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Baby Shower 07/26/2003

Dscn2587.jpg	"Let's talk about babies!"	Dscn2571.jpg	What a nice banner.
Nice Spread	Dscn2567.jpg	The reading of the stories	"Who's that baby!?!?!"
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I asked everyone to bring a funny story from their childhood. They were then read out loud, and we had to guess which story belonged to which guest. Here are a few samples.

I grew up on a dead end street with a lot of kids. Once little girl named Kristin, who was about my age, had a little sister named Tammy, who was about 5. One day Kristin got hit by a car and went sprwling down in the street.

It wasn't a serious accident. Kristin was crying a lot, but she wasn't hurt at all. Still, all the parents from the neighborhood gathered around the fallen Kristin, and all the kids in the neighborhood gathered around the parents, since this was the most exciting thing to happen in the neighborhood since Mars. Keller freaked out and tossed all her living room furniture onto the front lawn.

Anyway, for some reason I felt the drama of the moment could use a little heightening, so, in the silence between on of Kristin's tiny shcoed sobs and the next, I turned to her little sister Tammy and said, "Tammy, your sister is going to DIE!"

As soon as I said it, I realized what a stupid thing this was to sya. So did my Dad, who was hunched over Kristin. He spun around and swatted at me, then sent me to my room for the rest of the night.

My Childhood Story

My brother and I would climb up the stone chimney of our house to get on the roof of our house. This was when I was around 10 years old.

One day while the folks were away, we had climbed on the roof. Suddenly, we see our car coming up the street. My brother reached the chimeney first, and I realized that I was going to get caught. Rather than let that happen, I ran and leapt off the roof, over the cement patio slab ( but just short of the split-rail fence ) and landed with a somersault roll. Inexplicably, I then ran upstairs and dove in bed, pretending to take a nap - as though that weren't suspicious in itself.

Still, I didn't get caught.

In fourth grade I was waiting outside my homeroom for the previous class to leave and I saw the kid sitting at my desk, Teddy Neal, reach in and swipe my big orange calculator pen. I was very shy but I knew I had to say something so I went to Mrs. Anderson and told her what I was.

Mrs. Anderson said "Teddy wouldn't do that!", then she grabbed him by the wrist and told me to follow while she walked us both out the door towards the principal's office. Halfway there, Teddy reached into his pocket and silently raised the pen so Mrs. Anderson could see it. All three of us stopped in dead silence. Mrs. Anderson got very angry, turned to me and yelled at me for putting my pen so close to the edge of the desk, then told me to go back to the room while she marched Teddy to his punishment.

This is not a funny story, but I just want to say, take that Teddy Neal.

I went to a catholic grade shcool and was quite a tyrant during the 5th grade (actually most grades)

One particular time that stands out in my parents memory is the day they got a call to come and get me as I had been suspended for gluing the 5th grade nun to her chair.

Elmers glue was used as these were the days before super glue. Probably a good thing. I held the "honor" of being the first child ever put on suspension from my grade school. My folks still remind me of this...

My parents took me to a fair that had a lot of kids in attendence. One of the events was a tricycle race. I was both excited and confident as my tricycle was the largest on the block and I regularly beat the neighbor kids when racing tricycles. There were probably 50-100 kids in attendance for the race at the fair. Alas, my tricycle was not the largest there, and I was by no means the oldest kid. About 3/4 of the way through the race when it was clear that I was outclassed, I stopped racing and pouted. Clearly, Lance Armstrong must have been racing that day.

When I was about 12 years old, I broke my left arm.

My friend, James, and I had been building spaceships out of Legos, and were running around my basement with them, pretending to fly. Somewhere along the way, I dropped a Lego behind a chair that was sitting right in the corner of the basement. I crawled behind the chair, and was propping myself up by putting my elbow on the wass, and my hand on the back of the chair. I think James thought it would be funny to scare me while I was behind the chair - he ran and jumped into the chair, which squeezed my arm between itself and the wall. In the process I broke both bones in my lower left arm, just above the wrist.

I knew the arm was broken right away, and my mother knew something was wrong as soon as I yelped behind the chair. Oddly, I was immediately in charge of the situation... I commanded my friend James to fetch ice in a wet towel and my mother to call my Dad and then the doctor ( at least that's how I remember it).

When we got to the hospital, the doctor told me that I could either be awake or asleep while they set my arm, and asked what I preferred. I told him I wanted to be "as close to dead as possible, without actually getting there." I woke up in an ace bandage/splint sort of arrangement, which unfortunately didn't allow for cast signing. Six or eight weeks later I was out of the splint and back to full speed on the playground.