Story Time, part 1
This afternoon, for no particular reason, I got to thinking that it'd be fun to recount some stories from my past, as not everything that happens on a day to day basis in the life of Matt is necessarily newsworthy (or at least fit for public consumption). So, for our first installment, we have Matt's collection of very short short shorts — not to be confused with a depilatory ad, but rather a short list of very short anecdotes from when I was a very very short little dude (4 years old or less).
THE SOAP (or "Out damned spot! Out I say!")
When about 4 years old, I often found myself at Sunday school on Sunday mornings, or "Mother's Day Out" during the week (Does this concept still exist? It seems so antiquated in the days of dual-income families and single mothers).
Ironically, while there, I was exposed to more brattiness, mischief, and general childhood anarchist chaos than just about anywhere else.
On just one such time, one of the Mother's Day Out regulars had just torn a Shermanesque path of wanton destruction across the Sunday school room, leaving a wake of overturned building blocks, trucks, girls' dress-up clothes, and other such toy-like items tumbling behind him in every direction. Upon finishing his sprint into the area with all the little tables and chairs (for snacks, coloring, and other table-requisite activities), he tripped over one of the diminutive church nursery chairs, and, receiving all manner of the various hard and pokey bits of the chair in just about every tender and easily-bruised 3 or 4 year old body part, let out a tremendous, earth-shaking, heaven-rending, awe-inspiring, "GOD DAMN IT!!!"
An ominous silence followed, as all the kids and the teacher looked down at this blasphemous chair/kid hybrid which was still writhing about on the floor.
The silence continued as the boy stood up, sort of brushed himself off, and looked up at the teacher with a questioning glance.
"Young man!" she finally shouted. "That is no language for little boys to use, whether in a church or out! Come right here and I'm washing your mouth out with soap and water!"
Well, among other things, this soap-and-water concept was utterly foreign to me as a method of punishment. Sure I'd gotten Johnson & Johnson's Baby Shampoo in my mouth in the bath, and it was pretty unpleasant, but nothing quite vile enough for a punishment — how bad could this be? I and the other kids watched on in fascination as, through the crack in the not-quite-closed bathroom door, we could see the teacher holding the boy's face over the sink, and were overcome with a sound which can only be described as "YARGLEargleargleargle! YARGLEargleargleargle!"
Eventually the kid emerged with tears streaming down his very red face, and I recall thinking, "Wow! Soap? That bad. Huh."
So of course, being the perennially inquisitive child that I was, when having gone to the restroom a little while later to wash my hands before snack time, I looked down at the giant bar of generic church soap in my hand, and all the little bubbles on the soap dish, and, that bizarre "YARGLE!" exclamation still fresh in my mind, decided to do a little experiment.
And, because this story wouldn't be nearly as interesting otherwise, I couldn't have simply licked the soap, or tasted just enough to get the idea — no, taking the teacher literally at her word, I stuck that whole hulking bar of soap into my barely-large-enough mouth. The gagging ensued immediately, and the quick expulsion of the soap bar not only made a terrifying racket as it bounced around the bathroom, but also scraped enough of itself off on my teeth on the way out to make any hope of a quick painless rinse nigh impossible.
Myself crying now, I shoved my little face under the blasting sink faucet as fast as I could, heaving a respectable spit into the sink every few seconds.
Sensing that something was not right, the teacher opened the bathroom door to find me with my head in the sink.
"Matthew, are you okay? What happened?"
"I got soap in my mouth. Get it out. Help."
"But why would you go and do something like that?"
"I wanted to see what it was like, and didn't want to say God damn it and get in trouble. . . ."
It made sense at the time, I swear.
THE COOKIE JAR (or "There's something squirrely about that kid. . . .")
Nearly my whole childhood I suffered from frequent insomnia, ending at some point in high school, where, up half the night doing homework, I would have given anything for some sleep.
