Snippets of childhood memories that stuck with you and changed your thinking

[T_R_Oglodyte]

As I was driving last week in Idaho, on a 2-1/2 trip to see a client in Jerome, my mind was wandering and I recalled a couple of memories from childhood that stayed stuck with me and changed my outlook on life. They weren't earth-shattering moments in their own right. I have plenty of those, such as when my family moved from Phoenix to Minneapolis in the middle of second grade. and my new teacher tormented me. Rather, they were just mundane events that stuck with me. A couple came to mind,

The first was in junior high school, when we saw a movie on industrial production in social studies. I remember nothing about the movie except for one scene. It was two men sitting on opposite sides of work table, making galvanized steel garbage cans. Each of them had a stack of blanks next to them; each blank was one-half of a garbage can. The two men each picked up their respective blank, hooked the two sides of the blank inside each other (the sides of each blank were formed so that one side would hook into the other), and then a former would compress the two sides together to form the sides of a garbage can. They would put the formed can on a conveyor belt next to them, and proceed to the next can. They were producing about four cans per minute.

I saw the scene, and decided that that was not the type of work I wanted to do if I had a choice. It was motivation for me to apply myself more diligently to school work.

A second memory that I have was from drivers' education, when I was 16 years old. The course included a section on alcohol. There was a movie There was a movie in which a number of professional race car drivers were put through a course with cones. They first drove the course sober, then they were given two drinks and ran the same course about one hour later. Each of the drivers was insistent that they had performed better on the second run, saying they were more relaxed, more aware of their surroundings, in better mental condition, etc. Yet, not a single one actually performed better on the second run. While I got the message about alcohol, the bigger thing I took from that was how wary I needed to be of what my mind was telling me. As with most married men involved in stable and loving long-term marriages, that is a lesson that has been amply reinforced during my life.

 

[moonstone]

I think the most vivid experience and one that made a lasting impression on me was the summer I was 15. I was too young to get a summer job but my Aunt & Uncle asked me to come and stay with them for a month when their son/my cousin was born as a (paid) mother's helper. My uncle was a new Dr and one Saturday when he was doing his Emergency weekend rotation my aunt asked if I wanted to walk over to the hospital and take him a homecooked dinner. I had visited the Emergency room with him before and knew some of the nurses and other doctors, security was not as strict then. I was just walking into the back of the department when I young boy of maybe 6 or 7 was brought in just screaming, and the paramedics were holding a bloody pad over his face. I hung around for a bit and when things settled down I asked my uncle what had happened to the boy. It seems that the boy had been playing with an elastic band and had it hooked over something. When he stretched it back it somehow snapped and hit him right in the eyeball slicing the eyeball in half. He lost the eye and to this day I can not pick up an elastic without thinking about that poor kid. I also never let my kids or grand kids play with elastics.

~Diane

 

[billymach4]

I think the most vivid experience and one that made a lasting impression on me was the summer I was 15. I was too young to get a summer job but my Aunt & Uncle asked me to come and stay with them for a month when their son/my cousin was born as a (paid) mother's helper. My uncle was a new Dr and one Saturday when he was doing his Emergency weekend rotation my aunt asked if I wanted to walk over to the hospital and take him a homecooked dinner. I had visited the Emergency room with him before and knew some of the nurses and other doctors, security was not as strict then. I was just walking into the back of the department when I young boy of maybe 6 or 7 was brought in just screaming, and the paramedics were holding a bloody pad over his face. I hung around for a bit and when things settled down I asked my uncle what had happened to the boy. It seems that the boy had been playing with an elastic band and had it hooked over something. When he stretched it back it somehow snapped and hit him right in the eyeball slicing the eyeball in half. He lost the eye and to this day I can not pick up an elastic without thinking about that poor kid. I also never let my kids or grand kids play with elastics.

~Diane

Ouch. That's terrible. I have such a sad look on my face now.

