Looking back, I made a lot of foolish choices as a kid...

1983, age 4- despite warning of random redhot fire ant hills, I chose a red hot fire ant hill as the best location to sit down and tie my roller skates (in Red Hot Fire Ant Hill World Capitol, Ft. Worth, no less.)

1988, age 9 - soon after teaching myself the 'thrills' of riding a bike with no hands, I chose to make a 90 degree left turn...sans hands. And a few seconds later, sans two front teeth.

1990, age 11 - My parents had recently purchased a ridiculous vhs video camera. I call it 'ridiculous' because it was gigantor in terms of today's cameras, and I am a video snob now...deal.. Anyway, being the budding filmmaker, I was not camera shy. But I was shy in public. Especially in school. Always the teachers' pet, my mother thought my classmates should know the real me. What defies explanation and reason to me now, is how she actually convinced me to make a tape showing them just how *special* I was...and then pursuade my sixth grade teacher to pull together an all sixth grade assembly and force them to watch it.
Oh yeah, you read that right.
Now let me explain the events of this tape. The oh-so-apropos title? "Bethie's 3 Talents". My first 'talent': baton twirling. Second: cheerleading. Third: drumming. The beginning of the tape has me twirling my baton in some 11 year-old gay-fashion, then I drop it and start doing some cheer (I was a cheerleader that ONE year and apparently I claimed that a as a talent) (I think the title on the label of the tape was already written, so I had to throw something else in there). I then I ran over to my new drumset and played. Of course I had only been playing drums for a year and suckkkked. Then I had the bright idea of doing all three at once!! So with one hand I'm twirling the baton, singing some retard cheer and hitting the cymbol with the other hand.
THE EPITOME OF TALENT.
So after the tape was made, I showed it off to my family and we all had a good laugh. "Bethie, you should really show this to your class tomorrow"
"What? Why?"
"Bethie, people really need to see the REAL you."
"Okay Mom, you know best."

Okay now wtf, seriously W.T.F. was I thinking? Because sure enough the next day I went to my teacher and told her that I made this tape that I would like to show to everyone. And being that I was her favorite student, she obliged. There happened to be a sixth grade movie later in the day, so it seemed like it was perfect. The rest of the day I was all nervous. "Wow they are really going to like me now!", I thought. "Now that they will see how 'talented' I am!!"
And what's even worse is at the time I had the biggest crush on my classmate Danny. Danny did not like me. (God knows why, I was so freakin' normal!) *side note: at the end of the year, I signed Danny's yearbook, "you had your chance and you BLEW IT!"
Anyway, finally the time came to watch the tape. We all went into the music room. My teacher made an announcement that I wanted to show everybody something. I put the tape in and anticipated everyone expressions in excitement. My stomach was all in knots as I thought this would surely raise my social status. Everyone would see how funny I am, and goofy and "talented".
No one said a thing. They were all like 'what the ...."
It wasn't until just a year later in my Jr. High grown-up home-ec class that a former classmate came up to me and asked, 'yeah so what was up with that tape you made us watch last year? We all thought you were so weird."

1991, age 12 - During my math class our teacher reminded us to put our name and date on top of our homework as usual. Except this time, she joked 'put your name, date, life history, you know the norm'. Hahaha, math teacher made jokey.
So I had the bright idea of actually doing that, I wrote my name, date and just put 'I was born in Salt Lake City, Utah...' That's all I put. I mistakingly assumed that she would remember her attempt at humor when grading the papers later. Yeah, not so much. A few days later my teacher called me up to her desk. "Ooooooh", everyone moaned. "think of another talent there, Beth?" someone else mocked.
My teacher showed me my paper and said that my math teacher was very concerned, and wasn't sure why I had written that. They had somehow concluded that since I was so shy, that I was perhaps trying to communicate to them.
...That I was mormon.
...Because I was born in Salt Lake City.
That ditz forgot her own lame joke! Not only that, but the woman was stereotyping me because of my birth place!
I was mortified. What was I supposed to say? "No, you see she joked that we should write our life history, haha, oh never mind".
So I didn't say anything except it was a mistake and I wasn't mormon, and I didn't remember why I wrote it.

1993, age 14 - after a lot of 'peer pressure' I decided that I should take that first step into 'teenage-hood' and skip my first class. Of course no one dared me to do it, or even knew about it, I just felt it was a rite of passage that I put onto myself. After much deliberation on my part as to which class to whore, I skipped my dreaded freshman 9:15am algebra class. Instead of doing something cool like walking to the nearby McDonald's, smoking pot in the woods with my cool senior boyfriend, or even going to the library, I somehow decided hiding in the ladies stall for the 45 minute period would be the 'coolest'. I congratulated myself on doing something uber-awesome and extraordinary. I was always the 'teacher's pet', and here I was being the rebel, without any other cause other than to just do it.
'Oh Ms. Olsner', I thought, 'how foolish you are going to look when you call my name and find my empty front-row seat!'
"I bet she's out sick today" Bobby whispers.
"No, she's probably visiting a relative" Sue retorts.
NOOO you fools! I'm not! I'm a mere 50 yards away squeeling into my hand as to not give away my mischeif!
Now in order to successfully pull off this step into coolness I had to come up with some sort of valid excuse. Or some realistic-looking pass. Of course all of that didn't occur to me until the next day when she asked where I was, and where my pass was. THAT'S when I realized I had forgot that vital step. My kick ass class-skipping looked even more pathetic when I didn't even make something up. I just said that I wasn't there. She told me I had 'detention', which meant washing the chalkboard. I have to admit that I thought I earned a little bit more street cred by waltzing into class declaring that my abcence was NOT excused.
"OOOhh, who is that kickass rebel? Is that Beth?! Boy is she talented!.