I'm a happy Ten Year Old (give or take a few decades)

[seasprout]

.

I didn't realize how many others shared my fascination with Venus Fly Traps either,

I bought 3 of these today, just cos of this post...3 do ya hear me.!!

[Jillybean2608]

I remember taking my space hopper into school for sports day, it was for one of the races, kids falling over everywhere... no health and safety risk assessment rubbish in those days! brilliant!

[enrich100]

Aha, look again my friend - t'is the Budgie, not the Chopper, not even the Tomohawk. I was too young for the Chopper (being only borned in '75), I swiftly moved onto the Raleigh Boxer after the Budgie, and then I had a BMX of some discription before moving onto a "racer" with - get this, 10 gears!!!

my mistake I did see it was a budgie, I thought you may have graduated to a Chopper, but I now know better, I missed out on the BMX craze but I did have my skate board, no skateboard parks for me though living out in the sticks

[enrich100]

I bought 3 of these today, just cos of this post...3 do ya hear me.!!

Just think how complete your life is now

I Knew I should have bought shares in Venus Fly Traps before posting

Just please remember I can not be held liable for any reactions caused by reading my posts

(Liability - yet another condition of modern life)

[organic]

my mistake I did see it was a budgie, I thought you may have graduated to a Chopper, but I now know better, I missed out on the BMX craze but I did have my skate board, no skateboard parks for me though living out in the sticks

My best skateboard injury (and one of the few injuries to leave a lasting mark) was won out in the sticks.

In the Wexford (Ireland, of course) countryside myself and a few of the kids around there took to carrying our boards to the top of the hill we were on and riding them down... most of the time we would be carving, but one day I decided to straight-line the whole thing.

I absolutely rocketed past the others (who were walking up at the time) doing about a million miles per hour and a couple of seconds later got some pretty heinous speed-wobble. Long story short I hit the road about 30 or 40 yards from the others and they HEARD me hit the ground... slid to a stop and ended up with some nasty (abrasion) cuts on my wrist, forearm, elbow, hip (through clothing) knee and side of calf. The worst of them had black burn marks around them.
Once they started to heal up they looked great against the nice tanned skin I'd got that summer.

I now have a rather meaty scar on my elbow.

Pain is temporary, bones heal and chicks dig scars!

Good stuff.

[Flummery]

there's a few toys I remember wanting but never got,

I always wanted a fort. Not a cowboys and indians one, a saracens and knights one.

Got a dolly house. It's really not the same

[enrich100]

I bought 3 of these today, just cos of this post...3 do ya hear me.!!

Shirl The Girl you know your going to have to buy one now or three if you want to keep up with Seasprout and me

[maytreefrannie]

Enrich, I loved reading your piece, even though I was grown up before I learned about the Venus Fly Trap, much of what you wrote reminded me of my childhood though it was well before yours. Thanks.

That reminded me of something similar that happened to me, though not with a plant

Every birthday and christmas for yeeeeeaaaaars I asked for a Mr Frosty. I never got one, mainly because my Mum didn't want the food dye staining the carpet

Anyway, as I got old enought to know better I (jokingly) never let them forget the 'one toy I'd always desperately wanted'.

Some my wedding day, my folks got me one

The problem was, by then I was a little bit past it, lol so a year later it went to my Mum's charity shop unopened

This brought me back to the '80s, when my eldest daughter really really really wanted a Mr Frosty for Christmas. I thought they were shoddy things and that it would break in no time, and so there wasn't one under the Christmas tree.

The following year, in early December, I heard her say to her younger sister, " I really hope Santa has a Mr Frosty left when he comes this year."

What could you do? Of course Santa produced the goods that year and - yes, you guessed it - it was broken by January.

[enrich100]

I always wanted a fort. Not a cowboys and indians one, a saracens and knights one.

Got a dolly house. It's really not the same

Now the dolls house brings back memories too however not such sweet and inocent one's, lets just say I had become one of the horrible things I think they call a teenager,

I'm not going into full story mode here as I do not want to upset the censors, I will give you the basics names have been changed to protect the guilty

Myself and my best friend Paul oops I mean Brian are at his house after school. Our Action Men (mine the basic bearded army model with a scar on his cheek, Paul's, Dam it I mean Brian's had the Eagle Eyes Model) and his Steve Austin Bionic Man had been away on Tour for several months fighting for Queen & Country protecting the conker tree in his garden from several battalions of plastic Solders.

On the first shore leave they have had in ages, Action Men and Steve Austin come back in the house and are having difficulties settling back to their normal lives, Suddenly they have an answer, In Brian's younger sisters room (at last I didn't call him Paul) there is a Barbie House with several Young Free & Single dolls just sitting around drinking tea.

I will leave the rest to your imagination, lets just say the Barbie's were no longer sweet and innocent as they once were, I can't apologize enough to Brian's Sister for what she came home to that day as we left them in her room to carry on.

It was a long time ago I have lived with the guilt every since. All I can do is ask that you can learn to understand the man you see in front of you now has grown up a lot since then and would never do it again.

[organic]

Enrich...
...on that note I'm going to head to bed where I'll fail to ignore the garden organic catalogue I've just recieved and try my hardest not to wake people up with my laughter!

Oh dear!

[enrich100]

I didn't know Garden Organic Catalogues were that funny!

[organic]

They are selling lollypop sticks for marking your plants...



...I was reading the jokes written on them.

[enrich100]

So they are selling you secondhand lollypops at an inflated price to mark plants and your laughing?
what happens if your writing gets rubbed off, you will have ten trays of why did the chicken cross the road and three pots of whats black and white and red all over

[organic]

It sounds like as good a labelling system as any...

...well, maybe not, but it's definitely the funniest!

[enrich100]

Well I now realise one reason my parents didn't get me a venus fly trap, so far I have killed 2 of them and number 3 is looking a bit weird, I think the problem was our tap water, I now know they don't like lime and our water is very hard, its so hard it has tatoos on both taps, (no not love and hate, it's Love and Hot) I will just see if I can keep this one alive then see if I can propagate some more later in the year. Hopefully the other people who bought plants because of this post have been luckier.