Mysterious lessons from childhood

[Timsup2nothin]

This thread is for posting and discussion of things you are sure must have taught you something, but aren't sure what. The root premise is this; if I didn't learn something from this particular mostly mundane event, why do I remember it?

I'll give an example.

When I was a wee lad, as my grandparents would say, my family went to visit them on 'holiday' in Chicago. Scare quotes because my family's idea of vacations definitely taught me that vacations suck and as an adult I have heartily tried to avoid them. On this particular occasion we brought an aunt and cousin back with us so they in turn could have a holiday in southern California. I cannot say how old I was exactly, but my sister was still living at home so the cap is ten and my brother was not so the base is seven.

Now, my family had this old beaten down toaster. In its infirmity it was no longer capable of actually pushing hot toast high enough to grab. To get toast from the toaster one had three known options. You could wait, because as the springs cooled down they would slowly regain their springiness and after a while your cold toast would be available. This was flawed. You could turn the toaster upside down and dump your toast out, along with a mountain of cindered crumbs that had been in the bottom of the toaster for who knows how long, many of which would wind up piled on your toast. This was also flawed. Or, since the toast was actually right there just at or below the top of the toaster you could stick it just below the crust with a fork and lever it up far enough to grab and pull out. This was a well known thing to do in my family.

So, one fine day I am making some toast for myself and my cousin. She already has hers, and mine has just "popped" to the extent our toaster can manage so I'm about to pull it out when my aunt walks into the kitchen and loses her mind. She actually pushes me and knocks the fork out of my hand, knocking over the toaster in the process. She is hollering so much that my mom comes running as she is berating me for trying to electrocute myself.

Now, I knew for a fact that my mother has pulled toast out of the toaster the exact same way I was doing, and that my aunt's description of how I was "shoving a fork into the toaster" is crazily exaggerated. I also knew enough about how toasters work to know that any wiring that is live when not actually toasting is way down in a little crumb proof compartment in the bottom because I had at one point disassembled the toaster in an effort to figure out why it was such a pain in the butt to make toast in our otherwise well equipped household.

And yet my mother does not tell my aunt to calm down and quit being stupid, she joins in this "trying to electrocute yourself" jam and throws in some typical "wait until your father hears about this" flavoring.

I'm sure that something in my reaction to this provides some roots for my relationships with technology as well as people, but I've never really been able to pin down exactly what. I do know that it is very close to the only thing I remember from my aunt and cousin's visit, and is most certainly the only thing that ever drifts to mind unbidden or that I really remember in any sort of detail.

So there you go, an example. Anyone?

 

[Zardnaar]

I wasn't allowed to use the microwave by my father. Probably because he thought I would break it. Mother didn't care.

I accidentally used it in front of him one day and after that he didn't care.

The toaster thing I'll use a knife if it's stuck. I think some of the old toasters were dangerous but not 100% sure.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@Timsup2nothin well that story makes it pretty clear why you live in a state with lots of brown people: Browned bread is certainly less frightening than screaming white. Palmdale enables you to relive that experience everyday.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The toaster thing I'll use a knife if it's stuck. I think some of the old toasters were dangerous but not 100% sure.

For the record, the heating coils in a toaster are bare wire carrying current and sticking a knife or fork in there and contacting them while the toaster is actually toasting can in fact get you shocked. That is not what I learned that day, because I did already know that from having disassembled the toaster, but it is something best not left unsaid here.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

@Timsup2nothin well that story makes it pretty clear why you live in a state with lots of brown people: Browned bread is certainly less frightening than screaming white. Palmdale enables you to relive that experience everyday.

I will be relating this observation to my friends tomorrow at church. (COGIC, which is sort of commonly referred to as 'the black pentacostal church') They will no doubt be amused to think that God directed me to our church using a toaster when I was ten.

 

[Birdjaguar]

If they speak in tongues, then you might want to garble it up a bit to protect the guilty.

 

[Hrothbern]

And yet my mother does not tell my aunt to calm down and quit being stupid, she joins in this "trying to electrocute yourself" jam and throws in some typical "wait until your father hears about this" flavoring.

