First Skill
While musing the other day, I wondered what was the first skill I acquired. What was it that I excelled at early on? It then came to me, catching flies. Not baseball but flies as in insects. While in the alley, on Navy Street, I had watched an older boy catch a fly that had landed on a garage door. I immitated what he did and caught a fly. This at the age of five or six, can't remember which. I became very good at it and never missed. Once caught, it was obligatory to rip off a wing and throw the fly to the ground, smetimes stepping on it and sometimes not.
Of course, other boys could catch flies but sometimes they missed. Not me, I was perfect and took quiet pride in doing it so well. It did not occur to us to have a contest although the radio did announce a contest as to how many flies a person could swat in one day. I remember an announcement that somebody had swatted over two hundred and some of us boys had discussed how they could prove it. Not that it was a big deal to us, just idle curiosity.
How it is done. The hand is placed in front of the fly and slowly brought closer to the fly. When about five inches from the fly, a quick, snatching movement is made and the fly will elevate into the hand. (A fly takes off flying backwards.)
It became a habit, whenever I walked into the alley, to walk over to the garage door, catch a fly, rip a wing off and throw it to the ground. I think I did this until I grew up, at about seven years of age.
And your first skill was what?
posted by Marcel at
1:01 PM
7 Comments:
You were grown up by seven!!! You must have had the shortest childhood on record.
My first skill was crying. It started with my first breath and continued well into adolescence. Pyle will tell you I was very good at it. I was so good I used it as a weapon to get my own way. I don't know if I was pro class because I had nothing to compare to since all my siblings are older than me.
By
John Beauregard, at 5:16 PM
John, you took the words right out of my mouth.Even though Marcel was so good at seven, he got better, as the years went by. Some might say, he is perfect now.
By
patb, at 7:05 PM
I never learned any real skills when I was younger, I learned a lot of skills in the years I have been married though.
By
patb, at 11:27 PM
I remember the first skill to which I aspired but did not attain until I was over wanting it. I wanted to shake out a sheet and have it fall over the bed and not just into a lump at the end of my hands. We always made beds with a partner at that age and when we partners were not getting along Ma would come over and do that magic wave and the sheet would almost tuck itself in.
I think my real first skill was cake baking. The whold family got the advantage of that one.
By
paulette, at 2:13 PM
John, you are right, a better phrase would have been, I outgrew it.
Paulette, we are some bad cakes until you finally developed that skill. I remember the upside down plates on the cake dish.
By
Anonymous, at 7:14 PM
Why would anyone want to catch a fly? Did you not know where that fly had been? My first real skills I would imagine would have been to cook and clean like my Mother taught me. Mom said at one time, "no one can do windows and floors like you do".
By
cheryl, at 7:16 AM
Cheryl, Why catch a fly? We were not as hygenic as people are today. For some of us, we were dirtier than the fly.
So you remember the floors and windows remark, I remember it too. As I recall it did not make you the family's floor and windows champion. I can't remember once hearing, "Mom, let me do those floors and windows." Do you remember it differently?
By
Marcel, at 10:26 AM
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