"Mom, you ate me???"

Another childhood story today.

Marlea Foster, my dear mother, is quite a unique individual. She wanted my sister and me to maintain our innocent childhood for as long as possible. This included making me wear smocked dress until like, 6th grade (automatic nerd-dom for me), giving me a magic elf that "flew" around the room until age 15 or so, and telling me that I came from her mouth.

Three things: I don't think anyone else on the face of this planet thought for a second that they were born out of their mother's mouth. Belly button, maybe. Stork--a good explanation. But mouth??? I made the mistake of thinking this until age 5 or 6. Boy was I rudely awakened when a friend told me the truth (this was the same girl who told me Santa Claus didn't exist, mind you,and the former realization was worse).

On a related note, my parents decided it would be a great idea to show me my mother's ultrasound one day when I was little. This was back when ultrasounds were black and white and on a VHS and, well, the baby looked like a blob. Regardless, I was shocked and horrified to see that I was indeed in my mother's belly. They claim that I screamed, "YOU ATE ME????" and ran out crying. Similar reaction happened when I found out I wasn't extracted from my mother's mouth with "invisible forceps." WTF.

Now, who had a magic elf until the age of 15? Me. I figured out he wasn't real before then, but my mom made me keep him because my sister is 7 years younger--and how dare I corrupt her childlike belief. I think the moment my dad decided to make the magic elf "fly" and land on my lightbulb in my bedside lamp was the moment I knew he was not real. His legs burned to a crisp and despite the ace bandages my dad wrapped around him, the elf never quite gave me the same sense of magic.

My childhood was interesting, to say the least. What made it even more interesting was that I was spanked with a wooden spoon named "Mr. Woodie" on quite a regular basis. I dont even want to go there right now. My parents still think they didn't spank me enough. I thought my routine daily pop was quite a satisfactory amount. Maybe they should have given the wooden spoon another name.

Until tomorrow,

Edible Baby