I'm sure that something in my reaction to this provides some roots for my relationships with technology as well as people, but I've never really been able to pin down exactly what. I do know that it is very close to the only thing I remember from my aunt and cousin's visit, and is most certainly the only thing that ever drifts to mind unbidden or that I really remember in any sort of detail.

so... your mother sided up with your aunt

no wink to you while keeping up appearances in her words
no neutral diplomatic
no siding up with you

 

[Timsup2nothin]

so... your mother sided up with your aunt

no wink to you while keeping up appearances in her words
no neutral diplomatic
no siding up with you

Yeah, all of that is undoubtedly significant. I think there's something in it about her just abandoning reality that registered deeper, but I can't quite pull it to light. I know that in the navy I was notorious for not trusting anyone else to fix things...rooting around here...in a crisis I just assumed that they would forget how things actually work...that tracks...not totally sure where it winds up, but it does seem to show up there at least.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Sisters have weird relationships not often well understood by men. I don't get involved in how my sisters interact.

 

[Hrothbern]

Yeah, all of that is undoubtedly significant. I think there's something in it about her just abandoning reality that registered deeper, but I can't quite pull it to light. I know that in the navy I was notorious for not trusting anyone else to fix things...rooting around here...in a crisis I just assumed that they would forget how things actually work...that tracks...not totally sure where it winds up, but it does seem to show up there at least.

my feel on that:
also considering how deep you got yourself in understanding the tech of that toaster at that young age:

You found part of your (developing) identity in truly technical understanding
(a kind of ultimate truth or reality seeking).
(... also... a kind of taking control... and a kind of taking responsibility)

And your mother... by ignoring that... by preferring "her" social reality between adults... perhaps clouded by panick.... IGNORED something that was the very being of your identity at that time in your life (and later as well).

And result driven perfect tech thinking is always at odds with "good enough" tech thinking combined with more focus on social group process.

That's a tension that has never disappeared in my being.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

my feel on that:
also considering how deep you got yourself in understanding the tech of that toaster at that young age:

While pondering this it strikes me as extremely weird that...

My gf has a double toaster that can make four slices at a time. The right hand pair does not work properly and only toasts one side of the bread, heating the other side lightly. So the timer on that side is set a bit short and when it pops we flip the bread around and put it back in. The total time is just a little bit longer...just about long enough to butter up the first set of toast and be ready for the second to pop, so it isn't really much of an inconvenience.

But how has the kid who took the toaster apart at seven to find out why it didn't work right grown into the man that has let this toaster slide for fifteen years?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I once put out a toaster fire. I'm not sure how it happened (I just walked out and saw it in flames) but I think the bread got stuck and the heating element ended up igniting it. Unplugging it didn't make it go out and I didn't think throwing something electric in the sink was a good idea so I used the fire extinguisher on it.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

This thread is for posting and discussion of things you are sure must have taught you something, but aren't sure what. The root premise is this; if I didn't learn something from this particular mostly mundane event, why do I remember it?

I'll give an example.

When I was a wee lad, as my grandparents would say, my family went to visit them on 'holiday' in Chicago. Scare quotes because my family's idea of vacations definitely taught me that vacations suck and as an adult I have heartily tried to avoid them. On this particular occasion we brought an aunt and cousin back with us so they in turn could have a holiday in southern California. I cannot say how old I was exactly, but my sister was still living at home so the cap is ten and my brother was not so the base is seven.

Now, my family had this old beaten down toaster. In its infirmity it was no longer capable of actually pushing hot toast high enough to grab. To get toast from the toaster one had three known options. You could wait, because as the springs cooled down they would slowly regain their springiness and after a while your cold toast would be available. This was flawed. You could turn the toaster upside down and dump your toast out, along with a mountain of cindered crumbs that had been in the bottom of the toaster for who knows how long, many of which would wind up piled on your toast. This was also flawed. Or, since the toast was actually right there just at or below the top of the toaster you could stick it just below the crust with a fork and lever it up far enough to grab and pull out. This was a well known thing to do in my family.

So, one fine day I am making some toast for myself and my cousin. She already has hers, and mine has just "popped" to the extent our toaster can manage so I'm about to pull it out when my aunt walks into the kitchen and loses her mind. She actually pushes me and knocks the fork out of my hand, knocking over the toaster in the process. She is hollering so much that my mom comes running as she is berating me for trying to electrocute myself.

