{"id":1914,"date":"2019-05-10T19:10:01","date_gmt":"2019-05-11T01:10:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irenenorth.com\/writings\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2024-04-22T02:46:11","modified_gmt":"2024-04-22T02:46:11","slug":"sorry-gram-but-i-dont-think-i-will-ever-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/2019\/05\/10\/sorry-gram-but-i-dont-think-i-will-ever-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry Gram, but I don’t think I will ever learn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I got to thinking the other day and I concluded I have done a lot of stupid things in my life so far. I’m willing to try anything once. I do things without thinking of the consequences because it seems like a good idea at the time. I’m also dumb.<\/p>\n

At 8 years old, my sister dared me to eat a mud pie. I only had one bite. I’m still not a fan of pies.<\/p>\n

At 9, someone dared me to eat the entire, regular-sized bag of Wise Red Hot Potato Chips<\/a>. I did.<\/p>\n

At 9, I tried to \u201cjump the shark<\/a>\u201d just like the Fonz, except I did it by tying a rope to a friend’s bicycle and tried to skateboard down my street and over a homemade ramp\/jump. The end of my street was a hill. Skateboards in 1979 sucked. It didn’t end well.<\/p>\n

At 11, I built a ramp to jump with my bicycle. The neighbor kids and I tried to jump as high as we could. I had to lie to my mom about all the scrapes and cuts on me and my bike and tell her my bike got stuck in a sewer drain because the cars pushed me to the side of the road.<\/p>\n

At 12, someone dared me to eat cat food. It was Meow Mix<\/a>. I brushed my teeth for three days. Still tasted cat food.<\/p>\n

Also at 12, someone dared me to eat dog food. I refused to eat Gravy Train<\/a> because, ew. I ate Puppy Chow<\/a> instead. Cat food tastes better.<\/p>\n

At 13, I ate the last of the free cherry Popsicles<\/a> playing softball. There was no ice on the ball fields, but there were Popsicles in the concession stands. If you get hit with a line drive during practice or a game, you could get a cherry Popsicle to keep the swelling down. I didn’t mind getting hit in the head because it was a free snack.<\/p>\n

At 15, someone dared me to shove three Drake’s Yankee Doodles<\/a> in my mouth at once and eat them. My reward for not spilling any bits was free lunch for a week.<\/p>\n

At 15, somewhere in a French hotel, I ate an entire bag of fun-sized Milky Way<\/a> bars in one sitting.<\/p>\n

At 16, on a band trip to Canada, no one wanted to eat their dessert, a one-person-sized quiche. Everyone passed theirs to me. They didn’t think I would eat all 12 of them. I proved them wrong.<\/p>\n

At 17, I nearly set my house on fire because I liked to watch things burn. Do not set things on fire in your living room on top of a cardboard box. Cardboard can catch on fire.<\/p>\n

At 18, I chugged an entire bottle of Everclear<\/a> on a dare. No, I do not know how I am not dead.<\/p>\n

At 18, I ate a Runza<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At 19, I drank something called Aztec Snot at an around-the-world party at Acacia Fraternity at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I don’t know what was in it, but it was tasty.<\/p>\n

At 19, I dried banana peels and smoked them. They do not get you high. It was all a lie.<\/p>\n

At 19, I participated in a snowball fight inside my dorm. I turned to run away and hit a cement wall, knocking myself unconscious. I cracked my skull. My mother called me a dumbass.<\/p>\n

At 22, I went skiing for the first, and last, time. My friends took me on a black diamond. I made one run, mostly on my ass, then I took a nap in the car while they continued to ski. I got pneumonia.<\/p>\n

At 22, I made the 21-hour drive from Lincoln, Nebraska to Middletown, New York in 11 hours. My mom was not happy to see me.<\/p>\n

At 23, I ate raw eel on a hot dog bun. Eating each bite twice is not tasty.<\/p>\n

At 24, I parked my red, Ford Bronco II in front of the White House. When I came back, it had a ticket tucked under the windshield wiper and a note that a tow truck was called. I drove away as quickly as possible and never paid the ticket.<\/p>\n

At 28, I drove in Italy.<\/p>\n

At 28, I held Paul’s feet so he could go as far as possible into the crater of Mt. Vesuvius<\/a> and get a stone.<\/p>\n

At 32, I drove in a blizzard on I-80 even though the highway was closed. Technically, they said don’t drive if you don’t have to. I had to.<\/p>\n

At 48, I ate half a pancake and syrup<\/a> flavored Peep because my coworkers are babies. Do not eat these. Peeps of any kind are an abomination.<\/p>\n

At 48, Doug Southard, ad manager at the Star-Herald, asked me, \u201cYou want some?\u201d I ate his Paqui Haunted Ghost Pepper<\/a> tortilla chips. Not a good idea. Everything those chips touched was on fire, from my mouth to my stomach.<\/p>\n

Somewhere in the back of my head is my grandma’s voice going, \u201cWhat the hell is wrong with you?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got to thinking the other day and I concluded I have done a lot of stupid things in my life so far. I’m willing to try anything once. I do things without thinking of the consequences because it seems like a good idea at the time. I’m also dumb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[146,254,257],"class_list":["post-1914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","tag-food","tag-nebraska","tag-new-york"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1914"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3757,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions\/3757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/irenenorth.com\/writings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}