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We had some neighbors we didn't like when we were children. I don't know why we didn’t like them (maybe simply because some other adults didn't like them, or maybe because when they moved in they cut down a hedge where rabbits had nested), but the cause was irrelevant. Not liking them, we decided to frame them for murder.

Our six-year-old minds hatched a plot. First, we took some petals off a red snapdragon from our garden. We rubbed those against the sidewalk in front of the neighbor's house. The faint, tiny red blotch was indistinguishable from blood. Nearby, we placed a single gardening glove from our shed. Where did this glove come from? Obviously, from a murder victim. Any living person would wear their gloves on their hands.

Finally, the coup de grace. We had a board game called Masterpiece. It had little cards that represented paintings. We left some cards around the neighbor's house. Now they had a motive: They were art thieves!

The only thing left to do was wait. Naturally, cops have nothing better to do than exhaustively walk on foot down each street in a town, eyes cast ever downward for clues for a murder when no one has been reported missing. A dime sized red dot could not escape notice. And if murder was committed in front of someone’s house, that the people that live in that house are the only possible perpetrators is simple deduction.

So, why didn't it work? It must have been because we were too smart. Somehow, we came up with a crime so fiendish that it was never discovered! Talk about criminal geniuses!

When I was about 4 years old, I constantly used the expression, "Howd you know?"

Around that time, we were on vacation around Toronto, and we went on a tram ride. The tram operator told us we were some hundreds or thousands of feet above the ground.

I said, "How do you know?"

He said, "Do you want me to hang you outside so you can find out?"

So I guess he didn't really know.

There were a few dangerous things I liked to do as a child, though I didn't really know they were dangerous.

When I was barely old enough to have any memories, I liked to crawl on top of the stove and turn on the burners to watch them change color. It fascinated me that they would turn red when they were on, and would turn black when off. Sometimes, as I recall, I would drip water onto the burner and observed that the spot where the water landed would have its color turn back to black.

After one such adventure on the stove, I turned the burners off, watched them stop glowing, and proceeded to climb down. But I didn't know that the burners were still hot after I turned them off, and I stepped on one, and burned a hole through my footsie pajamas.



When I was a little older, and adults went shopping and left me in the car, sometimes I would put the car in neutral for a second to feel the car slide backwards a bit (the car was almost always parked on an incline), then quickly put it back in park. By the way, this was the type of car with the shift between the two front seats, not with it near the steering wheel.

I'm not sure how I discovered that that was possible, but I know I wasn't aware that you were supposed to push a button on the shift to get it to move.

After doing this many times, I once put the car in neutral and couldn't get it back in park. I panicked, naturally enough, and pushed it forward as hard as I possibly could. I ended up forcing it back into park, but the piece of plastic or rubber that held the stick and moved in a track was pulled completely loose. The shift looked completely destroyed; I don't know if the actual transmission was affected or not (nor would I probably have known what that meant, in any case).

I did that to my grandmother's car, which might have been somewhat fortunate, because she probably more easily afforded to have it fixed than my mother would have.

On my first day of kindergarten, we all had to sit in a big circle and talk about each other. One person started, and said their name, and something they liked to do. Then, every subsequent person had to list every previous person's name and what they liked to do, as well as add themself.

I was nervous and bored. I don't even know if I ever had to sit in a circle like that before. I sure as hell didn't want to be there. As a result of being bored, or just having too much energy, I was stretching my fingers in turn, by pushing them backwards with my other hand.

The kids went around the room with their likes. "I like to go swimming." "I like to ride my bike." "I like to ride my horse."

I had no idea what I'd say when it was my turn. Frankly, if I had to do this again today, I don't know what I'd say. I don't like to talk about myself. But back then, not only did I have that issue to deal with, I frankly didn't KNOW what I liked. I hadn't had enough experiences.

"I like to go shopping." "I like dancing." "I like riding my bike."

Well, I did ride a bike, but by now more than one kid said it. It seemed like all the other kids either did outlandishly unique or interesting things, or anything I could say was already made mundane by how many times they had been said.

It was finally my turn. I had no idea what to say. I was still stretching my fingers.


"Uh, I like to push my fingers back, like this."



Epilogue:

I told my brother this story a little more than a year ago. When he started his sophmore year in highschool after that, one of his classes started similarly, with the kids having to introduce and say something about themselves.

My brother said, "I like to do this with my fingers." No one had any idea what the hell he was talking about, but he said it was worth it.