Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach and I created this podcast for English students who want to improve their oral comprehension. As always you can find the transcription of this episode and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. 

Today I wanted to bring you a little more personal and story-telling based episode because I feel like we haven’t had such one in a long time.  And I am very delighted to say that I recorded this entire episode and then found out that my microphone was not on soo…here we go again. 

Do you know those nights where you can’t fall asleep and you just think about anything and everything, your mind is spiriling, you go back to your childhood, first loves and dreams that died, people you no longer have in your life, every mistake you have made and such…everyone has those nights, right? …Right? 

Anyway, a few nights ago my mind brought me back to my childhood and I started thinking about some things I used to do when I was a child and when I look back at it, it was just a little weird. I mean, I didn’t think it was weird back then but now I am seeing it in my head and I tell myself – girl, what the hell? And today, I will tell you about a few of these so you will know what little weirdo I used to be. But I guess, everyone was a little weird in their own way. 

A little grammar window- when I say I USED TO DO SOMETHING, it means that I no longer do it but it was something that I did repeatedly in the past. That is a construction that you can take from this episode.

So, buckle up, my friend. And if you relate to any of this — please send me a message so I know I wasn’t alone in my absolute weirdness.

Let’s begin with the one that gives me chills when I think about it:

Saying “I love you” to my mum before bed — just in case I died.

I mean. Casual, right?

Every night I used to have this routine. Brush teeth, go to bed, and say “I love you, mum.” Sweet? Sure. But the reason was a bit more dramatic.

Once, I saw a movie where there was this little girl and her mum in a hospital. The girl looked happy, cheerful, lively and her mum was smiling. But a few hours later, a nurse came to tell the mother that her little girl died. The mum couldn’t believe it, she said “but..she was just running here a moment ago” and the nurse said: “I know, I am so sorry, she had a heart condition, there was nothing anyone could do”. It was so unexpected. And then the movie was about the way the mother tried to get over it. She threw away the little girl’s things, she burned their photos and cleaned every handprint she found in their apartment. It absolutely shattered my heart. And from then on, I was terrified that I would die during the night. You know, unexpectedly. Like, truly convinced. Yes, I saw a movie and told myself: “Well. That’s it. That’s obviously going to happen to me next. I will die out of nowhere””

So every night I’d whisper “I love you” like it was my final farewell. I basically gave a nightly death monologue just in case. I just wanted for my last words to my mum to be “I love you” Looking back now, I think I was just a very emotionally intense child or just morbid… Probably both.‘

Doing everything three times.

This is where I now think — maybe there was a little something-something going on.

I had this thing where I used to do a lot of things three times. Turn the lights on and off three times. Tap the doorframe three times. Check if I locked the door- three times.

I didn’t know the word for it then, but now I’d say: yeah, some lowkey OCD tendencies. I don’t do that anymore, thank god but I find it kind of funny how it seemed completely normal to me back then.

Writing my name everywhere. With invisible marker.

So. Most kids like writing their name on stuff, right? Possessive little gremlins.

But I? I took it a step further. I had this invisible marker – you know, the one from the alien vitamins? If you know you know – it had invisible ink and you could only see it if you put it under UV light—anyway, I took that one and I wrote my name on EVERYTHING. My books, my toys, my bedframe… every wall, every door in our apartment. It was like I was preparing for a mystery game no one else was playing. But I also wrote it on the glass doors of our cabinets so you could see it there when it reflected the light, so I wasn’t really smart about it. Anyway, I wonder if I could still see it in my parents’ house if I went there with UV light. 

Overdosing on vitamins. Accidentally.

This one’s on my mum a little bit.

Coming back to those alien vitamins, I think almost all of you will know “Marťánci”. I loved those so much.

My mum once told me: “You can have one of these vitamins a day. Just one. You can take care of it.

Well, turns out, I couldn’t.

Because they tasted like sweets. And she left the bottle in my room. So of course, one day I had five. Or so. I don’t even remember. 

Good news: I didn’t die. Bad news: Never trust a sugar-loving child with anything that tastes like candy and is meant to be taken responsibly.

Collecting marbles. And other things. For no reason.

I had no goal, no plan, no particular love for marbles. I just… collected them. They were shiny. That was enough. But if it was a sphere made out of glass, sign me up! I loved the ones that were bigger than the usual boring ones. I still have a full box of them. It is a great hobby to take up space, that’s for sure.

And not just marbles — I used to collect stickers, rocks and even the wooden touristic…I don’t know how to call them, maybe stamps. But I gave that up after a few months because you had to actually walk up a mountain to buy one. 

Anyway, I don’t think this one is super weird as we had a sticker mania in our generation and everyone and their dog was collecting stickers but you know…now when I go through my old stuff, I just see hundreds of things that are for nothing.

Turning my teddy bears into students.

This one is my personal favourite.

I used to pretend that my teddy bears were students in my school. I made them little notebooks, gave them tests, marked their homework. I even got mad at them if they didn’t do it.

Sometimes, I wonder if that’s the origin story of me becoming a tutor. But it wasn’t too far from home, my mum was a math teacher and I always loved how she corrected tests and I always wanted to help. So this was not an unexpected outcome.

But imagine little me, sitting there, seriously scolding a teddy bear for bad handwriting. Like, “I expected better from you.”

Iconic. But don’t worry, I was really young when I did this, I was only 18 or so.

That’s a joke. I was actually 15. 

No, really, I think I was barely able to write when I was teaching my teddies. So 14.

Falling asleep to the sound of computer games.

My brother used to play computer games at night, and I’d fall asleep to the sound of clicking, typing, and gunfire.

Now? It’s a little messed up but to this day, the sound of a keyboard actually makes me sleepy. And I discovered this the hard way when I tried to study at the university library. The silence was broken only by the quiet clicking of other students — and suddenly I was fighting for my life not to nap. It was really hard for me to get any work done there. 

So basically, my childhood trained me like a Pavlovian dog. Clicking = bedtime.

Looking back, I realise how much these tiny habits and fears and imaginary games made me who I am. A little anxious. A little creative. And very dramatic.

And now I want to hear from you! Did you do weird stuff as a kid too? Did you talk to your toys? Counted steps? Paniced about vitamins? Send me a message on Instagram and let me know — or tell me if I was truly alone in this

Thank you for listening! If you liked this episode, please leave a five-star rating and share it with your friends. Don’t forget, you can find the transcript and vocabulary list in the podcast notes. See you next time.