Regale with tales from adolescence

When I has 8, my aunt had a beautiful wedding, and I was the flower girl. After making it through scattering rose petals down the aisle and standing through what seemed like eternity in the reception, the entire wedding party moved to the ballroom for dinner/drinks. I felt really important because I didn't have to sit with the other kids, sitting instead at the very front at a table with bridesmaids and the wedding singer. I remember feeling super fancy, and reaching to take a huge gulp of ginger ale from an equally fancy looking glass, and being appalled at how gross this soda was. I then did a spit-take, spraying champagne all over the wedding singer in front of 200+ guests. My aunt flipped bridezilla style, my dad cracked up, and the wedding singer sang a very emotional rendition of "Tonight" from West Side Story, albeit damp and boozy.

My dad uses that to tease my aunt, and to tell me how karma insures some disaster at my own wedding.

 

There are so, so many.

My cousin's favorite story to tell is one from when we were 5 years old. We were taking a bath and through some series of events, something really funny happened and we both started cracking up--the kind of laughter that won't stop, and when you think it might, you get that feeling in your gut and you start laughing harder than before.

After this went on for a couple minutes, it apparently had an effect on my internals and I started farting in sync with my hard belly laughing. This caused him to laugh even harder, which caused me to laugh even harder...

...Until I shot about half a gallon of shit like a shotgun blast onto the tile of the tub--three and a half feet up the wall.

My cousin flung himself out of the tub, still laughing, and I continued to projectile shit everywhere, without control, for about 30 seconds--laughing the entire time. As the laughter finally subsided, my mom came in to see what the hell was so funny only to find that her bathroom had been destroyed.

This story, among many others, is often told at every major family gathering, and I'm sure will be retold with the aid of a microphone at my wedding, and perhaps included in my eventual obituary.

 

My favorite one was from 1989 or 1990, when I was 10-11. In the back yard my mother had a garden in which hollyhocks grew. If you're not familiar with this plant they have rigid stems and grow to about four feet high (at least as I remember them), and to an 11 year old kid both A) are the perfect height on which to practice one's swordsmanship skills, and B) look kind of like a weed. So, this knowledge in hand I decided that my mother wasn't planting that garden that particular year and thus was perfectly acceptable to play ninja warrior and chop them down with a wooden sign post.

Well, when my swath of destruction was almost complete and I had eliminated nearly all of the warriors of the foul hollyhock clan my father came out of the house and saw me there. The look on his face was forever seared upon my brain, as I had never seen that particular look before or since. It was a look that said, "If I don't get my son out of that garden and into the house before my wife comes out and sees him I'm going to lose my son." Unfortunately him yelling, "What the hell are you doing?!?!" was enough to get my mom's attention and she came out to see what the commotion was, and saw me standing there, in her garden, along with the hollyhocks I had destroyed. She screamed at me to "Get the fuck upstairs!", which was also new to me because she had never sworn at me before. Meekly I went up to my room and just sat on the middle of the floor as my brain numbly tried to process my mother's fury.

A few minutes later she opened the door, angrier than I had ever seen her in my entire life. She just stood in the doorway and started screaming at me, "What the fuck is wrong with you!?!? How would you like it if I broke your things?!?!" at which point she grabbed the model F-15 Eagle I had sitting on my dresser by the nose, then smashed it on the corner of my dresser as one would smash a beer bottle on a bar and waved it at me meanacingly. She told me to stay there and left the room.

At that point I was completely and totally terrified for my life. I was generally a good kid and my mother almost never god mad at me and never swore at me, so for her to actually break something in anger was totally beyond my understanding of how I was going to get punished. I thought that she had left the room only to fetch whatever implements of my demise she had in mind and was going to come back to kill me. Not wanting to die, I got the fuck out of the house and rode my bike across down to my grandparents house and hid in the guest room closet.

