The Mind Fuzz Moments

In true ‘I have no job and therefore nothing to do’ fashion, I have decided to update my blog again. Yes, twice in two days. I’m spoiling you. This post is going to give you an insight into some of the ‘mind fuzz’ moments I have had in the past 22 years. To me, a ‘mind fuzz’ is a moment of seemingly innocent genius that totally clouds your usual sane self. A mind fuzz usually lasts a few reckless seconds in which you make a terrible decision that seems foolproof, only to realise you have seriously. Fucked. Up. A ‘mind fuzz’ is that moment as a child where you think it’d be really funny to move your friend’s chair out the way as they sit down, only to watch them fall backwards and crack their head on the solid concrete floor. It’s the idea that seems fail-safe but in reality really, really sucks and only illuminates the fact that you make terrible decisions and need a full time carer with you to supervise your daily activities. My life is a constant stringing together of mind fuzz moments so I’ll just include a couple of particularly stupid decisions I’ve made that stand out to me:

1.       The Soap Thing – As children, every single one of us will have pretended to be sick at least once in order to stay at home and watch day time telly in our PJs. I’ve heard many different methods for persuading parents that you are truly sick, ranging from holding the thermometer to a light bulb to pouring cans of diced carrots down the toilet. In true Lotte fashion, however, I could not be content with just pretending to throw up. No, I had to actually endure the actual process of being sick. For that reason I decided to eat a bar of pink soap. I’d remembered accidentally licking a bar of soap once so knew it tasted awful and was likely to have the desired effect. Seemed pretty simple at the time... turned out that vomiting pink foam through your nostrils is anything but simple. The soap thing quickly went from being a simple method to ensure I didn’t have to go to school to a very real fear that I’d forever look like a rabid dog. Safe to say I did get to stay home from school. Safe to say it was not worth it.

2.       The Phone Call Thing – I need to make it very clear that I have always been a good girl. I’ve never had a detention in my life and I always do my homework on time. I’m a good girl but this is going to make me sound like a bad girl, which is not the case.

      Remember how funny it used to be (and possibly still is) to prank people? In the days before internet became a staple part of your phone contract, if someone left their phone lying around we had to rely on basic hilarious jokes such as changing the names around in the phonebook or texting rude messages to the phone owner’s relatives.

      Once in sixth form, my friend and I had a true mind fuzz moment. One of our friends left his phone unattended and, not knowing how long we had to concoct a plan of genius, we quickly decided to ring his mum pretending to be an angry teacher who had confiscated her son’s phone due to finding porn on it. This provided at least 3 minutes of pure hilarity and I’m sure we felt very proud of ourselves. It was less funny, however, when his mum turned up at school demanding to talk to the head teacher about why a member of his staff was going through her son’s phone. Our daring prank quickly turned into a crippling fear that we were going to be found out and punished for our crimes. Luckily, the owner of the phone did not tell on us and I have been able to continue my life detention free, but it was a very close call.

3.       The Finger thing – I’ve lived next door to my two cousins for my entire life which has meant that as well as having one real brother, I also pretty much had two other siblings. Although this made for a brilliant childhood in which I always had someone to play with, it also meant that I had three different people to fight with instead of just one. I

       In one particular incident me, my brother and my male cousin decided to gang up on my female cousin. We were young and a yob mentality took hold and we decided to lock her in her own house because it was funny and one thing led to another and we cut her finger off. Yeah. Obviously it was totally accidental but what had initially started as a fun game of tug of war with the front door ended up with a severed finger and a bout of plastic surgery for my cousin. Luckily the doctors were able to attach the finger we had so viciously removed from her hand but it definitely served as a warning that trying to lock someone in their own house is neither fun nor clever.

4.       The Tree Thing – You probably wouldn’t think it to look at me but I actually really enjoy activities such as paintballing, obstacle courses and treasure hunts. Although I’ll probably whine about how cold I am and how much I need a wee, I love getting dirty and being a general tomboy (except when it comes to camping. Camping can go to Hell). To this end, even in my most recent years if I’ve ever come across a good looking tree, I have felt a need to climb it.

      When I was about 16 I decided to climb a tree in my cousin’s back garden because there was a net at the top that I wanted to jump down from and scare my brother. I know this doesn’t sound like a particularly normal activity for a 16 year old girl but in my head it made perfect sense. I’d climbed the tree hundreds of times before and knew exactly which branches to go for. I hadn’t, however, considered the concrete blocks at the bottom that were neatly covered by a smattering of autumn leaves. Climbing up the tree was fine (I’m a pro tree climber), but jumping down resulted in cracking the bones in my ankle. Rather than executing my plan of pure brilliance to scare the shit out of my brother, I ended up on crutches, having to explain to people that I behave like a ten year old boy when I’m not in polite company.

5.       The Concrete Thing – My primary school was the kind of place where parents liked to ‘chip in and help’ wherever they could. This meant very successful Christmas fayres and Harvest festivals in which children would bring homemade bread and cakes that looked like works of art. When I was in year 6 the parents all clubbed together to raise money to build a new play area on the school field and as well as funding the project, they also decided to build it with their own bare hands. Imagine their disgust after hours and hours of working in the rain to create something wonderful for their children to play on, only for me to wander aimlessly across the newly laid concrete. For reasons unknown even to me I wanted to see if the concrete was still wet but instead of just prodding an edge with my finger, I felt a need to literally embed my own feet in it. I could almost hear the thought process of thirty different adults weighing up whether anyone would notice if they buried me in the concrete. Apparently the footprints remain today. The legacy of my mind fuzz moment lives on.