3/31/2006 - 1984

A clear memory of Miss Brenda's class comes in the weeks before Easter 1984. I was sick for a week or so, running a fever, leading up to Easter. I came back to school on the last schoolday before the Easter break. It might have been a Thursday. I don't remember if Good Friday was a holiday in those days. The main event that day was a procession of sorts around the school property. All the kids had an egg with a sticker on it, and since I had been sick all week, I didn't know the first thing about why they had those eggs and where they came from, I just knew I had to get me one as well. I saw fit to solve that problem by mugging another kid, saying hey, that's my egg, and then taking it. I got away with it, only to find out that if I had been more patient, I would have gotten my own egg from one of the volunteers.

That summer I went on my first foreign vacation. My parents had left my brother and sister with my father's parents, and took me with them on a train to Freiburg in Southern Germany. My dad was working with the Dutch railways, so he had family coupons for free travel throughout Europe. We didn't exploit them nearly enough in my opinion. Anyways, in Freiburg we took a tourist bus to the town of Simonswald, where we moved into a vacation camp, consisting of wooden cabins about twice as big as the thing I was born in.

All I can provide are a bunch of loose memories of the trip. I remember a lot of walking through hills and mountains, learning to say hi, thank you, and more of that in German, a swimming pool that was crawling with hornets, and on the campground there was a small water hole for all the small kids, such as myself, to play in. The only problem with that was, that there was a tractor travelling back and forth thru the water hole every ten minutes or so. We always had to step aside. I don't know this for sure, but the tractor driver must have retired at an early age and then moved into a mental institution.

My most vivid memory of Simonswald involves apple juice. During the fortnight we spent there, my parents had me drink a lot of bottled apple juice. Then on the final whole day of our stay, they had bought a bottle of cider, that looked exactly like those apple juice bottles, and on top of that, they had forgotten about getting me my apple juice. What happened next should be pretty obvious. I wanted my juice, and couldn't have it. When I saw the bottle of cider I kept persisting I wanted that, and my parents kept trying to convince me it wasn't apple juice. In the end my perseverance paid off, and I got my first experience with alcohol. YUK! It probably has nothing to do with it, but I still don't drink more than a quart of alcohol every three months or so!

After the summer I ended up in the part of the school known as Timotheus, in Miss Astrid's class. During that time, my life sort of went downhill. At four, and also at seventeen by the way, I still wet my bed, and other kids were slowly losing that habit, so in the end I was the smelly one. I wasn't without friends, but I did get beat up a lot. I was no longer happy at school.

I also developed an autistic obsession with a certain jigsaw puzzle depicting a cottage with a bunch of cats. In the end I could complete it within two minutes almost with my eyes shut. The source of the obsession must have been the fact that no one else was interested in jigsaw puzzles, so I would be left alone.

The following story I think happened in the fall. For some reason I liked to pull hair from my head. My dad kept telling me to stop it, but I didn't, until one night I had gone so far as to pull out all my hair from the right half of my head. I stopped clean down the middle. It was hilarious, really. Parents of other kids informing with my dad, whether it was some new kind of fashion, etc. Only two months later enough hair had grown back to get the other half cut to the same length.

4/3/2006 - Old memories

Those are some interesting and amusing stories, it is good of you to share. I love the story about mugging the kid for his egg. I remeber my own first experince with alchohol, I was in my unlces cabin in the mountains with my parents and I got my mom to make me a screwdriver, it upset my stomach, and I sitll cannot drink a lot, the most I have is a glass of cider in a pub a couple times a year.

4/7/2006 - Well... good...

I'm not entirely sure it's that good an idea, because later on I'll be telling about some really embarrassing stuff, but hey, it's good fun. I had my doubts when I got started, but I'm very confident I will finish the job now. Never thought it was this amusing...



Edited by dutchboy on 6/11/2007 at 3:06 PM