I like to tell people, "Normal is just a setting on your dryer". And then sometimes there are moments where I think to myself, "I am a rather strange bean."
Not that I'm complaining, no not at all! You see, I thoroughly enjoy being a rather strange bean. It certainly provides one with an interesting repertoire of stories to tell, should one ever become bored for some reason. And I have a lot of those weird stories.
A lot.
I'm in a story-telling mood tonight, but I don't feel like freaking anyone out, so I'll tell two of the ones closest to "normal".
Fire is your Friend!
So earlier this winter, I had a bunch of my friends/siblings over at my house for somebody's birthday. It might've been mine, I can't remember. (There's a lot of us.) Anyway, it was really really cold outside, and gross and wet, and not nice weather at all, really. Well, unless you had a cup of hot tea and a good book, but that's beside the point. The point was, it was super chilly outside and my dad was really busy working on something he had to get done for his job. He's usually the person who starts the fires in the fireplace, and I tend them and keep them from going out. (Earlier that week, I'd spent an entire day keeping a fire going because it was so cold out.) So since my dad was busy, I decided that I'd build the fire in the fireplace before everyone got there!
Don't laugh. It wasn't a disaster!
So Dad walks me through the basics of what I needed to do to get the fireplace ready (where the thing to open the flue was, for instance) and I went out to the back yard to collect firewood. Okay, first of all, it was as dark as all getout and the woodpile is in the very back of the yard by a line of overhanging trees. Second, it was cold and windy, and I was out there with just a flashlight and a wheelbarrow. Not fun. Especially when you start hearing creakings and cracklings in the treeline in front of you that you're just sure aren't the feral cats or the wind, and you're thinking, "Well, it's probably not a crazed raccoon or a sneaky bobcat like that one time," as you shake out each individual log before putting it in the barrow. (I've learned by experience that bugs like to get into the bark, and if you bring them into the house, you find them later and it is very unfortunate for everyone.)
By the time the my older brothers got there, I had the logs in the fireplace and some kindling lit, but it was having a hard time catching. One of the guys sat down in front of the hearth with me and we just started shoving wadded-up magazine pages and wood shavings into the flame, because he told me we needed to make something like a bed of coals to help the log catch fire.
Did I mention we were doing this with our bare hands?
No seriously, we were actually shoving the paper into the flame with our hands. I cheerfully told my mother about this later, and she said, "Why?!" I have no idea what I was thinking at the time, but my answer was, "Because pain is impractical."
So there you go: a little weird.
Ice is not Nice.
Later that same winter, there were several snow days at my school. Now, down here in the south, "snow day" could mean anything from "a light dusting of white powder" to "three inches of ice covering the parking lot". This time, it was the latter. The first day was fun, spent in snowball fights and hot tea, and I even went sledding for the very first time.
Yeah, that's right, I'm in my twenties and I'd never gone sledding before.
As I've learned, a chicken feed sack works pretty well as a sled! Although, I preferred my giant tupperware lid. I slid down a giant hill several times, then the last time I fell off the sled and went rolling the rest of the way down with my hat going the opposite direction. Cold and wet, I went back to the dorms, shook out my coat and hat, and went right back out again with my brothers and sisters for a massive snowball war, after which none of us could feel our hands.
The second snow day consisted mainly of hot tea and homework, catching up on anything we might need by the time classes started again.
By the third snow day, I was going absolutely stir-crazy. As I'd mentioned before, there was a good two or three inches of solid ice covering the roads and parking lots, and I was not confident enough to take my car over it to go anywhere. I spent a lot of that day flopped over my bed complaining that I was going mad. Then, that night, my RA came dashing down the hall and announced that she was going skating in the parking lot...sans skates. My sisters and I joined in, slipping on flat shoes and running out to find that the long, thin road linking the parking lot at the top of the hill to the parking lot at the bottom of the hill had suddenly become a modified ski slope. A group of us were taking running (or in my case, waddling, as I was wrapped up in a blanket) starts and then "skiing" down the hill on just our shoes. On either side of the narrow road were ditches filled with giant snow drifts, which made convenient landing places when we fell down.
I started out mostly falling off midway down, but after four or five tries, I was able to pick up speed and coast all the way to the bottom, turning sideways and skidding to a halt. It was really fun, and I couldn't help but feel very slightly Olympic...even though I was wearing oversized sneakers and wrapped in a fluffy pink blanket because I didn't want to put a coat on.
Then, while I was at the bottom of the hill, some girls decided to sled down...
...sitting in either side of a suitcase.
In my haste to get out of the way, I slipped on the ice halfway and did a faceplant on the road. I ended up breaking straight through to the pavement...with my face. I remember seeing stars, as it were, and this kind of shocked moment of "What the heck just happened?!" You know, when you hit your nose, your eyes water. So I'm sitting on the ice in a state of semi-shock, trying my darndest not to cry in front of everyone because it didn't hurt that much! I mean, yeah, my brain was definitely telling me that I was in pain, but my face was so completely numb that I couldn't feel it. I looked up and everyone winced.
When everyone winces when looking at your face, that's not a good sign.
I couldn't hear anything out of my left ear for forty seconds, and my twin sister practically dragged me back inside because I couldn't walk in a straight line, which was hilarious. I got inside, and, oh! Surprise! Blood all over my face! I'd busted my lip, scraped up my chin, and had a huge gash on my nose. Quite honestly, I should've gotten two black eyes out of the deal as well. Meredith went outside and packed a bunch of snow into a plastic bag and made me hold it on my face (which hurt a lot, by the way), and the next morning I looked like this.
Only there was more blood than that.
I didn't realize until the next month that I'd actually broken my nose, but since I reset it myself, it didn't go crooked or anything.
So...yeah...weird stories of weirdness.
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