#cactilife

OKAY I know these are supposed to be anonymous, but I'm fairly certain I know who asked this. And I'm going to give him what he wants.

TLDR: I didn't know cacti were real until I found out the hard way when I was 8 that they are. It hurt.

Shorter TLDR: I am, for lack of an...appropriate word, an idiot.

I grew up in a very small town of about 700 people. We had one store about the size of a studio apartment that served as a gas station, burger shack/pancake place (that's all they served other than the occasional salad), fishing supply, and necessity store. And no one ever wanted to take care of extra plants because we all had our own farms, so the town had lots of wax plants. They looked pretty and added color to spaces in the home, but you didn't have to take care of them. It was great.

My sisters and I always walked to the store in the morning while my brothers were doing their chores. I had one sister much older than me and one that was just older than me. Naturally, they loved to tease me. We always did this thing where we'd smack the wax plants, namely the cacti, and watch them flop back and forth. You have to understand, kids in a small town are very easily entertained.

This was all great. I had never seen a cactus in real life. We didn't have any on our farm and little eight year old me always fell asleep on car rides. So one day, we went hiking with my mom's uncle and his family (mind you, he's a veteran, a retired fire fighter CAPTAIN, and now works in the oil business.) He's stupid brilliant. His kids are all equally as brilliant college aged students.

On the hiking trail, I was of course lagging behind because I have little legs, when I see a cactus. At this point in time, it was the first one I had ever truly seen and been able to closely study. Not knowing that it was real, I wound my arm back and smack that sucker as hard as I could. It hurt. Badly. But, at this point I'm lagging so far behind no one can hear my heavy breathing and subtle screeches. When I finally got to the summit, my mom's uncle starts to laugh at me because I took so much longer than them, but he stopped when he saw my bloodied had.

He asked what happened. I told him. I remember clear as day this man saying, "now Katie, why would you do that?!" I told him, rather defensively I might add, I had no idea it was real. I tried so hard to be strong and not to cry about the pain. After all it was my fault. Anyway, it has been over 20 years and I have still not lived that down.