Miscellaneous Mish Mash

The way that a young child's mind works can at times be kind of humorous. Although thoughts that are triggered by what an adult may say seem rational and serious to a child (like me in the following instances) later become points of humor. Examples:

• What was said: "Always walk facing the oncoming traffic.
• What I thought: "How can you always face the oncoming traffic when cars are going both ways?
• What was said: "So and So had a miscarriage." What I asked: "What does that mean?" What my mother answered: "It means the baby died."
• What I thought: "The baby must have died because the mother wasn't holding it right and probably dropped it.
• What was said: "There is no end to space." What I thought: As I lay in bed at nights and tried to imagine non-ending space..."nothing" out there forever and ever. I would think about it until I would get this weird feeling in my stomach that almost made me sick. Sounds weird, I know, even to me now.

Most embarrassing moments in my young life:

• When my dad came to my third grade class to give a presentation on Holland where he had served a mission. I had volunteered him but the teacher scheduled him to come about a week after my dad had all his teeth pulled. He didn't back out, but came with no teeth to give his presentation. I knew the kids would either just laugh in his face or laugh at recess.
  
• When I wet my pants in front of the whole class (fourth grade) while wearing those awful long stockings, so everybody knew. I'll explain. I have always been quite shy, more so as a child, so it was pure torture for me to have to give any oral reports in front of the class.This day was worse than most because it was to be on "How Our Community (East Mill Creek) got its' name. I had been struggling to find a book, a person, or anything that might know and could find none. Remember, there was no internet and the encyclopedia just didn't have that kind of local information. We had no school library and the city library was too far away to go...and they probably wouldn't have had any information, anyway. Mother was as frustrated as me, so together we kind of made up our own answer. I stayed awake all night (like I usually did before having to give an oral presentation) and by the time I had to get up before the class, I was a nervous wreck. So right there, in front of everyone, I just wet my pants. At recess I rolled my stockings down so the wet spots wouldn't show so much, but the kids began teasing me with remarks like: "Jonita, why did you roll down your stockings?", then giggle and run away. That was the longest day of my life, and the most embarrassing.
  
• When my mother had shelling peas as one of the games at my seventh birthday party. I was humiliated! The reason? We had just picked a ton of peas from our garden that needed to be shelled in order to freeze. She thought that all those hands at my party would speed up the job. So...she gave a small prize to the person who could shell the most peas in ten minutes. Can you believe that?
  

Spelling words I will never forget:

• I had been sick for a few days and had missed getting the handout of new spelling words and the test on them. When I came back to school the kids said, "The spelling words were really hard and you're going to miss at least two of them. They wouldn't tell me what they were. I was in third grade, and although I hadn't seen any of the words before taking the test, I only missed two of them: "pneumonia" and "business". I have never misspelled them since. When I was in high school, my teacher once said: "I never fail a student on a test because I know the things they miss on a test are the things they will remember." How right she was. Loved that teacher!