accused me of stealing his pencil and got his friends to treat me like shit. His mom and my mom went to the same gym and they had logo pencils because Jazzercise was a thing. One of the kid would talk shit to me during silent reading time. But my mom taught me to curse after school and the next day I told him to shut the fuck up. Didn't get caught either. My only regret is that I didn't steal that pencil.

Earliest memory is of getting scared by a Garfield clock in my crib

I got sad when I was 4 because girls were made out sugar, spice, and everything nice and I really wanted to be made out of something nice

making an ant village out of sticks at my summer camp and genuinely being distraught when it collapsed after it rained

Throwing a deodorant can in a pile of burning leaves in middle school. It booms

as a child i went to pick up what i thought was a pinecone but was in fact a very big slug (it was dark out). i screamed and then my grandpa laughed at me. where i live now i only ever see tiny slugs sometimes.

had a similar situation with what i thought was a rubber snake toy. i scared the poor snake so bad picking it up so quickly. I can't blame this one on it being dark out as it was in broad daylight

Driving over a big bridge and my sister opened the car door

being eight-ish years old, bouncing on my parents bed while eating marshmallows. I decided to start throwing marshmallows into the light fixture while It was on, of course. My mom found me on the bed, halfway through my jump shot and just about beat the brakes off my ass, with her flip flop. Afterwards I had to help remove the fixture, clean the caramelized sugar off of it, and then reinstall it. The whole time, tears just running like a river.

One time I was at my great grandmothers house visiting family I had never met (I was five or six). My great grandma lived out in the boonies in north Mississippi with no electricity, no running water, outhouse on the edge of the property that moved locations once its current spot had no more room. She had a cuckoo clock in the hallway and I was afraid of it. I remember sneaking down the hallway where it was, and when it went off I screamed and started crying. I remember telling my mom that her Uncle Erskin and her Uncle Claud both beat me. I remember her uncle Claude calling me a derogatory term from the late 1800s, used to demean black men particularly. It took me 30 years to remember the term correctly, and then look it up to see wtf it was. Fuck you Claud. Greatest Generation my ass.

I remember not being able to convince my mom to let me have ice cream for dinner so I held my breath till I nearly lost consciousness, fell down and cracked the back of my skull hard enough that I got mildly concussed and had to get a half dozen stitches on my head to fix it. I don’t remember how old I was then, but I’m 46 now and I can still feel the scar on the back of my head.

my dad (trying to advocate for me) having a 4-hour long conversation with a teacher about my accommodations that played out like when a chatbot gets caught in a dead-end and refuses to iterate

some fuckass game on the ps2 that was not spyro (nor ape escape as I vividly remember playing that) that was a collectathon (I genuinely can't remember any further even though I've scoured through my dads old stuff)

When we were little, my neighbor was sticking peanuts up his nose, throwing his head back and then blowing them out like a rocket. Watched my brother imitate him, but he shoved the peanut WAY too far up and he had to go to the doctor to get it removed.

My parents still blame me decades later because I didn't stop him. I maintain my innocence.

fishing a big teal rock out of a tree in the schoolyard (someone elses yard that intersected into it) and thinking it was aquamarine so we broke it into pieces between us three. the one guy in the mix got too cocky and tried to threaten us to call the cops which would make us give him our rocks (he thought he deserved them) but we just stopped talking to him. still have the rock.