The Story behind the Lesson Learned: Part 1

So, when I posted this I was asked by one of my friends to give details of some of these life lessons learned.

Well, here is the first one:

We were very poor growing up and when you are poor you have a very twisted view of what makes a person rich. For instance, I assumed that girls with braces must be rich... I don't know why on earth I thought that, maybe it looked like money in their mouth (and I am sure any parent out there who has paid for braces would have to agree with that) or maybe I thought all that glittered was gold. What I do know is that when me and my sister would play house we would, sometimes, roll up pieces of tinfoil and line them along our teeth and then we would talk like valley girls and flip our hair. Silly, I know, but, hey we were like 5 and 7 or something (may have been 10 and 12).

Well, sometimes while talking like a valley girl the tinfoil would begin to slip in between my teeth and that is when I found out that biting down on tin foil is not a good sensation at all... (shiver).

The next one about me getting my sister to smell my feet...

I was such a tease. (I know, who would have guessed, right.)

Now, remember, we were poor... ya, that is the reason for the plastic tennis shoes and polyester socks. I don't know if they were hand-me-downs or just the best we could find at the local thrift store. I just remember they were brown and ugly and made my feet sweat and stink immensely. So, I guess I thought if I had to suffer in my plastic shoes I would at least let Jessie suffer the consequences of my shoes... I would take my shoes and socks off at night and sit on the floor and smell my feet and go on and on about how my feet smelled like strawberries... I must have been a VERY convincing actress because she would believe me and come smell. Poor thing. I was like the big sister that should have been a big brother... that's how much of a tease I was. The funniest thing about it is that I would do it the next night and say that this time they smelled like watermelon... she smelled them again.

I am pretty sure that I cured her of smelling anyone's feet no matter what the claimed scent may be.

I hated going to school and I was often sick for real so it wasn't too hard to fake sick because I was usually sick anyway. But, sometimes it took a little extra convincing, so one day I try heating up the thermometer on the heater in my room. My mom had made the mistake of putting the thermometer in my mouth and then leaving to take care of something else. So, while she was gone I laid the thermometer on the heater... When my mom saw my temperature she started to freak out. I could tell this wouldn't be good and I didn't want to fake so well that I would have to go to the hospital so I came up with a lame excuse and went to school anyway. (I am pretty sure my mom knew I was faking anyway.)

So, with each one of these posts explaining my life lessons, I, of course, will remember other funny things at that point in my life so here are a few:

We had a big, soft, bouncy, old, brown chair in our room that me and my siblings would jump onto from the top bunk—man, that was so fun! (We weren't supposed to do that.)

We would slide on sleeping bags down our stairs. (We weren't supposed to do that either.)

We used to sneak down the hall way late at night and hide behind the antique record player that was at the entrance of the front room and watch TV shows that my parents were watching when they thought we were asleep. Eventually my mom would get up to get the bread out of the oven or some bottles out of the canner and we would get caught because the entry to the kitchen was from the front room.

What are some sneaky things you did as a kid?