Every family has stories that get retold at family gatherings. They usually start with “remember the time…” and everyone knows them by heart. They may be funny, sad or embarrassing things you just can’t live down. Maybe they’ve been embellished over time. Whatever they are, they’re just as much a part of the family as grandma’s meatloaf recipe. Here are my own top 10 family stories (thanks MamaKat):

Remember the time… you knocked yourself out?
1.  When I was five my BFF said to me, “Let’s teeter-totter!” That sounded like a great idea. Then we were joined by two friends on the adjacent seesaw. We decided to hold hands across so that we could teeter-totter synchronized. Then I slipped and… BANG! That’s the last thing I remember before waking up with my kindergarten teacher and the whole playground surrounding me. It took seven stitches to close up the wound in my forehead.

Remember the time… your sister taught you to write?
2.  I was jealous when my older sister learned to write. One afternoon I bugged my busy mother to teach me how until she finally told my sister to help me. She taught me alright… how to write her name.

Remember the time… you broke your sister’s finger?
3.  My sister and I were jumping around in sleeping bags like they were potato sacks. We fell, me landing with my elbow on the ring finger of my sister’s right hand. I don’t remember her tears or going to the doctors office. I remember resenting her splint because Mom wouldn’t take us bowling that day.

Remember the time… your sister got lost in Disneyland?
4.  Nothing is scarier than when a child is missing. We got separated from my sister in Disneyland for four hours - the longest four hours I’ve ever lived. I seriously thought we’d end up putting her face on a milk carton. When we finally found her (she’d gone back to the hotel looking for us) I was so happy to see her I cried.

Remember the time… Mom lost the radio station contest?
5.  A popular local radio station ran a contest where they dialed random numbers and asked whoever answered, “What music station do you listen to?” The correct response, “KZZP, 104.7 FM, the number one hit music station,” earned you a cash prize. My mother got their call at work. Her response? “KZZP.” Did that count? Nope.

Madison’s antics have made for some great stories. These are her contributions to the list:

Remember the time… you said the most embarrassing thing EVER?
6.  A friend we were visiting had a guest who was, um… very obese. Madison hadn’t met anyone at that weight before. So, she marched right up to him, patted his stomach and said, “Your tummy is full. You ate all of the food.” I hoped the ground would open up and swallow me whole.

Remember the time… you puked at school?
7.  Madison is known for her weak stomach. Her threshold for what is gross is especially low when it comes to food. The policy at her elementary school was to send home any child who threw up, which resulted in many post lunch pick-ups for me. My favorite incident happened in fourth grade when she said she threw up because the boy sitting next to her “put barbecue sauce on his pizza… and ate it.“

Remember the time… you were taken off the playground in a wheelchair?
8. Madison is also known to be overly dramatic about injuries, which makes it difficult to diagnose when something is actually wrong. One day at recess she fell and banged her shin pretty hard. She screamed, cried, and could not get up. The nurse took her off the playground in a wheelchair and called me at work saying Madison’s leg was probably broken. I rushed her to the emergency room but by the time a doctor examined her she’d stopped crying and her leg hardly looked bruised. They didn’t even take an X-ray.

Remember the time… you broke your arm and didn’t know it?
9.  Flash forward to middle school. Madison was outside playing when she banged her right elbow and skinned it. She came home holding her arm funny but when I asked her what happened she said, “Yeah, yeah, I hurt my arm but guess what? Guess what?!” Then she launched into a story about how much fun she had. Throughout dinner she favored her arm but refused Tylenol and hesitantly accepted an ice pack. By her bedtime I’d forgotten all about it. The next morning her Dad found her in the bathroom trying to do her hair left handed – her right elbow was swollen and black and blue. Instead of school we took her to Urgent Care. This time she’d broken a bone, ended up in a cast and yet hadn’t shed a single tear. Go figure.

Remember the time… we surprised you with a total bedroom makeover?
10.  When Madison was in 6th grade she went on a school field trip to Catalina Island for three days. While she was gone we totally redid her bedroom – new furniture and fresh paint with a blue accent wall and funky design. Read about it and see pictures here.

Checkout stories like this and more at MamaKat’s Writer’s Workshop.