Childhood Weirdness

don't know if it applies to yr question...

These are things I remember that are probably not, strictly speaking, true.

Here's something I don't remember:

My mother told me that when I was about eight or nine, we went to Times Square--to see a movie or something, I guess. On one corner there was, apparently, a woman in full-on mid-70s streetwalker garb: short shorts, big boots, a shiny cape. I started staring. My mother, to diffuse the situation, said: "She looks like a superhero, doesn't she?" I have been told I replied: "She looks like a hooker to me."

This is not exactly childhood weirdness, I guess, but it seems like it might be a useful allegory for something or other.

Even more weirdly, I was going to post this before I read the hegemon's story.

donna's gloved hand really freaked me out, though! like, ohmygosh! that would've scarred me for life.

this thread kicks.

It's a good thing that prescribing medication for children was frowned on back then, or I would have been put on some kind of med for weirdness like that.

Also when I was yound I used to hallucinate, I'd get these scary whispering voices in my ears and things that were thin, like hairs, would swell up until they felt like plasticine tubes. I once attacked my dad when I was in this state, thinking he was a big red car trying to run me over. I think because of this, I have a fear of hallucinogens to this day.

If someone else did this too, let's get married

I imagined it was a cursed pumpkin coming after me! That sounds bizarre but it was based on this cool kids story I'd read, about a leprechaun or something that had been horrible so he'd been cursed and shut up into a pumpkin and sent away... but then somehow the pumpkin came back, and rolled around and touched people and turned them to stone or killed them or some fucked up stuff.

SO I'd be lying in bed hearing hoosh hoosh hoosh and thinking this pumpkin was rolling after me :(

jon what did it look like? seriously, i'm fascinated by these things and i'd like to know.

My parents saw a F-117 in the early 80s near my house FWIW.

when i remember i can't, it ruins the day, really.

sleep paralysis is a very scary thing to an eight year old, i used to get it all the time- middle of the night, wake from a dream, you can see everything but you can't move a muscle. put the shits up me big time.

i used to play the laser game too, but did anyone else try to make it zip between the gaps in the white lines on the road- used to drive my dad crazy, i'd sit between the two front seats with my head going over and back like some kind of autistic savant.

maybe i am an autistic savant. that would explain much.....

-- sometimes i like to pretend i am very small and warm (hot.air.balloo...), October 15th, 2004.

hmmm...very well might've been a sceret aircraft then.

I did use my line of vision to try and make shit happen tho (like a telekenesis thing) - I'd stare at planes and cars and so on and will them to crash. They never did, but in my dreams, all I seem to need to do is glance at things like planes and they fall out of the sky. I have dreamt this constantly since childhood. I suspect it comes out of a sense of lack of control in my life.

They began to develop a very macabre theme of errant women getting stabbed and chopped up by other evil women, strung up on trees and all kinds of really fucked up shit.

How I am not some kind of psycho I dont know. It still really worries me, the shit I used to draw :(

Xpost - ahhaah oh noes! Foiled :D

I also used to be deathly afraid of seeing a clock turn midnight. I'd close my eyes until I thought 11:59 had become 12:01.

also i saw what i thought was a ufo while riding in my parents car at night. it was a bright green meteor falling straight down. next day, turns out other people saw it and reported it but it was confirmed to be fallen space trash. (cover-up!)

I was initially Didier Pironi, then Elio de Angelis, then I forget who until Ayrton Senna appeared - I was him straight away. But then he dicked over Derek Warwick and I turned against him.

By the end of the holiday I'd have worked out the final championship positions, with my family each "playing" another driver. I always won.

Between about the age of 5 and 7, I was convinced my toes were broken. They were only broken at night though, it never bothered me during the day. I was obviously having a feel of my feet one night and realised the tips of my three middle toes on each foot, moved backwards and forewards. I ran downstairs screaming but have no memory of how my mother sorted it out. She mustn't have done a good job cos it haunted me for a few years.

They're fixed now anyway.

I AM NOT A FREAK.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palilalia I did this in elementary school, people commented on it quite a bit.

I also used to have the urge to do things the same on both sides of my body -- if I touched something with my right hand, I would have a huge urge to touch something with my left hand to balance things out.

