"When I Was Little...": 40 Funny And Wholesome Childhood Stories, As Told By Our Community

When I was little, my dad made me believe I could use the bathroom for him. Before going on trips or something, he would say, hey, I need to use the bathroom but I'm busy, can you go for me, after I would use the bathroom he would then say thank you, I'm feeling much better now.

Growing up, the rule for Saturday mornings was that the first kid up was able to choose what our father made for breakfast. My little brother E (3 or 4yrs old) got up at like 7AM and told my dad he wanted "treaded pancakes" or "shredded pancakes". My brother was still working on speaking clearly and was very upset that my father did not know what he meant. My father woke me up and asked me to translate. So I get up and ask my brother, who is almost in tears. "shtreaded pancakes!" he says. I look straight at my dad. "Waffles," I say, "The boy wants waffles."

I was four or five years old, my grandpa took me to a zoo and I saw a peacock for the first time. My delighted exclamation: "Grandpa, look, a blooming rooster!"

Mom and I were re-painting a ceiling when the dogs went crazy barking. We rushed outside to do battle (this being a very rural area, you never knew if a bear would show up)... and scared the bejeezus outta the US Postal Service guy b/c we also happened to shout PAINT STICK WARRIOR WOMEN! as we ran out wielding our paint rollers.

1st year in primary school. I was 5. At the end of the day everyone had to stand and say a prayer together before we left (Catholic school. Go figure). One day I realised that everyone, including the teacher, prayed with their eyes closed so I just left when they started.

My grandmother took me to the Jacksonville Zoo. I was 6. I was excited to see all the animals IRL that I saw pictures of, or on TV. I knew all their names and wasn't shy demonstrating my knowledge. When we got to the elephants, I caused a big stir. I noticed something odd and yelled out, "Hey Grandma! Look! Loook!! That elephant has FIVE legs! 1-2-3-4-5!" When she stopped laughing and got her breath, she explained that it was a male elephant.

Some background: When I was little, we lived abroad, my dad got a job with my uncle and brought us over too. Uncle and aunt used to live in a compound - I believe the American version is a gated community. My mom used to take us there to aunt's house and my sister and I (f) would go alone to the nearby park to play with the other kids. One day we decided to take a walk through the compound and we went pretty far from aunt's house. A little elderly Indian guy (90% of workforce in that country is Asian) was driving a minivan through the streets and saw us all alone wandering so he offered to give us a ride back home. We jumped on board and he dropped us off at our aunt's. While retelling this story to our mom and aunt when asked how was our day, they went bats**t crazy on us (for to us then unknown reasons). To this day, I shudder to think what could have happened to us if we weren't picked up, or even were picked up by the wrong person. I salute you, random elderly Indian fellow, may your offspring be protected in the same way you protected us that day.

Not me but my uncle.
When my uncle was very young, he was getting dressed and he put his shoes on his opposite feet. My grandmother saw this and said "Owen, you put your shoes on the wrong feet." My uncle looked at my grandmother and then his feet, "but mom, these are the only feet I've got!"

When I was 7 or so, I was singing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (Bette Midler). But I was a little confused on the lyrics. "He's the Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of company b, said he couldn't blow a bugle so he blew me." I had no idea why my mom was laughing so hard.

Well, when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old and was in Sunday school, the girl that was seated next to me had Down syndrome (still remember her name lol and I'm 44 now). One day we were in our classroom and one of the light switches was broken and didn't have its cover, so being the a*****e I was as a kid, I told the girl to shove her finger in the hole, which she told she wouldn't do, despite me insisting, lmao. She never touched the open light switch, and I was so fricking curious that I ended up shoving MY finger in the hole, and because karma is a b****, I got an electric shock and spent the rest of the class with my hand trembling like crazy...

I touched my tongue on a hot toaster to see if it would make that "sizzle" sound. It did!

I was 12 in the 6th grade. Went to a friend's birthday/slumber party. She lived in a small community. Her house was on the corner and her bedroom faced the street, and had giant picture windows that opened to the street. Her house was big and dark, spooky, and very old. Sometime in the early morning all 7 of us were watching some silly movie, we heard a scary noice and we all jumped up and ran to her room jumping on the king sized waterbed. I was second from last on the pile from the top to jump on the bed, well someone jumped right in the middle of me and it caused me to pee on everyone under me. I jumped up and ran to the restroom. I was MORTIFIED, TERRIBLY EMBARRASSED AND SCARED. My friend came to check on me and told me it was ok and no one was mad. So everyone promised to keep slumber party events secret and that was just one of the secrets. Or so I believed.
The next school day, all of my boy classmates knew and I had to relive that over for years. At our high school graduation, the valedictorian brought it up again in her speech. I'm 47 now and have yet to live it down

My mom came out of the bathroom after having done eyebrow pencil, and I said, without missing a beat, "OHH, Maman, you made man eyebrows!" She went back and changed them.

When I was a kid my mom told me I couldn't lay on the floor to watch TV because of the draft from the door. Only, I though she said giraffe and I spent many evenings trying to figure out how a giraffe flattened itself enough to get under the front door and what it would do to make me sick. I was terrified.

When I was 5, we went to a wedding of a relative. My mom explained there would be a ring bearer and train bearers. I thought she said trained bears so as the bride passed I loudly said "Where are the trained bears?" Boy was mom embarrassed.

I was my dad's princess. He indulged my every whim. Of course kids like me are stinkers. First time he took me on a plane to visit my grandma, I was about 5, I insisted he get up, go to the cockpit and tell the captain to "make this plane go faster. Right now." Boy oh boy, once I reached adulthood, he told that story to everyone. I never lived it down, but we would laugh about it. Lost my precious dad in 2012. I miss him ribbing me about it. I'm not quite as demanding now.

When I was about 18 months old I was not feeling well. Sore throat. So my parents took me to the doctor. The doctor got out a tongue depressor. And I apparently was having none of it. I did a snapping turtle impression on the stick. The doctor blinked, then tried to wiggle the stick. The head bobbed but the jaw was locked. My parents were no help. They were rolling and laughing. Doc, "I think I saw enough." Yeah right. I didn't want to be poked.

So as a kid I thought I could parachute from the loft down to the first floor... with a blanket... And my parents would never know. My giant swollen foot and me withering around crying sure hid it all well!

Not me but my brother. One day he was trying to sing along with a BTS song, but he doesn't know Korean so it was all just gibberish. Well, my dad (who speaks Arabic, Spanish, and English) comes into the room and hears this and he starts to yell at my brother. Apparently my brother said like five super bad Spanish words in a row.

My little brother and I dug a hole in the backyard, trying to get to China. Someone told us we could, and we believed for some reason. We ended up hitting and breaking some sort of pipe and the hole filled with water. We didn't know what to do, so we covered the hole back in with dirt, and pretended it never happened. We had a swamp for a backyard for months. Our mother called the water company to complain about a large bill or two before the "burst pipe" was discovered. We never said a word. We were rotten kids. We laugh about it together from time to time. We both have kids that are mostly grown up. We tell each stories of what they think they have gotten away with.