my childhood stories

i was looking at my last post & feeling like i was such a downer that i didn't even want to hang out with myself. when i'm in a hole, feeling all blubbery & pathetic, i maybe should just write a letter to myself rather than for the world to see. today is a better day. my life doesn't suck. it's actually a good place to be, in spite of certain less-than-awesome aspects, just like everyone has.

so on that note, i was thinking about my own childhood & my wacky oddities. maybe my mom wondered what the heck she should do with me & how could i actually belong to her because i was so different than she'd anticipated. that led me to some memories that amuse me to remember, so i thought i'd share them with you.

once upon a time, i thought i had the wrong name. i thought sherilin was a big, odd name and i was annoyed at my parents' creativity in naming me. i thought my real name should have been sabrina. it made me feel like the glamorous princess i considered myself to be.

when i was about 5, my church would sometimes bring in a college singing group for a service & my parents would usually host a couple girls for a night. my room always became the guest room, so i would be stuck somewhere else, but one particular night, apparently i sleep walked. i woke up in bed with 2 college girls who i didn't know & i wasn't just in there with them. i was curled up tightly against one of them. draped & snuggled. i was pretty embarrassed as i peeled myself off that girl & scampered out of the room in hopes that maybe she hadn't noticed.

on the topic of sleeping, let me also add that i was a bedwetter. my mattress was covered in garbage bags in an attempt to prolong its life. my childhood best friend was amy & we spent many, many nights sleeping over at one or the other of our houses. we're still friends & she likes to kid me about the multiple midnight baths we got cuz i peed the bed & we both got soaked. sorry, ame! i'm glad you still like me anyway.

when i was about 11, i started taking karate classes. i was bigger than most of the little kids in my class who were about 4, but it wasn't long before i started to consider myself a real badass. my party trick was that i could kick up higher than my head & i would show it off regularly. i probably would have run off screaming if anyone had ever tried to fight me, but i liked to think i was tough.

i spent about 6 weeks sleeping in a large cardboard box, complete with rainbow brite sleeping bag, when i was 9. we had just moved & i was getting a new bed, but i liked that box so much that i skipped the bed for a while & just relished the fact that i could lay in my sleeping bag & color on my walls. it was the beginning of a career of graffiti which continued and flourished at summer camp for years to come.

at that same camp, when i was about 14, i let the camp program director chop off a large chunk of hair out of the back of my head & then had it shaved. that was a very bad fashion statement. i was also stuffed into a suitcase & carried about (including being dropped on a rocky hill) & left as a ding-dong-ditch on the supervisor's doorstep late one night. yeah, again with the bad planning because my friends all ran away & dove into bed like they were innocent little lambs while there i was, wadded into that suitcase where i couldn't exactly deny involvement!

i once fancied myself to be a fashion designer. my friend amy & i would chop up pieces of old fabric scraps & make them into outfits for ourselves. we weren't allowed to use a sewing machine or needles though, so we had to think outside the box. we used staples sometimes & other times we'd cut little holes & then tie knots of fabric through them to keep the fabulous outfits together. we were kind of pissed off that our moms never let us wear our outfits further than the back yard.

once upon a time, my goal in life was to be a dallas cowboy cheerleader. they were so amazing in those blue & white outfits & with their tan bellies & wiggly hips. a girl needs to strive for something in life.

did you know that if you microwave a spider, its legs go up straight in the air? it's kind of amazing how that dead thing can balance on just 2 or 3 legs while raising its others in surrender.

i had a shrine to ralph macchio hidden in my diary. i used to cut out any pics or articles about him from newspapers & magazines and paste them into the pages of that hello kitty journal where i could gaze at his awesomeness any time i wanted.

my cousin steve once paid me half of his allowance to eat cat food. my brother got the other half cuz he had some too. we made out with 50 cents each.

i went to a josh mcdowell rally and i was so convinced that i was going to be a virgin till i was married that i bought a t-shirt proclaiming "I"M NOT DOING IT" in bold black & red letters. on the back of the shirt were about 52 reasons why i wasn't going to have pre-marital sex. i wore it often & it used to embarrass my friends. probably cut down the number of guys who were checking us out as we walked around the mall.

once, when i was 14, i was at my friend patty's house & her parents were less involved than my own were, so we used to go outside at night. we generally didn't do anything other than maybe go for a walk around the neighborhood, but one night we decided to spice things up. we were out in our pajamas in the backyard, sitting on her little sister's swingset & we came up with a plan to race through a few backyards in a big loop & whoever made it back first, won. the catch was that we were going to take off our pants before we started running. we still had on shirts & undies, so it was only a half streak, but it sure felt scandalous at the time. we started out & i took the lead pretty quickly. patty couldn't stop giggling, so she wasn't moving very fast. i was afraid that giggling might draw the attention of the neighbors whose yards we were running through, and i certainly didn't want to get caught running in my undies, so i was silent & determined. i had a pretty good lead going when out of nowhere, i tripped over a dog chain that i hadn't seen & fell flat onto my belly in a full sprawl that almost knocked the air out of me. my face banged the ground & i had grass stuck to my tooth, but i popped right back up & kept hauling butt because by then, patty wasn't just giggling, she was laughing hysterically. i was terrified of getting busted, plus, i really wanted to win and i was afraid she'd take advantage of my unanticipated spill. i made it to the finish line with plenty of time to spare & once i was there i realized the stupid funniness of the moment & i stood there & wet myself in her grass in my minnie mouse t-shirt.