(I blame my countless bouts with strep throat as a child -- but then again my brother didn't have it as much as I did and he was very OCD-ish as a child so it could be genetic. Either way, it hasn't lasted to adulthood.)

wow crutis me too (the urge to do things the same on both sides of my body) i used to have this thing for months at a time, then i'd get over it for a bit then fall into it again. I used to have tonsilitis too (is that what causes it?)

More in keeping with the original post: a strange memory from childhood I have: walking through the woods one day with some other kids, one of them encouraged me to investigate these strange leaves growing on a plant. It was a green leaf with a hard green bud more or less in the centre of it. I stuck a thumbnail into it and peeled it back. Inside was a small brown eye, which then blinked. I quickly dropped the leaf in horror, and then we went on our way, not giving it much thought.

Although I thought it weird at the time, I, as a child, just accepted it for what I suspected it to be. But I've always wondered what this thing I saw, and took to be an eye growing inside a bud on a leaf, actually was.

i still have that must-do-things-with-both-sides thing

maybe i am still a child

i had bouts with lucid dream/sleepwalking for a few years as a child. i'd wander from my room and ask my parents strange questions. they'd always calmly go "c'mon let's go back to bed" and walk me back to the room. the next day i'd remember the questions.

"where are all the plates that go on the other plates?"

"where are the pillows that go in the bathroom?"

"why are all the babies crying outside?"*

*that one turned out to be real. it was cats fuxxing.

Once in Riverside Park I saw a guy with a metal detector and followed him for a bit until he stopped and dug a hole in the ground. In the hole there were lots of bugs, including a yellow-orange one that had a wiggly tail and looked exactly -- exactly -- like one of the fireballs from Donkey Kong, which I was playing a lot of at the time.

Used to think that the rest of my stuffed toys were all jealous of my stuffed elephant, Blue (he was my favourite), and that at night, while I was sleeping, they all plotted to torture and kill Blue.

And maybe this is kind of weird but i've never, at any point in my life, been frightened by horror movies. Best memories - being 4 or 5, watching Nightmare on Elm Street, the scene where Johnny Depp gets sucked into the bed, and turning to my squealing older sister "Come on, it's just special effects." I think I ruined it for her.

Also, when I was a bit older, around age 9, sitting in the fridge for five minutes just so I could scare my cousins when they opened it, right after we had watched Stephen King's IT. I made them cry and they didn't talk to me for a week lol. Good times.

roz, that is bloody genius.

you could've killed yourself in the fridge

Then it would have been the best joke ever.

Nah jk, I knew I wasn't gonna stay in there for very long, too dark. And the door was easy to open, because I remember, the magnetic strip on the door had gotten a bit loose. It wasn't all that cold either - living in the tropics with roughly 34-degrees C weather all year round and at a time when air-conditioners were kind of pricey, meant that most kids my age spent many days just sitting in front of the fridge when our parents weren't looking.

I kinda wish I was still small enough to fit in a fridge.

i spent a few years walking most of the time on the tips of my toes

i knew kids who did that, rrrobyn. i didn't question it but thought it was weird.

i think i did that too. i'm guessing it was a desire to be taller ie more grown-up.

I do still tend to do things on both sides but the urge isn't quite as overpowering.

why is it a lot of us would either step inside the squares or on the lines when walking on some sidewalk

cute~

You don't step on the crack, or you'll fall and break your back.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ehaBtLKS4ok/ToBvk5MO6lI/AAAAAAAALkI/q8AUESvhFxg/s1600/Monday+Morning+Smile+-+kitten+-+TheLaughing+Pet.jpg

My childhood dreams seemed to be incredibly vivid compared to the ones I have now. Like, I wasn't able to tell if I was awake or dreaming because the dreams were so clear and tangible. This made nightmares a lot worse though, as the build-up would often be something incredibly mundane (like washing before bed) up until the point I would get slammed with the dream equivalent of a jump-scare. I don't have any dreams like that now.

Leading on from that, I think when you're a kid the line between imagination and reality is a lot more blurred. I believe your brain in it's less-developed stage is a lot more prone to having experiences that are harder to judge objectively as an adult. You absolutely KNOW what you saw happened, but have you just been telling yourself it went down exactly that way for the last twenty or thirty years?

I also once discovered I had the ability to induce a hypnagogic state at will, as in I could go into a full-on waking hallucination with almost no effort at all. This lasted the duration of one holiday and then I forgot about it, and I now I can't do it all. Kidbrains are weird.