I somehow managed to read all this in one sitting.
at the whole thread, particularly the human volcano... even more amazing that she lived!
I have a bunch of these stories...
1) According to my mom, when I was younger - before school age, about 4 or 5 - our cat had a phase where she would bring in all sorts of dead things, like mice and birds. The conversation was always the same:
Mom: EW! EW! EW! DEAD ANIMAL! DEAD ANIMAL!
Irk: Wow, cool! Can I have it?
Mom: No! Get a plastic bag, throw it away...
Irk: OK. *disposes of it without any reaction*
I still don't mind dead animals much... not that I'd want to keep them as pets anymore, but my reaction to "throw that away" would remain the same. Of course, that's pretty much the one standard gross thing that doesn't get me...
2) When I was in 5th grade, during break, the teacher would leave the room and trusted the students to not cause chaos. We were allowed to leave our chairs, stand around the room, etc.
Also, our desks didn't have chairs attached - instead, each day, everyone took a chair from the pile, carried it to their desk, and put it back at dismissal.
Yes, all of this is important.
5th grade was also the year I started my period. A few months after I had started it, it was break, and I was talking to a couple of friends. They had left their desks to come over to mine, but I was still in my own seat. Eventually, in the middle of the conversation, I notice a wet feeling... since I had just started it not too long before, I wasn't too sure about my cycle yet and wasn't wearing a pad. I excused myself to go to my bag to get a pad, a baggie, and some clean underwear - thank goodness my uniform had deep pockets and no one else was in the bag room! - went to the bathroom, and got myself cleaned up. Thankful there was no blood on my skirt, I went back to the classroom. I noticed there was a crowd of boys around my chair, jeering, while my two friends seemed to be yelling at them to go away. Wondering what was going on, I went back into the bag room, put my underwear in my bag, and went over to my desk to figure it out.
"Hey, look, it's Poopie Splee!"
"Irk pooped herself!"
This was before we had the talk, so these boys had no idea about periods, but they probably would have reached the conclusion they did anyway - they thought I pooped myself! My friends and I REALLY didn't want to say "no, she's on her period," since that wasn't much better, but... I spent the rest of that year as the girl who pooped on her chair. Every morning when it came to getting chairs, kids would fight to not get the one I had - it never cleaned up all the way, so you could still kind of tell. I know this seems like complaining about mean kids in school, but as embarrassing as it was then, now I actually think it's kinda funny.
3) My cousin and I were staying over at a friend's house. Cousin fell asleep on the top bed of Friend's bunk, while Friend and I had passed out in the living room watching TV. The next morning when we woke up, Friend's Dad was carrying up a basket of clean laundry - that had some of Friend's stuffed animals in it. Friend asked why her dad was washing them, and the story came out. Apparently, the night before, Cousin had called Friend's Dad into the room.
FD: Cousin? What's wrong?
C: I feel sort of sick-
YAK! Cousin projectile vomited, and the puke sailed over Friend's Dad's head and hit the opposite wall. Some of it had also dripped down onto her stuffed animals, hence the washing. That's got to be fun, scrubbing your daughter's wall of her friend's vomit at dark o'clock in the morning...
4) As an aside, I only feel qualified to tell this one because mom did laugh at it later. Mom and I sleep walk/sleep talk a LOT, but before this incident, neither of us had done anything drastic - it was normally just falling asleep in bed and waking up on the downstairs couch, or waking someone up to tell them all about fairies for a few minutes and then head back to sleep. However, one night, we were staying in a hotel. Mom had gone to bed early because we had just driven 12 hours and I was sitting up reading a book. Eventually she got up, came over to me, shook my shoulder, and told me she had to go to the bathroom. OK, fine. She's sleepwalking, that's why she's telling me this, I just nodded. She headed down the hall... but then I heard a sliding door, which the hotel bathroom didn't have.
Irk: MOM! THAT'S THE CLOSET!
I rushed over, flung the closet door open, and mom was sitting in the hamper peeing. It took a few shakes and some yelling of "MOM! THAT'S NOT THE BATHROOM!", but eventually she woke up, realized what she was doing, turned crimson, and FLED from the hotel room. I let her handle the wash the next day...
5) Anyone ever been tasked with dumping 6-month-old milk?
I have NO IDEA how it went unnoticed that long, but the second I took the cap off of that sucker... holy cow!
6) Along those lines, one day I was doing the dishes when I noticed a closed container filled with cottage cheese. Wait... didn't mom pack the rest of the cottage cheese to take to work for lunch a long time ago...? Apparently, she took it back home, put it in the fridge intending to eat it later, never did, and then put the bowl in the sink intending to dump and wash it later. I got to it first. Cottage cheese squicks me anyway - the texture of it just looks strangely unpleasant to me - but the smell and look of it after however long it had sat in that fridge...
She did start laughing at me over it until I made her come into the kitchen. She agreed that it smelled of death.