Insomnia as an adult is frustrating, for sure, with all the thoughts of being tired at work the next day and all, but as a two-year-old, it's altogether unbearable. For the sake of example, think of all your favorite two-year-old activities, and then consider how many would have been deemed entirely appropriate at about one o'clock in the morning. My pastimes of listening to records, riding the springy rocking horse, watching the New Zoo Revue, playing with building blocks (which inevitably fell down at least once every two or three minutes), and so on, were no exception. Heck, the New Zoo Revue never even seemed to come on at night, and the best I could figure, the animals must have all been asleep or something — all I could find were boring adult shows and static, both of which could awake my parents with surprising swiftness.
After many many times of getting in trouble for putting on the Winnie the Pooh record or riding the horse or singing a song in the middle of the night, I finally came across a perfect nighttime activity — an endeavor which was not only quiet enough to do at any hour without waking the parents, but whose successful completion depended on it: Cookie Theft.
My first night on the job as a cookie thief was not taken lightly, my friends. Understanding the gravity of getting this right, lest I be found out and the cookies locked out of reach, I decided a dry run was in order the first time around. Making the most of my footie pajamas' inherent stealth qualities, I silently padded out of my room, crawled across the front hallway so as not to make any suspicious shadows, and entered the kitchen, where, there on the counter, glowing under the single illuminated fluorescent kitchen counter light, like a holy grail to two-year-olds everywhere, stood The Cookie Jar.
The greatest challenge of the endeavor suddenly presented itself: the cookie jar was up on the counter, whereas I, just a little guy, was not. I stood in the middle of the kitchen pondering for some time how to overcome this obstacle (having decided that I probably couldn't jump that high, at least without making a great deal of noise or bruising something), at which point the wisdom of my dress-rehearsal paid off, because my mother, apparently hearing me shuffling around, appeared in the kitchen and asked me what I was doing up.
"I don't know," I sagaciously answered, in as confused a tone as I could muster, and was promptly escorted back to bed.
The cookie retrieval dilemma unrelentingly occupied my thoughts throughout the next day, until a moment of utter genius hit me. I was meandering around the kitchen as my Mom cleaned up after lunch, and there, right under the cookie jar, I watched her lower the dishwasher door and put our dirty dishes inside. It was as if God had put a magic cookie-thieving stairstep in just the perfect place. The afternoon and evening hours passed so slowly that day, I assure you.
When that night finally arrived, I had my plan together.
Clad in my same cat-burglar footie-pajamas, and having developed a formidable cookie appetite over the last 24 hours, I set forth into the holy land, resuming my previously thwarted quest. Upon reaching the dishwasher, I fumbled with the handle a bit, having never before encountered a need for learning to operate this particular bit of machinery, and once I'd finally gotten it open, lowered the door, stepped up on the edge of it, carefully, slowly, and as silently as possible slid the cookie jar toward the edge of the counter, and, as if handling a priceless artifact, cautiously opened the lid and retrieved my prize: a giant chocolate chip cookie. I'm sure few smiles in my childhood rivaled that one.
The cookie thievery quickly became an addiction. I stashed away plastic baggies during the day in order to store my stolen cookies at night. Night after night I returned to The Cookie Jar, congratulating myself on my unprecedented accomplishment and newfound independence.
Those were the golden years — oh, halcyon cookie-filled days.
Like any criminal, however, I soon became greedy. I often took more than I could scarf down in any one night, and my dresser drawers began filling with little bags of stale cookies. These little stashes were soon discovered, of course, raising the parents' suspicions that something was amiss. I became dodgy and paranoid. My need for cookies only grew. I no longer stole the cookies because I wanted them, but because I didn't know how to stop. It was a sickness, this cookie compulsion. I couldn't go a night without stealing them, because I couldn't sleep otherwise.
Until. . . .
One night, now burning with my peculiar obsession and fraught with carelessness and complacency on my cookie runs, the unthinkable happened: having heard the creaky dishwasher door, which I no longer bothered to open slowly, my mother came slipping into the room, and just as I slid the cookie jar to the edge of the counter so I could reach inside, she said, "What are you up to?" In my ensuing state of utter shock, I lost grip on my beloved cookie jar, which, with a resounding crash, shattered on the floor, leaving a frightful mix of glass and newly inedible cookies.
Though the tragedy didn't put me in cookie addiction rehab, or even in any particular trouble as far as I can remember, the old annihilated cookie jar had a new yellow bear-shaped replacement. Moreover, the replacement cookie repository had a new home at night, safely out of reach of two-year-olds everywhere, on top of the refrigerator.
Thus ended the glory days of Matthew's cookie empire, let it rest in peace. . . .
THE PLAID PANTS (or "When Poop comes a-knockin'")
As a little kid, I spent a great deal of time hanging around in the back yard. I was easy to please, too — both my mother and grandmother knew that if they wanted me out of their hair, all they had to do was give me a little shovel or big spoon and point out the door. Two or three hours later, you could usually find me with dirty knees, a bent spoon, and a truly impressive pit dug in a bare spot in the flowerbed. Recipe for three-year-old happiness, all the way around.
On one such particular occasion, I struck out across the back yard, armed with spoon in one hand and little orange truck in the other (because occasionally a dude needs to call in the heavy backup equipment), and wearing my brand new, totally stylin' for 1977, plaid pants. In one version of the memory they're red and navy blue, and other times they're brown and yellow — I'm not sure which is correct in this story, but in all likelihood I owned both and simply can't remember which pants go with which story. Like I said, 1977. Plaid pants. Not an uncommon clothing item.
Anyway, it was a sunny warm day, and wasting little time, I'd taken the truck and the spoon out to the quarry I'd been working on all week and got busy. I think this point I'd started to dig up all kinds of worms and tree roots.
After some time out there, being a while after lunch, the tummy started to rumble and tumble a little, and I sat up, sort of wrinkled up my face, and . . . well . . . let's just say I thought it was a fart, and leave it at that.
My wrinkled gassy tummy face immediately opened up into a gasp of utter horror face. Incidents like this are embarrassing enough, as you all know or could easily imagine, but when you're three years old and take great pride in taunting your little play buddies about the fact that your poops always make it into the potty, lest they ever doubt your infinite superiority and ambitions to take over the world (by digging a hole to Malaysia in the marigolds, of course) — well, under those circumstances it's absolutely inexpiable.
Not to mention, oh the pants — the new plaid pants, in all their woolen glory, now weighing about 6 ounces more than God ever intended them to.
In this situation, any three-year-old's entire capacity for all rational thought whatsoever has now been displaced by horror-filled visions of what kind of punishments await. That being said, once I realized that I had to do something about my current circumstances, all reasonable solutions for which involving a mother's assistance, I went galloping for the door, holding the back of my pants with one free hand (the spoon was in the other, of course, lest someone abscond with it while I was away from the garden), because, as any little kid can tell you, the only thing worse than having a load in the butt of one's new plaid pants was having a fresh turd roll down the entire leg of one's new plaid pants and out onto your shoes.
Unfortunately, instead of running to the back door, something possessed me to run to the seldom-if-ever-used utility room door (looking back 26 years later I have to wonder if I considered the linoleum utility room floor less mess-prone than the lush lawn-like green shag carpet of the living room; however, I can't really say that as much logic was involved here), whereupon I commenced yelling, knocking, and beating the door with my spoon as loud as I could muster.
I could hear my mother, but couldn't figure out why she wasn't answering the door. "Matthew, Matthew, I'm right here. Where ARE you?" Finally, hearing my cries, she came wandering around the side of the house to see me standing there, spoon in on hand, plaid-pants-enclosed turd in the other. What went through my then-28-year-old mother's head I can only imagine, but putting myself in her situation, the resultant thoughts are nothing less than derisively hysterical. I'm sure I didn't even know those words back then.
Anyway, oddly enough, I don't remember what happened after that. I guess my rescue was solution enough has far as I was concerned. I don't even remember if the pants survived to dig another day, but chances are they made it through. . . .
THE SOAP (or "Out damned spot! Out I say!")
When about 4 years old, I often found myself at Sunday school on Sunday mornings, or "Mother's Day Out" during the week (Does this concept still exist? It seems so antiquated in the days of dual-income families and single mothers).
Ironically, while there, I was exposed to more brattiness, mischief, and general childhood anarchist chaos than just about anywhere else.
On just one such time, one of the Mother's Day Out regulars had just torn a Shermanesque path of wanton destruction across the Sunday school room, leaving a wake of overturned building blocks, trucks, girls' dress-up clothes, and other such toy-like items tumbling behind him in every direction. Upon finishing his sprint into the area with all the little tables and chairs (for snacks, coloring, and other table-requisite activities), he tripped over one of the diminutive church nursery chairs, and, receiving all manner of the various hard and pokey bits of the chair in just about every tender and easily-bruised 3 or 4 year old body part, let out a tremendous, earth-shaking, heaven-rending, awe-inspiring, "GOD DAMN IT!!!"
An ominous silence followed, as all the kids and the teacher looked down at this blasphemous chair/kid hybrid which was still writhing about on the floor.
The silence continued as the boy stood up, sort of brushed himself off, and looked up at the teacher with a questioning glance.
"Young man!" she finally shouted. "That is no language for little boys to use, whether in a church or out! Come right here and I'm washing your mouth out with soap and water!"
Well, among other things, this soap-and-water concept was utterly foreign to me as a method of punishment. Sure I'd gotten Johnson & Johnson's Baby Shampoo in my mouth in the bath, and it was pretty unpleasant, but nothing quite vile enough for a punishment — how bad could this be? I and the other kids watched on in fascination as, through the crack in the not-quite-closed bathroom door, we could see the teacher holding the boy's face over the sink, and were overcome with a sound which can only be described as "YARGLEargleargleargle! YARGLEargleargleargle!"
Eventually the kid emerged with tears streaming down his very red face, and I recall thinking, "Wow! Soap? That bad. Huh."
So of course, being the perennially inquisitive child that I was, when having gone to the restroom a little while later to wash my hands before snack time, I looked down at the giant bar of generic church soap in my hand, and all the little bubbles on the soap dish, and, that bizarre "YARGLE!" exclamation still fresh in my mind, decided to do a little experiment.
And, because this story wouldn't be nearly as interesting otherwise, I couldn't have simply licked the soap, or tasted just enough to get the idea — no, taking the teacher literally at her word, I stuck that whole hulking bar of soap into my barely-large-enough mouth. The gagging ensued immediately, and the quick expulsion of the soap bar not only made a terrifying racket as it bounced around the bathroom, but also scraped enough of itself off on my teeth on the way out to make any hope of a quick painless rinse nigh impossible.
Myself crying now, I shoved my little face under the blasting sink faucet as fast as I could, heaving a respectable spit into the sink every few seconds.
Sensing that something was not right, the teacher opened the bathroom door to find me with my head in the sink.
"Matthew, are you okay? What happened?"
"I got soap in my mouth. Get it out. Help."
"But why would you go and do something like that?"
"I wanted to see what it was like, and didn't want to say God damn it and get in trouble. . . ."
It made sense at the time, I swear.
THE COOKIE JAR (or "There's something squirrely about that kid. . . .")
Nearly my whole childhood I suffered from frequent insomnia, ending at some point in high school, where, up half the night doing homework, I would have given anything for some sleep.