Now, I knew for a fact that my mother has pulled toast out of the toaster the exact same way I was doing, and that my aunt's description of how I was "shoving a fork into the toaster" is crazily exaggerated. I also knew enough about how toasters work to know that any wiring that is live when not actually toasting is way down in a little crumb proof compartment in the bottom because I had at one point disassembled the toaster in an effort to figure out why it was such a pain in the butt to make toast in our otherwise well equipped household.

And yet my mother does not tell my aunt to calm down and quit being stupid, she joins in this "trying to electrocute yourself" jam and throws in some typical "wait until your father hears about this" flavoring.

I'm sure that something in my reaction to this provides some roots for my relationships with technology as well as people, but I've never really been able to pin down exactly what. I do know that it is very close to the only thing I remember from my aunt and cousin's visit, and is most certainly the only thing that ever drifts to mind unbidden or that I really remember in any sort of detail.

So there you go, an example. Anyone?

Okay, I don't have much experience of relating to sisters - real, kin sisters, at least, since I never had any. The time living with my dad's girlfriend with her four kids (I got along with the two younger ones and the older boy; the older girl and I couldn't stand each other) was not one in which I was actually considered part of the family by anyone but the younger boy. And when my mother remarried, I suddenly acquired a step-sister who was over 10 years younger and we had very little in common. We weren't close.

So here are my speculations regarding the incident you've just related.

I'm guessing that your mother and aunt trusted each other, at least in most ways? That each of them would absolutely trust the other to look out for her kids and protect them? So when your aunt thought you were going to electrocute yourself (never mind if she was right or wrong), your mother, on some gut-level based on years of interacting with her own sister, trusted her reaction and reacted herself as though you really were in danger.

That's one possibility. Another is that sisters can be godawful competitive (something I've observed in a couple of friends' families). They compete over all sorts of things I can't relate to (never having had any real sisters). But once kids are part of the equation, the competition to be The Best Mother is either at the top of the list, or close to the top. In this scenario, it's possible that your mother didn't want her sister to think she was a bad mother, so she reacted in that way to save face. Obviously I don't know your family and am only guessing, but is it possible that if your mom had shrugged and said, "Oh, don't worry, he knows what he's doing and won't hurt himself" that your aunt would have been shocked and indignant and considered your mom to be a bad or negligent mother?

As for how this relates to your own affinity for technology and taking stuff apart, I'm not sure. But I am offering a couple of possibilities for why your mom and aunt acted as they did (naturally I could be way off on these, but as with any speculations, YKMV).

---

As for my own story...

I have a picture of my 3-year-old self sitting in a cardboard box in my bedroom. The reason I was sitting in it... well, I'm not really sure. My mother was in a bad mood that day and told me to pick up my toys or I'd get a spanking.

So I started to... and then for some reason I can't explain even today, I dumped everything out of the box and sat in it. The toys were scattered around (turns out I still have the ViewMaster and the pictures), and... then my mother came in.

I thought that was it, I'd definitely get a spanking. But she started to laugh, grabbed the camera, and took a picture. I still had to pick up the toys, but at least that day there was no spanking.

I can't blame any cat's influence, because we didn't have a cat at that time. In fact my mother insisted that I was allergic to cats, so I had to avoid them (it took another 12 years before I realized that she was reacting to a one-off situation where it turns out that I can't tolerate long-haired cats, but short-haired ones are just fine).

Anyway, I wasn't even thinking about that until recently, when it suddenly occurred to me that I have a thing for boxes. There have been times over the years when someone has given me something and while I appreciated the gift, I appreciated the box more, because it was a perfect fit for something I needed to put away, or just had a really cool design.

Maddy has a couple of favorite boxes and a cloth shopping bag she likes to be in when she wants some private time. I've told my housekeeping helper that those are not to be moved, as they belong to the cat.

Maybe I was a cat in another universe.

 

[bernie14]

A young brain has many more connections (synapses) allowing for greater experience-driven plasticity

 

[Timsup2nothin]

It's also possible that my mother was just daft. Figuring her out is beyond my ken. Interest probably. What I made of the experience and how it influences me is my main interest.

