Laundry Day: Imaginary friends were the only kind that understood me

And now your second installment of Laundry Day (I told you it wouldn’t come every week):



 I had two imaginary friends when I was five. They were boys and they were my sons and they lived in my closet. One of their names was Michael and I can’t remember the other one’s name. I guess Michael was my favorite and I blocked the other one out? My mom remembers their names. It’s her go-to story whenever she wants to embarrass the shit out of me. That and telling people I didn’t learn to walk until I was 18 months old. Thanks, mom! Anyhoo, let me check with mom:

“You had two imaginary friends, Michael and Jimmy and they lived in your closet. You set things up for them in there like it was their room. And when they were bad, you would lock them in.”

“So I was a really weird kid is what you are saying?”

”No, not especially. All kids have imaginary friends, you just had two of them that were somewhat ill-behaved. You had a wild imagination a lot of the time...Make sure you tell everyone on your blog that you used to poop your pants while you were hiding under the dining room table! ” *laughs hysterically*

My gaze tells me I am showing off in front of my imaginary sons

Thanks, mom…So mom can embarrass me but she must remember that embarrassment is a two-way street:

I went to Sky View for kindergarten. Christy and I went to the same school but for some reason the kindergarten was closed one day but the grade school was open. So Christy had to go, but I did not. They didn’t even send a note home about this which is crazy, right? They trusted five-year-olds to tell their parents they didn’t have school and they trusted the parents to actually believe their children. Mine did not.

Mom brought me to kindergarten that day after I swore (yeah, I was swearing at five, what up?) up and down that I didn’t have school that day. She didn’t believe me (what parent would?) so she dropped me off in front of the kindergarten. My sister has always been a pretty solid protector so she would always walk me to the door of the kindergarten building. This morning when she tried to open the door, it was locked. I told. You so.

She was a great sister but I don't like the look in her eyes here

Mom was driving away in her snazzy two-door Buick at the time so Christy and I had to run out to the street to flag her down to come back and get me, her honest, trustworthy five-year-old. We caught her, thankfully, and she has been apologizing for that ever since. And boy was her face red when she saw that every single other parent trusted their child and didn’t bring them to school that day. Ha! You would think she would have learned to listen to me from that, she didn’t…

Back in the day when I went to church, a missionary came to speak and she picked me to bring me up on stage and measure my arm. More than likely to measure how large a healthy child’s arm should be and compare it to children of starving countries. Makes sense, yes? Not to me it didn’t. I thought she was going to cut my arm off. Seriously. I thought she was going to sacrifice my right arm to god for some reason and I was terrified as any small child should be when they find out their arm is about to be cut off. Naturally, I couldn’t stop crying.

I was a very shy kid when I was little so mom thought I was just nervous about going up in front of everyone. I was bawling my eyes out in fear of losing an appendage and mom was baffled at to what my problem was. I tried explaining but I couldn’t get the words out over my uncontrollable sobs. My crying grew worse as the time approached so mom had to take me into the restroom, sit me down, and tell me to cut the shit (she would never) it wasn’t that big of a deal and to calm it down. I am also pretty sure I got a spanking* for my ridiculous crying.

I was inconsolable so the missionary chose someone else to cut off their arm and I was relieved to say the least that some other poor schmuck was giving their arm to Jesus. Better them than me. When I finally calmed down I told mom what I thought the missionary was going to do and, immediately, she felt horrible about the whole misunderstanding.  Of course I was crying, mom. DUH!

I cried uncontrollably a lot back in the day so I shouldn’t be at all surprised that she thought I was overreacting. The only photographic evidence I can find is this from my kindergarten graduation:

I am told I cried throughout the whole thing. Couldn’t tell you why. I do know that I am still tormented about my crying jags to this day. No one knows what the hell was wrong with me at kindergarten graduation and, really, no one knows what the hell is wrong with me now. I like to keep people guessing you see.

Next up on Laundry Day; Grandparents…those magnificent bastards.

*To this day I will never understand why parents spank their children to get them to stop crying. Does that not seem counterproductive? And kind of crazy?