sometimes i think about dumb things i did that permanently warped my perception of specific parts of adulthood:

when i was in preschool/kindergarten, probably, i was investigating my parents bathroom (probably just bored lol) and i found my dad's razor. obviously, being a stupid dumb 4-6 year old kid, the first thing you do is pretend to shave like in home alone. the problem was I had no fucking idea how razors work, so i just dragged it across my face... horizontally. on my upper lip. exclusively. a lot. i got cut real bad, and developed a fear of razors for a long time. even now i'm wondering if my reluctance to shave regularly has anything to do with it. probably not. i'm p lazy and dont get out much

when i was in middle or high school, i was asked by my parents, who were not home at the time, to help set up for dinner by preheating the oven and putting in the pizza stone. i (in my infinite wisdom) was unaware which thing in the cabinet was the pizza stone. so, i looked for what seemed the most like "stone"-like. what i grabbed was a ceramic trivet (i think that's the correct term?) that was gray (like stone). it melted in the oven, and ever since i feel like i'm scared to set up and cook something myself.

now for a more useful one: 1-2 years ago, it was early morning before class and i was SUPER tired. i'm talking like i was NOT there. bro you could've waved a hand in front of my face and yelled my name and i'd be like "whuthefuck gegeghhhehuhhhh" it was BAD. so, i go to take my morning medicene before i eat my breakfast. however, i have this weird conditioned response to do it after i finish eating normally. i don't know why i did it beforehand that time, but because i was so tired, i took the next day's medicene without thinking. so yeah, i double-dosed. we called poison control. they said i'd be fine, as i don't take any morning meds that would be dangerous to double-dose on. moral of the story? I now double check before i take my medicene what day of the week it is lol...

do any of you have similar stories? things that warped your understanding of otherwise normal things you do every day in your adulthood (current or future)?

you guys are adults?

i can remember one such occasion. i was driving with my dad back when i still had my learner permit. we were on our way to a basketball game (go nuggets!) and there was this pretty bad accident on the road in front of us. a motorcyclist had gotten hit because someone hadn't seen them or something, in any case - my dad had to give the cyclist CPR while the ambulance came. we later learned that he died in the hospital, he was only like 19 or something.
either way this was as you can imagine pretty resonant with young me, as i truly got an understanding of how truly dangerous an automobile is, no matter how useful it is or how fast you can go. to this day while driving i make sure to give motorcyclists plenty of space on the road and am careful of my surroundings when there's cyclists around. being careful could save someone's life, and you don't want to have someone's blood on your hands, intentional or not.

I'm definitely way more cautious with vegetable peelers after taking off most of a fingernail a couple years ago with a brand new serrated one

one time when i was a kid someone on the phone called me "maam" and uuuuhhhhhhhh ummmmmmmmmmmmmm....... uhhhhhhhhhhh

for me this mostly makes me think of all the parts of our society that are out of sight & out of mind by default... for example, all the municipal solid waste from my county goes to what i think is the largest incinerator in the US, which has been linked to negative health outcomes in the (mostly poor & black) townships near and downwind of it, and of course puts out a ton of greenhouse gas emissions. after learning that, i was a little more thoughtful about the trash i generated, altho ofc a real solution would happen on a policy level - like the "stop trashing our air" bill a neighboring county just introduced - and on the "supply side" of the equation

globalized industrial commerce means that practically anything you consume can have invisible effects anywhere on the planet so that's a whole can of worms

on a lighter note it's been nice to learn more about plants & birds & fungi and be able to recognize more of them whenever i go out. now that i'm noticing more of them i'm excited to see how they grow over time and change with the seasons

I watched that penguinz0 video where he shows you how to wipe your ass properly

luigi64, have you seen the light?

That maintenence job I worked towards the end of summer, those 12 hour shifts have irreversibly changed my perception of time in a way that's hard to summarize quickly

in recent years, between:

- working in brain injury rehab
- recovering from a bad ankle break
- losing some weight

i've learned to not take free movement of my body for granted. it feels ecstatic just to bend, stretch, and swing my limbs about, and i'm constantly noticing it in a way i hadn't since i was a child. i sometimes relive my brief stint in the hospital, hearing that i might not even walk comfortably again - and even sadder memories from the brain injury job - and flex my joints just to feel them work. nothing teaches you to appreciate what you have like facing up to the possibility of losing it

so these days breaking into a run fills me with a kind of giddy libido; every step feels like a precious gift.

oh god i do have many of these, so i limit it just to a few. HAHA




DIETARY RESTRICTION

back when i was just a child...
i visited family in korea one summer. my grandfather took my mum and me to a seafood restaurant, the kind that displays your food alive in a tank. i remember saying: "wow! what a cute little guy!" to an octopus. instantly, it was snatched out of the tank by one of the workers, slammed onto the chopping board, and sliced cleanly into sections.

i was horrified, and refused to eat it. to this day, i still do refuse to buy any octopus for consumption. squid ok! fish ok! but NEVER octopus. when offered (and please know, that when my fellow asians offer me food, they really REALLY want me to eat them), i must strongly refuse. thus i tell this story often.