 

[Cornell]

I grew up with a strict , buttoned-up , formal father (eg never heard my dad swear. never saw him in pajamas, never saw him wearing just socks or bare feet). He also had the inability to express love or emotions through words. My mother used to always tell me "Your dad demonstrates his love for the family by how hard he works and giving you kids what you need". I never quite believed her.

One day I overheard my dad on the phone with a friend of his. Friend was sharing the news that he (and his wife) would be adopting a baby . They had been waiting for years. Even though I could only hear my dad's half of the conversation I somehow knew what they were talking about. Anyways, I heard my dad offer his congratulations and said "Being a parent is the best thing in the world". He was able to tell his friend what he could not tell his kids. I just felt more "secure" after that.

Fast forward many years later. My dad become a blubbering , sentimental man as he got older. It was really very sweet. I think it took retirement and his own mortality to let the emotions flow.

 

[artringwald]

Sorry, don't have any of my own life changing moments, but was touched by reading this article.

The reason one teacher has kept an empty chair in his classroom for 50 years

The empty seat that sits in the center of Dan Gill's New Jersey classroom was inspired by a lesson he learned at age 9.

www.yahoo.com

 

[bizaro86]

When I was in 1st grade a smoking educator came and talked to our class about smoking. I think there were gross pictures and health discussions and all sorts of stuff like that. But I remember clear as a bell when she said how much the average smoker spent on cigarettes per year, and how it was the exact same amount as the big ad I had seen in the paper that morning for a Disneyland package holiday. At 6 years old going to Disneyland was a huge deal and only a few kids I knew had been, and the idea of going every year instead of smoking seemed genius.

 

[T_R_Oglodyte]

When I was in 1st grade a smoking educator came and talked to our class about smoking. I think there were gross pictures and health discussions and all sorts of stuff like that. But I remember clear as a bell when she said how much the average smoker spent on cigarettes per year, and how it was the exact same amount as the big ad I had seen in the paper that morning for a Disneyland package holiday. At 6 years old going to Disneyland was a huge deal and only a few kids I knew had been, and the idea of going every year instead of smoking seemed genius.

Adult memory - not childhood.

One time, I was working in an office where one of the staff engineers (not in my line of command), was a big guy. Not obese, but simply big. In college, he had been an offensive lineman at a BCS school.

Every day, he went out to lunch. Given his size, lunch for him was more than I ate for dinner. This was ~2000, and he was spending about $15-$20/day for lunch, each day.

I mostly brought my lunch to work with me, but a couple of times I went out for lunch with him, and saw what he was packing away. Meanwhile, while we were eating, he was talking to me about how difficult it was for he and his wife to find a house to buy for them and their two young children. So I grabbed my pen and a piece of paper, perhaps a napkin, and put down the numbers to show how his decision to go out for lunch every day was the difference he was trying to make up to be able to buy a house.

He was almost literally eating himself out of house and home.

 

[ScoopKona]

I have two:

1) Around 8-years old, at my grandparents' house in the very deep south. They sent me to the corner store to buy a flat of eggs and a bottle of milk. I selected my purchases and stood at the back of the line. Roughly 10 women (older -- but anyone over the age of 18 to me at the that time was older) were in front of me. All of them had much darker skin than I did. The casher told me to come to the front of the line. I replied I had nowhere to go and didn't mind waiting. She then ordered me to the front of the line. Since I didn't think it was fair, I stayed put. The woman directly in front of me turned and said, "Please just. Nobody goes until you do."

2) I was at some function for the other side of the family on the other side of the country. My grandparents and a bunch of their peers. Nobody my age (around 9-ish?). So I just talked to random adults. One of them owned the town car dealership. Everyone in town bought their car from him. He confided that although he was successful, his biggest regret was not attending university. He said he felt like he had missed out on what could have been the most important thing in life. "But you're the most successful person in town!"

"There's a lot more to life than money, son."

So I went to school -- pretty much constantly since the 1980s. And I'm OK with my place at the back of the line.