As a wild guess @Valka D'Ur I bet you have a much greater affinity for the indoors than the outdoors and always have, because I would be really surprised if your three year old self didn't come away from that equating "safe" with "boxed in" as a sort of "rule of life to live by."

As an example of how useful identifying those 'rules' and their source can be, another tale of my internal workings...this one that I have sorted out.

I had this job working at a university; maintenance at the aquatics center. Basically, I was a poolman. Hilariously, they hired me because the athletics department maintenance guy made a career out of explaining how he never had time for anything else because the pool took all of his time. Coaches of the swim teams and the 54 other organizations that paid use fees for various hours on various parts of the facility found that hard to believe since the facility was always in some sort of disarray and demanded relief so a job was created and I was hired to fill it. What makes this hilarious is that once I figured out how the equipment worked (a week) and got it all dialed in (a couple more weeks) the incredibly well designed facility actually took pretty much complete automated care of itself and I really had nothing to do...but I had a student helper assigned to me anyway.

So, he and I had a morning routine. I would pick up a Jamba Juice and the paper on my way to work, then sit in the equipment room with my filters and pumps reading the paper until he finished his morning classes and wandered over to the pool, at which point he would run the daily chem checks and either he or the two of us together would spend an hour on 'the project of the day' and then we would go to lunch. This covered his half day work assignment, and left me free to spend the afternoon breezing around the pool deck and shmoozing the client organizations into renewing their contracts at higher rates since the pools were in so much better shape. Anyway...

He generally arrived and started working during my last bit of daily paper analysis, which was a thorough examination of the classifieds looking for a Fiero to buy. Why I wanted a Fiero I'm not really sure, but I really did, and eventually I found one and bought it. Restoration started fitfully and mostly stalled, but over time there was some progress. Then one day we were in the Fiero on our way to lunch and he said "when you gonna get these seats redone?" Now, that was a thing I had thought about, a lot, and it was one of very few things I didn't actually credit as something I could just do. I would have to pay someone. So even though they certainly needed it, I said "I might not bother with that. It's just a car and I don't want to spend a lot of money on things like that."

Bless his heart, my SA had the guts to say "Don't BS me man. I watched you root through that paper every day for months to find this thing. Whatever it is, it's not 'just a car.'"

So I had to look at myself. At that point in my life the truth was that that car was just about the only thing I had. I still had the truck I had used in my previous pool business, but it was sitting with expired tags in my then gf's back yard so it wouldn't get a ticket because it had a flat tire I hadn't fixed and I couldn't be bothered to keep up the registration. I had enough clothes to fill half of one closet and two drawers in her house. I had a computer loaded with games that had a CD drive that I used to play my couple dozen CDs. That was it. And despite how light I was traveling, the fact that I had a ridiculous job that paid really well, and a small mountain of money from having sold my business to take that job, my truck was typical of everything I had ever owned...sort of abandoned in place and decaying away until I would just get rid of it as junk. The Fiero seemed to be headed the same way, despite all the effort I had put into getting it. Come to think of it, that was more or less how my wives had come and gone...a lot of effort to get them, sort of a lack of maintenance, then they drifted off. Careers? As soon as I developed the skills to be really valuable I was looking for something else to do. Even the business that I had sold, the money had come from running it really...in the end I practically gave it away rather than having to keep dealing with it.

The rule of my life was that there was no point maintaining what I had, because I was just gonna lose it anyway. I sort of knew that, and had tried a hundred different "manage your life" schemes. Day planners, to do lists, books about rich people's habits, recreational drugs, felonious behavior for fun and profit, intense exploration of eastern philosophies...if there was a way to change myself I had investigated it, but that was "just me," the zero maintenance guy with no stuff.

But I had been introduced to this "find the source of the rule" concept, so I looked back through all these repetitious acquire and let go events in my life. LONG list...really long...like demoralizing long. Anyway.

When I was just a tyke, I got a Christmas card from my grandparents. One of those cards with the oval cutout so you can see the face on the bill inside. Abraham Lincoln! It was, AFAIK, the first piece of mail ever addressed to me. Even though my brother and my sister also got one just like it they sprang for three stamps and my name was on the envelope. This five dollar bill was mine. My brother was still at home, meaning that I wasn't yet seven, and I didn't even have my own room. In fact, this five dollar bill was quite likely the very first thing that I ever looked at as being really mine.

