Previously I’ve written about matters of vital importance, those things that children take extremely seriously–you know, things like quicksand, favorite colors, and how to stop, drop, and roll.

Well, my childhood obsessions did not end there. I read books like crazy, including a bunch of monthly series like The Baby-Sitter’s Club. I also consumed enormous quantities of television (Thank Goodness It’s Friday!).

Long-running series tend to recycle scenarios, so the more you read/watch the more you begin to believe these scenarios are common occurrences. Well, maybe you don’t, but Baby Sam sure did. I was convinced that, at any moment, the following situations waited right around the corner.

And I aimed to be prepared.

Without further ado:

THINGS MY CHILDHOOD MEDIA CONVINCED ME I WOULD HAVE DONE BY NOW

More extremely specific first aid

In addition to previously mentioned catastrophes such as getting a pencil in your eye or catching on fire, Baby Sam was also convinced that people choke on large pieces of food practically every week, and therefore I must be prepared to do the Heimlich Maneuver. Did I have professional training? No. Did I have any practice? No. But I watched Mrs. Doubtfire a bunch of times so I was definitely ready to step up to the plate.

It was also extremely important that I know how to splint a broken leg or apply a tourniquet (I didn’t say all of my books and television were aimed at children). Also, I was vaguely aware that I should keep candy bars around at all times, just in case a diabetic person had a dangerous sugar drop. You can thank The Baby-Sitters Club for that one.

Survive on my own in the woods

Is every child obsessed with children-surviving-the-wilderness narratives? Island of the Blue Dolphins! Hatchet and it’s even shittier sequel, The River! My Side of the Mountain! The Swiss Family Robinson! Even Stephen King wrote one: The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. She was really into baseball. And she had to fight a bear.

These books taught me that, despite the fact that I never left my quiet suburban neighborhood, I might, without warning, be stranded in the woods, on an island, or even on a distant mountain. In order to survive this scenario that was definitely going to happen one day, I needed to know how to start a fire with sticks, how to account for light refraction when spear fishing, how to build a shelter, and of course, how to splint a broken leg.

Nurse a baby bird back to health

According to my childhood media, everywhere you looked there were baby birds straight up dropping from trees. When this definitely happened to me one day, it was going to be impossible to simply return the baby bird to its nest. Either its mother was dead, or its mother would cruelly reject it for smelling like asphalt. I was going to have to build a nest in a box and feed it worms until it was big enough to fly away. And then, obviously, it would be my friend, because imprinting.

Call 9-1-1

Okay, this one is a little more feasible and I suppose I have been involved in a couple of 9-1-1 calls over the years. However, my real calls have been stressful welfare-check situations, and not the cool, dramatic, dare I say heroic 9-1-1 calls of my imagination. Nobody ever got trapped in a well, or a basement (we don’t even have basements in earthquake country), or broke a leg (in which case, obviously, you should devise your own splint instead of waiting for paramedics).

What a disappointment.

Win something at a carnival

Clearly, every kid in the country had fall festivals and traveling circuses and holiday carnivals EXCEPT ME. There would be hay rides and elephants and big top tents and also apple picking and also a freak show and an aisle of barkers exhorting you to throw horseshoes or something (I was confused and these were all one massive combo community event). In retrospect, these all totally existed and my parents just never took me, because they knew the truth: carnivals are money pits of ride tickets and game tokens, and you’re never going to win anything because the carnies have rigged the games.

HOWEVER. I’d have liked the chance to try!!

Sneak into a haunted house

Where the hell are the haunted houses, I ask you? Where is that one house that everyone in the neighborhood knows was a total murder house, and now nobody will buy it, so it is slowly moldering away, covered in creeping vines and padlocks, except that there’s a broken window in the back and the sociopaths in your best friend gang won’t respect you unless you sneak inside and bring back a token to prove you did it, except the token is also haunted so now you’re totally haunted.

Where is it?

Snow day

Winter was supposed to mean snow. Snowballs, snow angels, snowmen (snowwomen), sledding, Christmas cheer, snow shovels and snowplows, mittens that you attach to your coat, hats with ear flaps, rosy cheeks, diabetic babysitters trapped in cars during blizzards and desperately in need of a candy bar.

But Baby Sam, you grew up in San Diego. Not the mountainous bit. The bit bordering the desert. We don’t even get snow.

What an uneventful childhood.

I could have SWORN I had a photo of myself as a little kid rocking my “1/2 Italian is Better Than None” t-shirt, but I couldn’t find it!

I’m only half Italian, and I’m third generation, and I was raised in Southern California instead of Back East, which means I make a really good lasagna but would be totally laughed out of the room if I tried to relate to real Italian-Americans. For one thing, I don’t speak Italian. For another thing, did I mention SoCal? Because Goodfellas did not take place at the beach, brah.

(I can make jokes about Goodfellas because my mom grew up around there.)

Alas, my poor children will only have a meager quarter of Mediterranean DNA, which means they’ll probably tan even worse than I do and nobody will mistakenly assume they’re white Mexican. The near-black hair and hints of future cuddly nonna face are the only things I’ve got going for me.

Here are some of the tiny scraps of culture you absorb when you’re basically a white kid but you have lots of distant relatives with names like Antonello and you went to Catholic school through kindergarten.

You get the food, thank God. Most cultures revolve heavily around their food but Italians revolve heavily around their food. There’s a reason that when you google “Italian chef” you get a regrettable sea of pizza and mustaches.

But you guys, there’s so much more than pizza dough. You get cannoli and cassatini, you get calzones and chicken cacciatore. You don’t really understand why somebody would put butter on their pasta when olive oil clearly exists, and when you say you’re making cookies at Christmastime you MAKE SOME SERIOUS MOTHER-EFFEN COOKIES AT CHRISTMASTIME. Even though you don’t know the language, you know enough to curl your lip and yell, “Skeevatz!” when you bite into a lasagna and get a mouthful of hamburger meat. You get to drink wine at holidays when you’re a young teen, and you force it down even though it tastes gross because 1) heehee you’re drinking alcohol, and 2) your nonna will make fun of you otherwise.

In addition to skeevatz you know a confusing mishmash of words that are sometimes Italian and sometimes just slang from New York (and you’re never certain which are which), but in any case bruta and stunad regularly creep into family conversations, and when something is giving you agita you’re tempted to sigh, Ah Jesu.

Oh, and you’re not superstitious, but it doesn’t hurt to make the sign of the cross or the sign of the horns once in a while… just in case.

You know that what happens in the family stays in the family. You know that your siblings will always have your back and you’ll always have theirs, because you all have to be there for each other when your mother is dead. It is super confusing and sad to you when people genuinely don’t like their siblings, so you welcome them into the fold. Seriously, you barely know your friends’ families growing up, but they know every one of your relatives by name and might even hang out at your house without you.

You weren’t even raised Catholic but you somehow absorbed that Catholic guilt anyway. The vaguest promise is practically a blood oath, and once you have kids… hoo boy, you’re basically never going out again.

And finally, it takes a lot to get on your bad side, but once somebody is there… man, you can hold a grudge for life. You’re not proud of this. In fact, you could even say it fills you with guilt. But what are you supposed to do? THEY DISRESPECTED YOU!! Or worse… your mother. D: