November 22, 2004

• Welcome to another installment of:

  
  

  Not-So-Great Moments in Dramamine Boy History

  
  

  Age: 6
  Location: The humble abode of the Dramamine Boy family for the first few years of my life

  
  

  

  
  

  This was our house back then and it looks exactly like it did back on that warm, summer day, oh so many years ago.

  
  

  Well, except that the drapes were open.

  
  

  And there was no such thing as cable TV, so none of those wires were running up the wall.

  
  

  And that big bird of paradise plant was either waaaaay smaller or it wasn’t there to allow for easier access to the window (this is an important piece of info which will become obvious later).

  
  

  And that car in the background hadn’t been made yet.

  
  

  And that little garden in the front yard was just grass.

  
  

  And I don’t think that was the color of our house back then.

  
  

  And the image of the school that is reflecting in the window was brown instead of white.

  
  

  That’s right, the school where I went to kindergarten and first grade was right across the street from my house.  And yet, I was constantly late.  Also, in kindergarten, they had this big piece of paper cut in the shape of a telephone hanging on the wall with names of students on it.  When you proved to the teacher that you were able to memorize your own phone number, she would add your name to the list on that big phone piece of paper.  Despite living approximately 30 seconds away from the classroom, my name was never added to that list.

  
  

  But alas, that is not the not-so-great moment I’m talking about… although yeah, that wasn’t so great either.

  
  

  NO!  Instead, I will regale you with quite a different tale.  It’s about a game I was playing with my brother… that immortal favorite, tag.

  
  

  Back when I was little, there was no Cartoon Network and there were no Nintendos or stuff like that, so we had to rely on the classics to keep us entertained during the summer.  Swimming lessons… eluding the deadly clutches of the chinese finger trap… and tag.

  
  

  

  
  

  When someone falls for this, you immediately go for their wallet/purse

  
  

  So, me and my brother ran around outside of our house one summer afternoon playing tag.  Now, if you look at the picture of our house, our front door is on the left side of the house (you can make out the porch light) and we had a back door on the right side of our house.  Well, me and my brother decided to combine our outdoor tag with indoor tag… we were pretty versatile tag participants.  We went in and out of the house, running through both doors, slamming them shut and swinging them open (I have no idea why my mom, who was in the back bedroom, didn’t come out and lock us up in a closet or something for making all that noise).

  
  

  Around and around we went, with my brother trying to tag me.  Suddenly, I had the idea of running through the front door and then locking it.  Yes, even at age six… genius.  My brother yelled at me from outside how that wasn’t fair.  I reluctantly agreed, so I unlocked the door and ran out the back.  He eventually caught up to me and tagged me, so I started chasing him.  He ran into the house through the back door and locked it (what a frikkin’ cheater), so I ran over to the front door and… he had locked that one, too.

  
  

  So here I am, locked out of the house.  I walk over to the front window and look inside and there’s my brother, laughing at me.  I’m a little mad now, partly because he’s taunting me from inside the house, but mostly cuz I just got out-smarted by a four-year old.

  
  

  I bang on the window and yell, “Let me in!”.  My brother just stands there, laughing away.  Frustrated, I bang my fists on the window and yell, “UNLOCK THE DO-” aaaaaaand the window shatters.

  
  

  Shards of glass explode into the house and my brother stumbles back and falls on his butt.  Fortunately, he was standing about ten feet away from the window, so no glass came near him.

  
  

  Then again, maybe a couple of shards stuck in his leg would’ve been just desserts for locking me out.

  
  

  For the next hour and a half (okay, it was like a second or two, but it seemed like an hour and a half), I stood there in shock and my brother sat on the floor in shock and silence enveloped the scene.  Suddenly, my brother yelled, “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!” and got up off the floor and ran towards my parent’s bedroom.  That woke me up out of my trance and I had only one thought on my mind…

  
  

  That’s it, I’m running away from home.

  
  

  That’s right, some kids leave the house after high school or college, I’m deciding to venture off on my own at age six.  Now, where I was going to run away to, I was not sure.  Since I was prohibited from leaving our block, it really cut down on the number of places I could run away to.  So, I ran four houses down the block and ducked into the driveway, kneeling behind a shrub.

  
  

  

  
  

  Now, I wasn’t expecting this shrub to be my new permanent place of residence, seeing how it lacked important things like food and a roof and a TV.  However, it gave me a place to sit down and think this through. 

  
  

  Where am I gonna go?  Should I just go around the block and knock on people’s doors and ask if I could stay there?  I guess I could ask that lady that would feed me and my brother cookies.  I wouldn’t mind having cookies for dinner.  Oh oh, I’m not supposed to go out without a jacket.  I’ll have to sneak back home and get that.  How am I gonna do that?

  
  

  I decide to peek above the shrub to see what’s going on and what do I see?  My mom.

  
  

  

  
  

  DOGGONE IT!

  
  

  What are the frikkin’ odds that my mom would know where I was!?!  Well, I later found out that some lady was walking on the other side of our street and saw the whole thing.  When my mom came out of the house, the lady told her where I went.  Doggone tattle-tale bystanders.  What happened to that age-old courtesy of people MINDING THEIR OWN FRIKKIN’ BUSINESS!?!

  
  

  The next thing I remember is sitting on the far corner of my bed, cowering in the corner of my room and my mom yelling, “JUST WAIT UNTIL YOUR DAD GETS HOME!”.  And that was it for me… I cried for like the next four hours, anticipating the horrible things that were going to happen to me when my dad got home.  Just when I’d get down to sobbing, I’d hear some people talking in the living room and start crying again, thinking my dad got home.  I remember my dad finally getting home and… that’s all I remember.  I don’t remember what happened to me after that.  Maybe I was beaten so bad, I blacked out or something, I dunno.  Perhaps I should invest in some psycho-therapy to recall these repressed memories.

  
  

  So, the things that I learned from this not-so-great moment are:

  
  

  
  
  • The approximate breaking point of glass when being banged on with my fists
    
  • My brother is a frikkin’ cheater at tag
    
  • Carry around money, extra clothes and a toothbrush wherever you go if you suddenly have to run away from home
    
  • If you do decide to run away from home, pick a good hiding place!

  
  

  (Does anyone remember what ground-breaking moment you have just witnessed!?!  I didn’t think so.)

  • 1:58 pm
  • 17 Comments