Alarming Activities
When we were kids, our family used to go up to close by hill station every summer for a couple of weeks. We would pack our bags, be up super early, stumble around, and gagging, force the bitter Avomine pill down our throats. All five kids would go down to the car, half asleep… and then we would wait for about 20 minutes while my dad set up our security system. Now to my ten year old self, this was a normal part of leaving the house for a vacation. It was only later that I began to realize that I had never seen anyone else set up such an elaborate security system. All I remembered was my dad winding long strands of wires around the house.
As an adult I found out what was actually going on. This was his system: he would wind wire across all the doors and windows of the house. If any of the doors or windows were broken into, the wire would be stretched taut, which would set off a LOUD recording of a police whistle being blown, and a voice screaming ‘CHOR! CHOR!’ (Thief, thief!’)
Now this is what I call a literal LOL moment. (And no, I don’t think my dad had watched Home Alone at that point. Also, no, I don’t think we even had anything worth stealing in our house.)
My Troubled Childhood
When I was a young teenager, we didn’t have much music. We had a few tapes with songs my dad had recorded from the radio I think, a few CDs that my sister’s boyfriend had given her, and a few other random bits of music that landed up in our house, that we would listen to repetitively. We didn’t have the money to buy music ourselves, nor did we know anything about music. Early musical influences include (shudder) Roxette, Boyzone, Aqua, Jennifer Lopez, the Beatles, Lobo, Mark Knoffler, Dire Straits and other strange bits and pieces.
But it was only a few years ago I realized that one of the songs I loved and used to sing along to was actually about heroin addiction. Yes, I used to sing Alice Cooper's Poison:“You’re poison, ooo oooh ooh, poison running through my veins. I don’t want to break these chains!” Good grief.
Figures of Speech are Just That
I once met an elderly lady who told me she lived just behind my school. She said “I live so close that you could just call my name from the playground, and I’d hear you.”
Oh, poor little Sue. I spent many disappointing lunch breaks standing near the wall at the back of the playground calling “Auntie Aaaa-aanne! Auntie Aaaa-aanne!” with nary a response.
I only later realized that maybe she didn’t really mean that I should actually stand there and call her. Just like ‘a stone throw away’ doesn’t mean you should throw a stone to figure out how close the place is.
When we were kids, our family used to go up to close by hill station every summer for a couple of weeks. We would pack our bags, be up super early, stumble around, and gagging, force the bitter Avomine pill down our throats. All five kids would go down to the car, half asleep… and then we would wait for about 20 minutes while my dad set up our security system. Now to my ten year old self, this was a normal part of leaving the house for a vacation. It was only later that I began to realize that I had never seen anyone else set up such an elaborate security system. All I remembered was my dad winding long strands of wires around the house.
My family about 24 years ago
As an adult I found out what was actually going on. This was his system: he would wind wire across all the doors and windows of the house. If any of the doors or windows were broken into, the wire would be stretched taut, which would set off a LOUD recording of a police whistle being blown, and a voice screaming ‘CHOR! CHOR!’ (Thief, thief!’)
Now this is what I call a literal LOL moment. (And no, I don’t think my dad had watched Home Alone at that point. Also, no, I don’t think we even had anything worth stealing in our house.)
My Troubled Childhood
When I was a young teenager, we didn’t have much music. We had a few tapes with songs my dad had recorded from the radio I think, a few CDs that my sister’s boyfriend had given her, and a few other random bits of music that landed up in our house, that we would listen to repetitively. We didn’t have the money to buy music ourselves, nor did we know anything about music. Early musical influences include (shudder) Roxette, Boyzone, Aqua, Jennifer Lopez, the Beatles, Lobo, Mark Knoffler, Dire Straits and other strange bits and pieces.
But it was only a few years ago I realized that one of the songs I loved and used to sing along to was actually about heroin addiction. Yes, I used to sing Alice Cooper's Poison:“You’re poison, ooo oooh ooh, poison running through my veins. I don’t want to break these chains!” Good grief.
Yes, that Alice Cooper
Figures of Speech are Just That
I once met an elderly lady who told me she lived just behind my school. She said “I live so close that you could just call my name from the playground, and I’d hear you.”
Oh, poor little Sue. I spent many disappointing lunch breaks standing near the wall at the back of the playground calling “Auntie Aaaa-aanne! Auntie Aaaa-aanne!” with nary a response.
I only later realized that maybe she didn’t really mean that I should actually stand there and call her. Just like ‘a stone throw away’ doesn’t mean you should throw a stone to figure out how close the place is.
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