Quote from: Ryuichi13 on March 09, 2018, 08:29:14 AM
*When I was 11, I was given a barbie doll. I promptly gave her a mohawk, then melted her head onto the sidewalk with a magnefying glass. I also wanted the barbie camper that was out at the time, just so I could play with it like the boys did with their trucks.
*I hated dolls, but would instead play with plushies. I'd pretend to be a zookeeper, or a circus tamer and make them fight each other instead of do tricks.
I did very similar things to the Barbie dolls given to me. I cut their hair off, painted them with permanent marker and found the material their legs were made of strange so I cut off their feet and some other body parts to see how they were made better. Then I threw them around against the ceiling and caught them again, or I kicked them around in my room to play soccer with them. Those things looked completely wrecked and since I had no interest in dressing them up they were flying around naked on top of that. Those Barbie dolls I had crept the hell out of every girl that my mum invited to visit my room and they were scared that I would destroy their dolls too what I wouldn't have done because I knew to respect other people's property.
I also hated those other kind of dolls that resembled babies and one should play to care for. I got that stuff as a Christmas present and as a birthday present once and I hated those even more than Barbie dolls and had no clue what I was supposed to do with them. I normally used them as a ball as well or just ignored them but one time when I was about to go to my grandparent's place my mum was in a hurry – I was always at my grandparent's before and after kindergarten because my parents both worked fulltime – so she wouldn't let me choose the toys of mine I wanted to take to my grandparent's home but took some for me instead and she took those stupid dolls because she apparently had not given up just yet.
Hence, I later suggested to my grandfather that we should make zombies out of the dolls and paint their faces and make them look like monsters and my grandfather found that idea fun so we did this.
When my mum came back from work and she saw what we had done to the dolls she was shocked and angry at my grandfather because he had participated in this instead of stopped me and told him that those dolls were expensive – I always had high-quality toys which was a waste in the case of dolls or similar stuff I didn't even play with – and she once more was in horror about me. When we talked after I have come out to her she told me that she was often as shocked and disappointed about me as a kid because I didn't show any maternal instinct at all and didn't act like a girl in anyway and she was worried that there was something inherently wrong with me.
Quote from: Ryuichi13 on March 09, 2018, 08:29:14 AM
*I used to catch salamanders and toads in the creek behind my Dad's house and bugs in my Grandpa's front yard (we lived with him for a while when my folks divorced) and keep them as pets.
Quote from: PurpleWolf on March 09, 2018, 08:44:01 AM
Ryuichi, I envy your childhood !
Hey I used to catch frogs as well!!! I loved frogs! And bugs. I always had pet bugs as a child.
I collected and observed insects, bugs, spiders, worms and all kind of animals I could dig out of the ground somewhere as well but I don't think that this is a weird thing at all. I thought that's just something kids do because they are interested about their environment and the creatures that live there. I usually spent my days outside and in the forest and came home looking like the forest. For me it was weird if someone found animals and insects gross or was scared of them. There was this one girl in my neighbourhood whom I loathed and whenever she saw me alone or me and my friends collecting spiders or insects she would freak out. One day she got particularly annoying. I was digging out worms and she was standing behind me going "Ewww, you're so gross! Ewww, you're disgusting! Ewww, don't touch the worms!" the whole time and it was obnoxious, so I took some of the worms, turned around to her and reached out into her direction with the worms, she jumped away and started to screech and run and I chased her through the neighbourhood with the worms in my hand. My grandfather couldn't stop laughing when he had seen that.
I was lucky that it was him who was around that day though, because whenever mine or someone else's mother was around I got into trouble with them because they always were on that stupid girls side and defended her.
My grandfather is pretty chill in general though and even when I got into a fist fight as a kid with some other guys or anything he didn't mind. My mum would freak and try to stop it and my grandfather was like:"That's normal, kids fight and they need to learn to solve their conflicts on their own."
He was also the one to encourage me when I got into trouble for disobeying a teacher at primary school because her rules were completely illogical and just wrong. While my mum told me to obey the teacher regardless because she was an authority at school and I had to my grandpa said:"Bullocks. You've done the right thing. Whenever you think an authority or a rule is inherently wrong and bad, don't obey, disobey and don't blindly follow." Considering that both of them played a huge part in my upbringing I often got completely contradictory advice and I usually went with what grandpa said
