In some ways, I was an averagely smart kid. I'm told that when taking the test to see if I should go to pre-K or straight to Kindergarten, I was asked which way a ferris wheel turned, to which I responded, "Which side are you standing on?" I went straight to Kindergarten when the teacher thankfully confused my early development of sarcasm with intelligence. Otherwise, I was stupid.
Stupid, dumb, gullible...all of the aforementioned. I was that. I made stupid decisions and believed stupid things.
Cousin A and I picked what we thought were beautiful plants one weekend we were on the Outer Banks. We brought our findings back to the house where Uncle Bubba told us we were going to jail because it was illegal to pick sea oats on the Outer Banks. They hold the dunes together, see. I was terrified the rest of the night that he, as a police officer, was going to call other police friends and put my 8 year old butt in jail for picking sea oats. I seemingly couldn't escape my dark future confined in solitary, gazing longingly out of the barred window at the blowing plants in the breeze, constantly reminded that I had single-handedly contributed to the destruction of the entire chain of barrier islands on North Carolina's east coast and wondering which of those pretty plants would land the next little girl in a Jem shirt and bright blue bangles in the slammer for the complete ruination of a community.
And that was probably my least dumb. I was at least lied to in that instance.
The Outer Banks also has a large rabbit population. While frolicking in the dunes alone, probably after having lost yet another game of King of the Hill to my brother who was a dude and 3 years older so duh, I came across what were most definitely rabbit eggs. I scooped them up in my tiny hand, intent on having pet rabbits of my own at home, which my parents would, I'm sure, be totally cool with. So I take the rabbit eggs to my dad and say with unrestrained glee, "Look Daddy! Rabbit eggs!"
My poor father. Here he is looking at his doe-eyed overjoyed little girl, undoubtedly immediately sullen that though once thought to be somewhat intelligent, his daughter was actually on the borderline of being too dumb to walk and was standing there not only oblivious to the fact that rabbits are mammals and thus do not hatch, but she's unwittingly presenting to him a handful of rabbit crap and she's quite excited about it. All of his hopes and dreams of her capitalizing on her love of space, geology, volcanoes, and other extremely cool science-based professions, for which you must be incredibly smart and able to understand calculus (and the difference between poop and eggs) vanished into thin air and he realized that she was likely to become a 30 year old administrative assistant.
Did I grow up and prove to my understandably worried parents that the "rabbit egg" incident was just the adorable mistake of a small child? No. On yet another weekend at the beach, Brother was off riding his bike. He came back to the house with one of his legs covered in blood and what appeared like a gaping hole where his knee used to be. Apparently he hit a rock and flipped over his bike, leaving him with red socks that once were white and a leg covered in iodine. After offering him an Icee pop, Cousin A and I decided that we were going to go look for something. Something that we couldn't believe we hadn't thought to look for before.
We were going to find the skin that once covered his knee.
We went around and around Section E, to no avail. We did not find his knee skin. I'm sure the two girls on Strawberry Shortcake bikes looked completely normal pedaling away, eyes looking straight at the ground, scouring every flake of mica in the asphalt.
We also thought the driftwood in Section E was a pirate ship wreck. Cousin A and I probably shouldn't have been allowed to be off alone at any time because it's painfully obvious my rational thinking skills were not where they should have been and she would have been too small to care for both of us when I made a stupid decision that put us both in great peril, particularly around all that water, sand and empty houses.
Above all that, one of the hardest times we've laughed didn't happen on the Outer Banks. Nay, this comedic and idiotic wonder took place at my regular house. Playing in my room one day, we had become bored with perfectly normal toys. Instead, one of us had the genius idea to put stuff on the ceiling fan and then turn said fan on "high." It started out with popsicle sticks. We turned that ceiling fan on and watched those things fly and we thought it was great. Then I thought it would be even funnier to put mousse up there (hair product, not dessert). Now, mousse shooting off the ceiling fan was hilarious. Well I ran out of mousse. What did I still have? Suntan lotion. With self-tanner. We've never laughed harder in our lives watching that liquid shoot around to every corner and crevice of my bedroom. 20 years later, there are still suntan lotion stains on my dresser, mirror on the back of the door, and on the slats of the closet door in that room. That was our fun. Suntan lotion on the ceiling fan, forever staining the walls, closet doors, bedroom door, and any other surface of that room. My mom was displeased, but we couldn't find it in our hearts to be sorry.
But honestly, what's to be expected of a child who thinks it entirely appropriate and functional to clean up cat poop stains on the carpet with her brand new bottle of Vidal Sassoon Air Spray?
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