To prelude this, and provide some background I have big family, and an ever bigger extended family, so tales of childhood and what it was like being raised by parents who believed in the traditional method of disciplining children, has also made me realize that my youngest sibling is from a different generation when it comes to when she was born there was at least a decade if not more in age difference. I grew up being a dumb, loud-mouthed, and stupid kid. All that’s really changed is I’ve shut up for the most part. And being from a time where spankings, or “Sasa” as it was known by my mother, American Samoan by birth and grew up on Oahu, was the prima donna method of discipling dumb, loud-mouthed, and stupid kids. My other sister, just under me in the lineup, once busted the skin just under her lip open when me and my oldest brother were running around playing tag on the corner of a chest. Clean through. She could put her tongue through it.

My mother, was not happy, and I’m pretty sure me and my older brother would have earned a lot more than getting whacked on our behinds and having to kneel in room with our hands on our heads for half a day while she took her precious baby to the ER to get her lip stitched. That was somewhere in 2000’s, maybe 2003 or 2004. There are a whole lot of stories I could tell, but needless to say, when you are the mother of five boys, and only one daughter for the longest of times, wishing you had at least one more precious baby girl, punishment was rather heavy-handed when handed out to the boys. Especially when all of them at times wanted to make you tear your hair out.
Now, I mention this because I have one memory that I should definitely not look back on fondly, yet the petty part of me does, where my youngest sister, Emma, let’s call her, was about four to six. Emma, was spoiled.

She knew she could get away with antagonizing her older siblings, and she would cry not out of any actual distress, but because Mama Bear would be right behind her and regardless of what had happened, would take her side. Eventually, this led to a Pavlovian behavior of my sister believing that she could do no wrong. Emma, however, managed to clog a toilet by using to much toilet paper, and instead of letting anyone know, kept flushing. And flushing. Until there was a lot of water from the toilet bowl, on the floor. Mama Bear caught on, and began to frantically call for help from her children to mop the unsanitary mess, and found out Emma was the cause.

I remember being told that if I flinched, it would add another three spanks. I remember having to brush my teeth with a bar of soap for the first time I ever used slut as an insult (and to this day I carefully think about which words I select for insults, the lesson was learned, and I learned what slut meant, me being a stupid boy of ten years who didn’t understand how derogatory it was). I remember dreading ever stepping out of line for fear of earning some untimely discipline.
And it all resulted in me having to choke back laughter as my mother grabbed my sister by the shoulders and began to shake her back and forth half-shouting “WHY” as my other siblings where walking behind her cleaning the mess up.
Ah, years of bowing and scraping to Emma to avoid Mama Bear, and here Emma finally understood the fury of a mother having to deal with her children’s messes. I still laugh about when I’m reminiscing.

And as I think on it and ponder the all the things that led up to it and the questions I ask myself about how parents get less and less strict with each child, I remember another pavlovian behavior my sister learned from the incident.
She doesn’t flush the toilet after she uses it. And in fact, I’ve got a sneaking suspicion she didn’t use toilet paper either for the longest time out of fear she would clog another toilet and witness Mama Bear angry once again.

TL;DR, I grew up in a house where you got you ass beat, and had a sister who younger by ten years who got in the biggest trouble of her childhood by clogging a toilet and I found it both vindicating and hilarious.

Funny story. Thanks for sharing

A guy in my basic training company dropped a live hand grenade. Does that count?

I should clarify.
He pulled the pin, then dropped it.

That counts. Who pulls the pin on a live hand grenade and then drops it?

The kinda guy who doesn't graduate basic.
The sergeant at his lane practically threw the kid outta the pit in what must've been a pretty terrifying show of badassesery

As I get older, I find out a lot of weird stuff about my parents.
There are a lot of spies in my life. Sometimes I reminisce about the younger years of my life with my parents, and they are like "Oh yeah, he was a spy". I asked what ever happened to an old family friend. A spy. Talk about the tailor who would invite my family into the back room and let us kids have orange juice while he talked to my parents. He was a spy. One of my aunt's old boyfriends? A spy. An old work colleague of my mothers? A spy.
I find out a lot of weird stuff about my mum's time in Russia. She's had several run ins with the Night Wolves, a Russian motorcycle club. She knows a lot of people who come on television. Just name drops a famous person she's never mentioned.
My dad doesn't talk much about his life either, so most of what I know comes from talking to my grandma. My grandpa was also involved in some weird stuff. I think most of the spies we meet are because of them, but I can't be sure.

They bring up places that I didn't know they had been. My grandma will say shit like "I remember him! We were at his house a week before he was assassinated. Oh well". I can't ask my grandpa about this stuff because he's dead. When I ask my grandma, she mostly wants to talk about the parties involved, but occasionally I'll learn something weird. I was at my grandma's house this summer, and when I was helping her clean I found weird letters. The weirdness is on my dad's side of the family, my mum's side is pretty normal but she isn't.

*Whistles* That's way more interesting than any tale I can think of. Where your parents and grandparents spies?

I don’t know what they do exactly

I think my grandpa’s job was government related

I just found out that my dad taught english in the czech republic and made a ton of money off of real estate. I had no idea

And that the croatians burned down his office twice