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KEEPING UP CONTACT

when i was in high school...
there was a girl i met from history class. we were friends, or maybe something a bit more. i still don't know. we went on little dates, shared secrets. after a while i knew she was depressed and that's why she kept missing school in huge chunks. one day she just disappeared.

nowadays, some part of me is hesitant to keep up contact with people. i've reflected on this for a while and i think i can attribute it to this voice in my brain that says "what's the point?" no matter how much i tell myself that friends are precious, and that i should keep up with them, that tiny voice stops me: "why would they stay for you?" what the hell.


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OUTLOOK CHANGE

as of about a year ago...
after getting kicked outta my last place, i stopped viewing my life as Chapters to Look Back On, and started viewing it as Every Day Today.

probably due to two things:
1) the fact that i had to take a certain kind of action every day (jobs, social events, public utilities) to keep myself afloat, and
2) around that time i had just started a new project where i photograph and post one image per day, to prevent the busy days from blurring into each other.

that's a double-edged sword though; that shift in my mentality made me more productive/adventurous by day, and incredibly self-critical by night. i hope to find a way to improve myself still.

my friend burned her entire hand on the oven rack taking out a pizza and had to walk with her hand in a bandage for like 3 weeks. im now more careful with the oven

researching on car accidents and the effects of car centric infrastructure. i now think cars are genuinely evil

yess hate on cars with me! i think they've done an astounding amount of damage... the local municipalities here are trying to move away from car centrism to make things nicer for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit-takers, but it's such a difficult thing to undo. even so i feel lucky to live where i do, other places have it so much worse

I don't always do this but making to do lists and working ahead of schedules saves me a lot of heart and headaches whether it's a personal project or team project. I'm very bad at time management and estimating time needed to do work, so working ahead just offsets a lot of trouble for me.

I've also learned that my company will never care about me and it's perfectly fine for me to work on my own focuses and needs as long as I work ahead and get the work done for the company and get my paycheck

Also, realizing that offering no boundaries in a romantic relationship is terrible to yourself. It's ok to have boundaries. Respect your partner's boundaries as well. You don't cease being an individual living for another. You'll still have separate interests and that's ok.

mind-altering substances

I was playing with bricks when i was 10, i threw one up the air and it fell on my head, now i don't play with bricks

In college I started having occasional heart palpitations. This put me in a weird frame of mind. On one hand, it freaked me out whenever it happened, and would leave me anxious for the rest of the day; on the other hand, it was infrequent (typically only flaring up for a week every few months) and never got any worse, so it was something I could ignore most of the time.

One consequence was that I became even more averse to regular medical checkups than I was before. My irrational instinct was: well, this isn't really that big of a problem, but if I go see a doctor, they'll take my blood pressure and my heart rate and maybe it will turn out there secretly is a big problem and my heart will explode!

Then, last year, I was going through a particularly stressful time -- I'd just finished my first year of full-time teaching, I'd made the poor choice to jump directly from that to working at a kids' summer program where I was frantically grading finals in between activities, and immediately after that I had family in town. And the problem got worse -- I was constantly feeling dizzy and unable to fully enjoy what would otherwise have been a nice visit.

At that point I finally went to see a doctor and explained the problem in detail, and I learned that:

1) yes, there was something weird going on with my heart, but
2) it was essentially benign, so I wasn't in any serious danger, and
3) I could take medication to treat the palpitations and dizziness.

So I started doing that! And I stopped feeling palpitations!

But there was this weird 10 (!) years of my life where walking that knife's edge between "this problem doesn't seem serious" and "theoretically it could be a sign of something really serious" amplified my worst tendencies around scheduling medical appoinments. Don't let this happen to you!

@clona: phineas and ferb contains false advertising, then?!

i remembered some more recently from my music production classes in community college.

I took a music business class, as it was a required elective or one of the options in the course. in this class we did a simulation of a record business, where we had to sign a contract and become "recording engineers" at a "studio" with budgets and artist profiles to choose to "record" with. there was a clause in our contract that was super specific, however. it was written in such an obtuse manner that I don't remember what it was, something about the moon phase and emailing a specific codeword? anyway if you did it, you got an A on something, and nobody in the class paid attention to that portion so it was a teaching moment for sure. Always read contracts, but also one of the things impressed into to us was to always have a contract when agreeing to something on business terms. Contracts aren't intended to be abused; they're intended to clearly outline the terms of an agreement in writing, so they're incredibly useful when money is involved. You should have one, even for benign things!

Another thing I learned was how hard union negotiations are. (Before I tell this portion of the story, be aware that the teacher was by no means against unions and was in the union of teachers for the college.)

Every year he would give the students the option to unionize. However, like a real union, the agreement to form a union had to be unanimous.

After a lengthy debate, we were the first class in his ~15 years of running the game in various forms that actually reached a union agreement with him, our "boss". I had a union contract and everything, though now that the game is done I probably threw it out... but yeah, i remember it being a very messy debate that culminated in a very unique experience.

We also had to wear a tie to "work", I don't quite remember if that was reduced from more "professional" attire being required in the union agreement or not. I do recall that being a big big sticking point though...

OH another thing we had to do in that class was select a real "underground" artist not signed to a label (as an A&R lesson) to put in a tournament bracket and debated who would be the best to sign to a label. I picked coda for the hell of it (had to try so hard to narrow it down from other people on this site lololol) he did not win. i did not think my choice made sense by the end.

all in all an enlightening class that taught me a lot of things i hope to never fully forget