Childhood Memory #2: We Wanted To Get Sick

We always wanted to get sick. Who knows why. The attention? Getting out of school? Some untapped death wish.

So people said not to eat things off the floor or you'd get sick. We would throw our candy on the grimiest floor and eat it in the hopes we'd get sick. We'd sit in ice cold water and then run around naked in the wintertime. I remember once eating tobacco and drinking dishwashing liquid. I almost never got sick and had to fake it most of the time.

Injury was almost as good. No one was more envied than the girl in the cast. We hoped for danger and disaster. I remember there was an exposed wire on a neighbor's doorbell. We'd go and touch the wire. Then we realized we could pass the current down a chain of bodies. The length of the chain could be increased if we all got wet first.

Somehow we survived.

I remember my father being on an unpleasant phone call of some kind. I wanted to distract him. I threw myself from a bike (not mine) onto the concrete in the hopes of breaking a bone. My bones seemed to be made of steel. I didn't break any bones until post-college.

It was great though. I got out of work.