At some point I fell asleep and was awoken when my grandfather opened the closet door and saw me there. I thought I was going to get it but apparently in the several hours of my absence my mother thought I had run away from home and was despondent. Since they actually checked my grandparents house and called for me but I didn't respond, they looked elsewhere. When they couldn't find me anywhere my mother started thinking that I had fell into the pit (the town I grew up in is right next to an old open pit iron mine). So by the time they actually did find me, my mother's anger had been replaced with relief that I was ok that I actually escaped serious punishment. I don't remember exactly, but I think my parents actually took me to McDonalds that evening.

This may be against the technical focus as I actually like telling this story to people to fluster my mother, as opposed to her telling it to people to embarrass me. She actually probably wouldn't tell this story on her own because between her destroyed hollyhocks and fears of me running away it's nothing but bad memories for her. Everyone has a laugh about it though. I really wanted to tell this story during my mother's wedding, but didn't get the opportunity.

 

Here's the story about the time I got a school bus pulled over by a cop:

It’s been a long time since I was in high school, but I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the Media Technology program as an elective (otherwise known as the audio-visual club at other schools), and since my district had two high schools at the time, they had to share a production studio.
I had to take a bus to the studio every day, and it was usually a mundane ride spent talking with my friends. Our days at the Media Technology studios were usually pretty boring, though we did do out best to liven things up (Like the time I used the video editing decks to splice single frames of pornography into a Spanish copy of 101 Dalmatians that I rented; yeah, I got the idea from Fight Club, but I actually did it. Can you say that? Didn't think so.)
Anyway, this wasn't one of those days; it was a usual boring day spent reading entertainment magazines and gossiping. Finally it was time to go back to our home campus. Our bus was stopped at a light; in the opposing lane, there was a County Constable.
A friend of mine (I'd mention her name, but I'm not sure if she would want to be connected with this) said:
"Hey Bandit, look, it's a cop! Flip him off!"
So that's what I did; I gave him a two fisted one finger salute.
I don't know how the planets were aligned at that time, but out of a whole bus load of kids, the cop saw me.
The light turned green for the cop, but he just pulled over to the side of the road, waiting. Highly irregular. Then the light turned green for our bus, we went on our way, but the constable followed closely behind us. On the way back, I speculated with my friends about what was going to happen.
When the bus reached the turnoff to get back to our school, the constable flipped on his lights. The bus driver pulled over. I took my driver's license out of my wallet and asked my friend who originally encouraged me to flip off the cop to hold it. She was reluctant at first, but I told her that it was her idea, and the cop wouldn't search her, so she acquiesced and took my license.
He came aboard the bus and said that what I had just done was disorderly conduct, and I could be cited for it. He asked how old I was, and I told him I was 16 (I was really 17). Then he took down all of my personal information, since I didn't have any ID on me.
I gave him all phony information: fake name, the address to the house where one of my friends USED to live, the phone number to Domino's Pizza, and lied about my parents.
"Well we'll see what your parents have to say about this when you get home. I know where this address is; it's right off _______ road." He stated.
"Yes sir," I said, trying to sound as sorry/scared as possible. In actuality, I wanted to burst into hysterical laughter.
He didn't write me a citation or anything, but I figured I'd be hearing about it soon enough, either through the school by the principal or by the local authorities. I did get suspended for three days, but that was it.
I have never heard anything about this incident since, except when discussing it with friends. That Constable was just trying to shake me up, and he couldn't. But if he did go by that house, I wonder what the new residents thought.

 

When I was six I threw up right in my underwear while I was shitting... In school. I was real popular after that.

 

In first grade, I got beat up by a girl. In my defense, the girl was Chuck Wepner's daughter.

 

I didn't really become an embarrassment to myself until I was a preteen, and even then there weren't many family stories, just ones that almost make me anxiety-vomit out of embarrassment when I reread them in my old journals. There's only one that I can think of that my dad tells.

I haven't done it in years but, to add to my huge list of sleeping problems, I used to sleepwalk every now and then. With few exceptions, this almost always happened when I was sleeping in a new environment. When I was twelve, we went on summer vacation with my stepfamily at the time in this awesomely huge, old, creepy house on Block Island. It didn't even have electricity except for the kitchen. I was sharing one room with my cousin, which had a door that connected to the room next to it, where my aunt and uncle were sleeping and my other cousin was sleeping on the floor.

