A Chaotic Jaunt Down Memory Lane

I have a third follower! Welcome, LaceyRee.

When I was about three years old, I tried to eat a handful of gravel.  I had had rock candy for the first time the day before, and in my mind all rocks were candy, so I tried to eat some. To my disappointment, it wasn't candy. I managed to scoop up quite a bit of dirt with the gravel and I was trying my best to crunch up the gravel but it hurt my teeth. That's when my brother, who is two years older than me, looked out the window and said, "Mom! J is eating rocks!" My mom ordered me to spit them out, and then I started crying, because my mouth was full of dirt and my teeth hurt and there wasn't any rock candy. I learned my lesson though. Only parents know which rocks are secretly candy.

A couple of years later my brother and I were playing outside and we decided to pretend we were cows. We got down on all fours and made mooing noises and ate grass. My mom asked us why were eating grass and we responded that we were pretending to be cows. Then my mom told us that there were little bugs on the grass that we were eating and we couldn't see them because they were too small. That cured us of eating grass. It actually didn't taste bad, much better than dirt and gravel.

A few years later, I was in second or third grade, and some of the kids in my class and I decided to have what we called "Gross Eating Contests." I was the only girl, and I always won. The object was to eat either the grossest thing on our lunch tray or the strangest combination of foods. To start with, I could win by just eating the nasty green beans that were cooked to death. After a while, the boys got braver and ate their green beans too, so I started eating my baby carrots with ketchup. I actually thought that tasted really good back then, but now I can't stand ketchup. The day that I was declared the Gross Food Eating Champion of All Time, I ate my entire orange peel. That was actually really disgusting and there was no way the boys could compete with that. We quit having the contests after that, partially because it took up too much of our recess when we actually ate all of the food on our tray.

I have always gotten along way better with guys than I do with girls. We just share more of the same interests: sports, climbing trees, arm wrestling, video games. I still like all that stuff. Anyway, most of my friends in school were and still are guys. I actually have about 10 female friends right now, and that's kind of weird for me. I have about thirty male friends. Anyway, in fourth or fifth grade, the guys started having suspicions about if I was actually a girl. This was based on the fact that they had never seen me cry. I always just laughed whenever I got hurt, and I still do actually. So they decided that if they could make me cry, they would believe that I was a girl. I was, and still am, very competitive. I'm really tough and I wasn't about to let them make me cry, no matter what. And believe me, most guys would have been crying. At one point, they almost broke my thumb. I actually believed that they were going to break my thumb, since they practically pulled it back until it touched my wrist. It hurt really bad, but I didn't cry.  A different time, we were wrestling outside on the pavement and one of them slammed me flat on my back on the pavement and knocked the wind out of me. He felt really bad and it hurt but I didn't cry. I guess they just quit trying at some point and started believing me that I was just a really tough girl. Of course, none of the teachers ever saw any of this stuff happening. I was really little in elementary school, leading to nicknames such as Small Fry and Little J. I was also really strong. When I was in third or fourth grade, I started doing 10 push-ups every day. I got behind for a little while, but I kept track and I made them all up. One night, I did 200 something push-ups. My mom was a little worried, I think. She told me that I didn't have to do them all at once, and I could spread them out over a few days, or a week or something. She didn't want to discourage me from exercising, but I was about 10 years old. I didn't mind, I did my 200+ push-ups in one night. It took me about two hours. I still love exercising. Now I hacky sack for about 4 hours a day, at least when I'm not sick.

I don't think I've ever cried from pain. Like I mentioned earlier, I always just laugh. The more pain I'm in, the more I laugh. I punched a brick wall once while hacky sacking, don't ask how, I'm not sure. My knuckles were bleeding and I laughed so hard, then kept hacky sacking. I tried to ollie once on my friend's skateboard while I was wearing flip flops. This was stupid for two reasons. First, I had given up learning to skateboard about five years earlier because I couldn't even learn the most basic trick, an ollie. Second, when ollying, you should wear shoes that have some grip on them, because you slide your foot up on the skateboard and turn it sideways to get in the air (or something). My friend was determined he could teach me to olly, and I was wearing flip flops because we were going white water rafting and killing time before that started. I did everything exactly the way I was supposed to, and I probably would have successfully ollied, if I had been wearing shoes. I slid my foot up and sideways, and my flip flop slipped when I turned my foot sideways and my toes scraped against the grip tape. For those of you who don't know, grip tape is kind of like super coarse sandpaper. It's the stuff on the top of a skateboard. So I basically sanded my toes. They were sliced open and I was dripping blood everywhere, but I was laughing so hard. I managed to get a bandaid and then I wrapped the wound with duct tape after having it bandaged, because that way the water wouldn't soak in. Then I went white water rafting, and it was a blast. My best friend broke her foot though, so she didn't have quite as much fun.

This has been a chaotic jaunt down memory lane, brought to you by the letter J. Thank you for flying with me, and please put your seats in the upright position. Single file line, please.