Insomnia as an adult is frustrating, for sure, with all the thoughts of being tired at work the next day and all, but as a two-year-old, it's altogether unbearable. For the sake of example, think of all your favorite two-year-old activities, and then consider how many would have been deemed entirely appropriate at about one o'clock in the morning. My pastimes of listening to records, riding the springy rocking horse, watching the New Zoo Revue, playing with building blocks (which inevitably fell down at least once every two or three minutes), and so on, were no exception. Heck, the New Zoo Revue never even seemed to come on at night, and the best I could figure, the animals must have all been asleep or something — all I could find were boring adult shows and static, both of which could awake my parents with surprising swiftness.
After many many times of getting in trouble for putting on the Winnie the Pooh record or riding the horse or singing a song in the middle of the night, I finally came across a perfect nighttime activity — an endeavor which was not only quiet enough to do at any hour without waking the parents, but whose successful completion depended on it: Cookie Theft.
My first night on the job as a cookie thief was not taken lightly, my friends. Understanding the gravity of getting this right, lest I be found out and the cookies locked out of reach, I decided a dry run was in order the first time around. Making the most of my footie pajamas' inherent stealth qualities, I silently padded out of my room, crawled across the front hallway so as not to make any suspicious shadows, and entered the kitchen, where, there on the counter, glowing under the single illuminated fluorescent kitchen counter light, like a holy grail to two-year-olds everywhere, stood The Cookie Jar.
The greatest challenge of the endeavor suddenly presented itself: the cookie jar was up on the counter, whereas I, just a little guy, was not. I stood in the middle of the kitchen pondering for some time how to overcome this obstacle (having decided that I probably couldn't jump that high, at least without making a great deal of noise or bruising something), at which point the wisdom of my dress-rehearsal paid off, because my mother, apparently hearing me shuffling around, appeared in the kitchen and asked me what I was doing up.
"I don't know," I sagaciously answered, in as confused a tone as I could muster, and was promptly escorted back to bed.
The cookie retrieval dilemma unrelentingly occupied my thoughts throughout the next day, until a moment of utter genius hit me. I was meandering around the kitchen as my Mom cleaned up after lunch, and there, right under the cookie jar, I watched her lower the dishwasher door and put our dirty dishes inside. It was as if God had put a magic cookie-thieving stairstep in just the perfect place. The afternoon and evening hours passed so slowly that day, I assure you.
When that night finally arrived, I had my plan together.
Clad in my same cat-burglar footie-pajamas, and having developed a formidable cookie appetite over the last 24 hours, I set forth into the holy land, resuming my previously thwarted quest. Upon reaching the dishwasher, I fumbled with the handle a bit, having never before encountered a need for learning to operate this particular bit of machinery, and once I'd finally gotten it open, lowered the door, stepped up on the edge of it, carefully, slowly, and as silently as possible slid the cookie jar toward the edge of the counter, and, as if handling a priceless artifact, cautiously opened the lid and retrieved my prize: a giant chocolate chip cookie. I'm sure few smiles in my childhood rivaled that one.
The cookie thievery quickly became an addiction. I stashed away plastic baggies during the day in order to store my stolen cookies at night. Night after night I returned to The Cookie Jar, congratulating myself on my unprecedented accomplishment and newfound independence.
Those were the golden years — oh, halcyon cookie-filled days.
Like any criminal, however, I soon became greedy. I often took more than I could scarf down in any one night, and my dresser drawers began filling with little bags of stale cookies. These little stashes were soon discovered, of course, raising the parents' suspicions that something was amiss. I became dodgy and paranoid. My need for cookies only grew. I no longer stole the cookies because I wanted them, but because I didn't know how to stop. It was a sickness, this cookie compulsion. I couldn't go a night without stealing them, because I couldn't sleep otherwise.
Until. . . .
One night, now burning with my peculiar obsession and fraught with carelessness and complacency on my cookie runs, the unthinkable happened: having heard the creaky dishwasher door, which I no longer bothered to open slowly, my mother came slipping into the room, and just as I slid the cookie jar to the edge of the counter so I could reach inside, she said, "What are you up to?" In my ensuing state of utter shock, I lost grip on my beloved cookie jar, which, with a resounding crash, shattered on the floor, leaving a frightful mix of glass and newly inedible cookies.