I clutched onto that five dollar bill for a month, at least. One day my sister was walking to the store and let me tag along, so I took my five dollars. It would have taken something really extraordinary for me to spend it, but you never know what wonders the store could present so off I went. Interesting, but just store stuff, and when my sister had whatever little groceries she was supposed to get we headed home. I pulled my five dollars out there in the parking lot and looked at it with satisfaction, put it back in my pocket and headed for home. We were about halfway when I reached in my pocket just to touch it, like Gollum with the precious, and it was gone.

My sister, who I love dearly, walked me all the way back to the store. About half the trip from our house to the store, the half closest to the store, was through a patch of undeveloped desert where a bill on the wind might catch in a scrub bush, and I checked them all...downwind all the way to the street that she wouldn't let me cross to keep looking. I searched probably half a square kilometer, bush by bush...and I decided that I would never, ever, invest myself in something that could just disappear ever again.

So, knowing that that was a decision that *I* had made, I was free to make a different one. I did restore the Fiero, and enjoyed great pride of ownership for several years. I got another Fiero, with a T top, and restored that too. Fixed up the truck, renewed the registration (without getting arrested for beating up a DMV clerk, but considered it strongly) and used it for a couple years running side jobs. Didn't stay with that gf, but the next one that I acquired is the longest relationship I've ever had with a woman and seems likely to be who I grow old and die with. Did blow off the university job, but hey, there's other early decisions I have yet to recognize that I made that probably account for that.

So that explains my interest in these 'lessons.'

 

[Hrothbern]

While pondering this it strikes me as extremely weird that...

My gf has a double toaster that can make four slices at a time. The right hand pair does not work properly and only toasts one side of the bread, heating the other side lightly. So the timer on that side is set a bit short and when it pops we flip the bread around and put it back in. The total time is just a little bit longer...just about long enough to butter up the first set of toast and be ready for the second to pop, so it isn't really much of an inconvenience.

But how has the kid who took the toaster apart at seven to find out why it didn't work right grown into the man that has let this toaster slide for fifteen years?

smile

You adapted to pragmatical benefits ?

Was this toaster, with this malfunction, already belonging to your GF before you two joined up ?

I dumped everything out of the box and sat in it

When my kids were small I bought as toys those big Lego blocks (something 20x7x5 cm).
Their most favorite use was to build walls around them, making a kind of box,
And yes my cats also loved being in boxes, and the first litter I experienced was in a box with some woollen shawls standing at the floor of a cupboard.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

smile

You adapted to pragmatical benefits ?

Was this toaster, with this malfunction, already belonging to your GF before you two joined up ?

Oh yeah, toaster has been here longer than me. There is a great air of workability around the problem, because on some level I know that if all the toast popped at the same time half of it would sit getting cold while the first half got buttered.

 

[Zelig]

I was... five maybe? My uncle told me not to stick my finger in his mouth. I stuck my finger in his mouth. He bit me. I learned not to stick my fingers in people's mouths who've told me not to do so.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I was... five maybe? My uncle told me not to stick my finger in his mouth. I stuck my finger in his mouth. He bit me. I learned not to stick my fingers in people's mouths who've told me not to do so.

That's mysterious?

 

[Zelig]

Now, my family had this old beaten down toaster. In its infirmity it was no longer capable of actually pushing hot toast high enough to grab. To get toast from the toaster one had three known options. You could wait, because as the springs cooled down they would slowly regain their springiness and after a while your cold toast would be available. This was flawed. You could turn the toaster upside down and dump your toast out, along with a mountain of cindered crumbs that had been in the bottom of the toaster for who knows how long, many of which would wind up piled on your toast. This was also flawed. Or, since the toast was actually right there just at or below the top of the toaster you could stick it just below the crust with a fork and lever it up far enough to grab and pull out. This was a well known thing to do in my family.

One method I use with old toasters is to put a thumb on the top of the toaster so you can grip under the handle with your fingers and forcefully eject the toast which you then grab out of the air with your other hand.