One night, I got out of bed and shuffled into the adjacent room, still in my sleeping bag. My aunt was awake, reading, but my uncle and cousin were sleeping. I guess my eyes were still open, so she didn't realize I was sleepwalking, so as I continued to walk in, she told me to look out for my cousin on the floor. I changed direction, and walked to the foot of their bed. I stood there for a while, staring ahead, not moving or speaking, kind of like that scene in Paranormal Activity. My aunt was, understandably, freaked out, and she kept asking me what was wrong or what was up over and over again, but I wouldn't say anything.

Then, all of a sudden, I THREW myself into their bed. Like, hurdled into it. This woke my uncle up, who apparently had some deep-seated childhood fear of getting robbed in his sleep. He went screaming out of the room, and spent the rest of the night sleeping in the car. His screams, however, did not wake ME up, so I continued to lie there completely still, in my sleeping bag, eyes staring straight ahead. I think this is when my aunt realized I was sleepwalking, so she managed to convince me to get out of bed, then walked me down the hall (still shuffling along in my sleeping bag) and got me back into my own bed.

The next morning, I went skipping down to breakfast, where my uncle was sitting still traumatized. My dad asked me if I remembered anything from the night before, and when I said I didn't, they all burst out laughing.

 

I was about 14. It was December, and it was snowing. I was sleepwalking. My parents were woken up by me yelling "BYE MOM, BYE DAD" at the top of my lungs and flinging open the door. They found me making a snow angel on the hood of my mom's minivan, giggling madly. They came outside to grab me, so I started running down the street. In my underwear. Barefoot. At 2:30 in the morning. Yelling incoherently at the top of my lungs.

I've done some stupid shit while sleepwalking, (I walked out of a hotel room and pissed on the wall) but that one is what makes relatives ask about "the time Omegaham went fucking nuts in his underwear."

 

When I was in first grade, I peed my pants in gym class. We were playing duck duck goose, and I asked to go to the bathroom. The teacher, who I hated at the time, wouldn't let me go. I don't know what went through my mind, but for some reason I thought pissing on the gym floor would be a way to get back at her for not letting me go. I instantly regretted my decision. I went to a small catholic school, and by the end of the day everyone heard what happened. No one would let me forget about it for the rest of my time at that school.

 

A friend of mine was a photographer for our school yearbook and one day took a picture of me with a pencil in one nostril and a pen in the other. Don't ask me why I had them there. I also made him promise that he would not put them anywhere in the yearbook. A full 8X10 page later that is how he kept his promise and I was memorialized in 8th grade.

The fallout wasn't all that bad because the vast majority of the school looked at it and said, "Oh look, that scrawny kid did something stupid again."

 

My mother loves telling this story at every opportunity.

When I was 5 my parents took me to a fancy restaurant in Peru to have dinner with some other couples. At some point during dinner I decided I had to go to the bathroom, and let my mom know that I wished to go by myself. My mother, assuming the bathroom was in the first floor where we were, let me go.
For whatever reason, I decided I was going to make my way to the second floor bathrooms. I think I read some sign and just followed it. Now, the second floor of this restaurant was set up so that it overlooked the whole of the main dining area. I found my way to the restroom and proceeded to poop and finished before I realized there was no toilet paper.
Now I hadn't even considered the possibility that there would be no toilet paper, and sat there dumbfounded. What to do? Eventually I came to the conclusion that I had to find my mom. She would know what to do. Also, I couldn't put my pants on without wiping. That would be crazy! So I made my way out of the bathroom completely bare assed, ran to the bannister that overlooked the first floor and yelled at the top of my lungs:

"MOM! THEY'RE OUT OF TOILET PAPER! MOOOOOOOOOOM!"

My mother, mortified, sprinted up the stairs as the whole restaurant had a good laugh. Hey, I needed TP. I regret nothing.