Though the tragedy didn't put me in cookie addiction rehab, or even in any particular trouble as far as I can remember, the old annihilated cookie jar had a new yellow bear-shaped replacement. Moreover, the replacement cookie repository had a new home at night, safely out of reach of two-year-olds everywhere, on top of the refrigerator.
Thus ended the glory days of Matthew's cookie empire, let it rest in peace. . . .
THE PLAID PANTS (or "When Poop comes a-knockin'")
As a little kid, I spent a great deal of time hanging around in the back yard. I was easy to please, too — both my mother and grandmother knew that if they wanted me out of their hair, all they had to do was give me a little shovel or big spoon and point out the door. Two or three hours later, you could usually find me with dirty knees, a bent spoon, and a truly impressive pit dug in a bare spot in the flowerbed. Recipe for three-year-old happiness, all the way around.
On one such particular occasion, I struck out across the back yard, armed with spoon in one hand and little orange truck in the other (because occasionally a dude needs to call in the heavy backup equipment), and wearing my brand new, totally stylin' for 1977, plaid pants. In one version of the memory they're red and navy blue, and other times they're brown and yellow — I'm not sure which is correct in this story, but in all likelihood I owned both and simply can't remember which pants go with which story. Like I said, 1977. Plaid pants. Not an uncommon clothing item.
Anyway, it was a sunny warm day, and wasting little time, I'd taken the truck and the spoon out to the quarry I'd been working on all week and got busy. I think this point I'd started to dig up all kinds of worms and tree roots.
After some time out there, being a while after lunch, the tummy started to rumble and tumble a little, and I sat up, sort of wrinkled up my face, and . . . well . . . let's just say I thought it was a fart, and leave it at that.
My wrinkled gassy tummy face immediately opened up into a gasp of utter horror face. Incidents like this are embarrassing enough, as you all know or could easily imagine, but when you're three years old and take great pride in taunting your little play buddies about the fact that your poops always make it into the potty, lest they ever doubt your infinite superiority and ambitions to take over the world (by digging a hole to Malaysia in the marigolds, of course) — well, under those circumstances it's absolutely inexpiable.
Not to mention, oh the pants — the new plaid pants, in all their woolen glory, now weighing about 6 ounces more than God ever intended them to.
In this situation, any three-year-old's entire capacity for all rational thought whatsoever has now been displaced by horror-filled visions of what kind of punishments await. That being said, once I realized that I had to do something about my current circumstances, all reasonable solutions for which involving a mother's assistance, I went galloping for the door, holding the back of my pants with one free hand (the spoon was in the other, of course, lest someone abscond with it while I was away from the garden), because, as any little kid can tell you, the only thing worse than having a load in the butt of one's new plaid pants was having a fresh turd roll down the entire leg of one's new plaid pants and out onto your shoes.
Unfortunately, instead of running to the back door, something possessed me to run to the seldom-if-ever-used utility room door (looking back 26 years later I have to wonder if I considered the linoleum utility room floor less mess-prone than the lush lawn-like green shag carpet of the living room; however, I can't really say that as much logic was involved here), whereupon I commenced yelling, knocking, and beating the door with my spoon as loud as I could muster.
I could hear my mother, but couldn't figure out why she wasn't answering the door. "Matthew, Matthew, I'm right here. Where ARE you?" Finally, hearing my cries, she came wandering around the side of the house to see me standing there, spoon in on hand, plaid-pants-enclosed turd in the other. What went through my then-28-year-old mother's head I can only imagine, but putting myself in her situation, the resultant thoughts are nothing less than derisively hysterical. I'm sure I didn't even know those words back then.
Anyway, oddly enough, I don't remember what happened after that. I guess my rescue was solution enough has far as I was concerned. I don't even remember if the pants survived to dig another day, but chances are they made it through. . . .