Hand/Foot/Paw Prints

When I was young we lived in this old farm house that according to my memory was right next to the freeway, and some sort of office building yet still had a field in the back with a stream running through it. It seems somehow contradictory or wrong but I definitely, kind of remember all those things (or something like them). Anyway, the stream is the reason we've journeyed back to the old farm house. I also had this older brother who was kind of a jerk (although I'm not sure he was trying to be in this particular story but either way, he gets his comeuppance later (that's some foreshadowing for you (I like nesting parenthesis))). On one fine afternoon I was out exploring the stream area in my stylish red galoshes.
The record (my memory) is a little unclear about the details of these galoshes but they may have have Sesame Street characters on them. It's impossible to say for sure but I like to think it was Grover, or Cookie Monster... or better yet one of each, let's go with that. So, here I was exploring my surroundings with Grover and Cookie Monster when my evil older brother came along and decided to show me how far he could push Grover down into the mud. Turns out it was pretty far which, I have to admit, was pretty cool for a minute. Then the novelty wore off and I wanted Grover back. Turns out Grover had grown fond of his new home there in the mud and felt no qualms about letting my foot go and just leave without him. So there we were, Cookie Monster and me just standing there on one leg screaming/crying (Cookie Monster wasn't crying, he's tough). Evil older brother? Gone, maybe for help but, I wouldn't count on it (I think he had Oscar the Grouch galoshes). Eventually Dad, or Mom, or some random adult came and saved the three of us from certain doom and there was much rejoicing.

We now venture from the stream to the driveway of the old farm house. Oddly enough, we still have water. This time it's in a kiddie pool. Man, I was having some fun times in that kiddie pool. I liked the kiddie pool. You know what else I liked? The kitty. So, what could be better than turning the kiddie pool into the kitty pool, right? Now, it is a well known fact that cats don't like water. It is also a well known fact that little kids, in this case maybe 4 years old, don't know well know facts.
Off I went to get the cat and help him get in the water. I successfully got the cat and successfully held the cat over the water but, my drop of the cat was somewhat less successful. He figured out pretty quick what was going on and the specifics of what happened in the following moments are a bit of a blur. I'm pretty sure the cat suspended the laws of physics and gravity as cats often do. I came out of the scuffle a little shaken (ok, I was bawling again), a little wiser (this is how well know facts get to be that way), and with a small paw shaped wound in my left elbow pit (don't act like you don't know where I'm talking about).

For our third and final vaguely related tale we head inside the old farm house to the kitchen. Let me set the stage for you. The players are me, my mother, and my evil older brother. My mother is somewhat upset. My evil older brother is weeping and wailing. I'm in trouble but I don't seem too concerned about it. My mom apparently was determined to help me understand what I had done so that I could feel bad about it. So, she lifted up evil, sobbing older brother's shirt to reveal the damage. Apparently, I had slapped him in the chest (who knows why but I'm sure he deserved it (this is the comeuppance I alluded to earlier)). The damage came in the form of a full, quite distinct, red hand print across his chest. The site of this probably didn't really have the desired effect since I seem to remember just being fascinated that I could do that by slapping him. From then on this scene came to mind every time I saw one of those super special hypercolor t-shirts.

This is probably the only time in my memory that I came out on top in a fight against the evil older brother. I'd like to dedicate the win to Grover and Cookie Monster.

Powdered Soap Pyramids

In the elementary school where I spent the majority of my pre-teen life we had these old school bathrooms. They had great big long water trough style urinals and manual paper towel dispensers that required you to go backwards a little bit before you could turn them again (which doesn't stop kids from using tons of it, they just get good at shaking themselves all over the place while they dispense a paper towel all the way to the floor as quickly as they can). The coolest part of the bathroom though was the soap dispenser, behold:

So basically, here's what you got; There's a main storage unit with this little stick doohickey hanging out of the bottom. If you stick your little hand under there, palm up, and ram the doohickey up toward the main storage unit about half-way up before it stops it'll drop a small deposit of white pixie dust into your hand. Hooray! But wait, there's more. As you're releasing the doohickey back to its original position a second gift of powdery goodness is delivered to your outstretched hand. Oh joy! At this point you have a decision, you can either:

a). wet your hands and proceed to wash with the accumulated amount of pixie dust or

b). pump the magic doohickey another time or two (or 80) just to make sure it doesn't start coming out purple or something... cause that would be cool.

Either way, eventually you get to use the inevitably still white powder to get your hands super clean. Your hands aren't super clean because the powder is made of penicillin or anything, they're clean because the powder/sand scoured off the top three layers of your skin. The new pink skin underneath is the cleanest.

The really cool thing about this soap and its aforementioned dispenser however has to do with a fairly well known glitch in its dispensing mechanism (I've decided that if you took advantage of this glitch as a child you can feel free to consider yourself an "analog hacker"). The glitch goes like this, if you use only one finger to press the doohickey, instead of the intended open hand palm up, the powder packet will not find a welcome home in your filthy palm but instead will continue downward until stopped by some other object (usually the floor, sometimes a sink). Furthermore, failure to bring the doohickey into it fully upright and locked position instead stopping mid packet release causes the dispenser to actually continue dispensing powdery goodness forever (or until it runs out of soap, whichever comes first). The product of this constant stream of powder is a small but growing Powdered Soap Pyramid. Ants will marvel at its beauty and ponder its origins, and the janitor will consider it further justification for his hatred of children.