Two Strange Things From My Childhood

    I had a wonderful childhood growing up in rural, agricultural, and wooded Southern Indiana, but thinking back on it, I remember a couple of things that I now find very strange.  

    One concerned dragonflies.  As a very young kid I hung around with the local kids who were just a bit older.  They of course were a source of much knowledge for me, a lot of which was bunk.  One thing they told me was that dragonflies were called “Snake Doctors”  because when a snake was sick or injured, a dragonfly would find it and cure its injuries,much like a doctor, thus the name.  I accepted that as fact for a long time during my early childhood.  I have always wondered how and where such “information” originated from.

    The other strange thing I remember from childhood was a habit of my Uncle Bill, who all of us kids idolized for being “cool”.   Bill, or “Bud” as he was known, was always chewing gum, and would often offer some to us kids.  The strange habit our Uncle Bill had was that when he got tired of chewing the gum, he would take it out of his mouth and stick it on the back of his ear.  There it would stick until he wanted to chew the gum again, and then he would remove it from the back of his ear, put it back into his mouth, and start chewing it again. 

    Of course, us kids would follow his lead, and do the same thing with our chewing gum.

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