Tell me all about 10-year-old you

I do know that I got my appendix out that year and I really liked Nik Kershaw and Boy George. Also I got a kitten for my birthday.

Before the trip, I was a somewhat-dim, late-blooming, usually cheerful tom-boy who had few fears (other than the dark), few passions (other than glow-in-the dark things) and few interests (other than climbing trees, rollerskating and collecting ladybugs from vacant lots). By the time I returned from the trip, my outlook and intelligence had expanded exponentially.

This was probably because Europe introduced me to so many complex concepts that I'd had no exposure to before : different time-zones, language barriers, people who speak more than one language, buildings which are more than 200 years old, Communism, Socialism, cathedrals, political upheaval, cars with steering wheels on the "wrong" side, foreign currency exchange rates, paper money that is worth less than coins, siesta time and bank holidays, soccer, ABBA, Playmobil, various legends and myths, Renaissance art, lukewarm soda, fried toast and tomatoes, muselix, watermarks, gnocci, anti-Americanism, passport stamps, border guards/searches, holes in the ground called "toilets", travelling by train, travelling by boat, death, the Crusades, Henry the Eighth, relics of saints ...

In an effort to get me to improve my awful spelling and handwriting, (as well as to solidify my memories of the trip) my parents made me keep a diary of my travels. Since I would have much rather been playing with my new Playmobil guy (Robin Hood) than writing in my diary, my diary entries are typically very short, blunt, and incomplete. But, occasionally, I took the time to explain things. Many times, I just draw pictures. My favorite drawing subjects seemed to be coins, stamps, street signs, and campsites. But I also attempted to draw Giotto, the Mona Lisa and myself! Art has been a lifelong hobby of mine since then.

My favorite passage is an observation I made in France : "their movies are just like ours, only spelled differently." Here are some other entries. Some silly, some scary, some profound ...

[note : I haven't corrected any of the spelling or grammar. This is exactly how I wrote when I was 10!]

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"April 4th, 1978 [Belgium]
We went to Brussels then we ate lunch, after lunch we had a yummy waffle. We saw a town hall that had a legend to it. "The desstresed architect". Here is how it goes : a man who worked on a building made a plan for a building. He said "When the building is done it would be perfect." but when it was done, one side was shorter than the other so he climbed to the top of the building and jumped off. Then we had dinner and went to bed..."

"April 6th [France]
...we went into town .We took the subway. Then we came back and I found three friends. They were hard to understand. There was a teeter totter we played on, then they played soccer. I taught them how to play kickball.We had fun playing ball. The End."

"April 8th [France]
We woke up late. Then we went to the pool and swam for two hours. It was 2 noon over here but 6:00 in the USA. Then I played with my friends and ex-friends ..."

"April 13 [France]
We went to a walled city where there are curches and the curch had nice windows. The name of the city was Carcassone.We headed to Spain. We got lost there ..."

"April 16th [France]
We stayed in Nimes Franse where we saw many Roman ruins. We went to the Acqa Duct. Where the water was brought to the city. I saw fifty catepillars in one line going across the street. Ten got run over so I took the catepillars across to the other side. I tuched poison ivy! We went to Avignon. i saw the pope's house (he lived in it a long time ago). It was nice ..."

"April 21 [Italy]
We left Turino (Turin). We drove to Milano where we got a campsite. We took a bus to town. We saw a mall that was 100 years old! We saw a curch with the most statues in the world! We bought a toy bird that can fly! We got little pizzas .I found the pizzas tasted just like at home. That made me home-sick ..."

"April 25th [Italy]
We went to Bologna (Boloney) They were having a parade to rember the war (the second war) we went on to Flornce fast!"

"April 30th [Italy]
We went to the Vatican and saw the Sisteen Chappel and the pope's house. Well, we spent the day there. Then we ate lunch. To tell the truth, we had lunch outside the pope's house. We went to Augustus Ceazer's toamb. We went to a park with many rest areas. Thank godeness! We hobbed on a train to our campsite ..."

"May 1st {Italy]
We got on a pony cart tour. We saw ruins by the donzens. We were rounding a corner when we saw a lot of police come, and more police, we heard two bomb noises. My dad could have sworn that that sworn that the boom were bombs. We got off our buggy and we walked ..."

"May 2nd [Italy]
We woke up and my dad went into town. Mom stayed with us. Mom did the laundry. That's all I can say..."

"May 3 [Italy]
We went to Tivoli Villa that was built in the 1500s. We saw the biggest collection of fountains. We went to Hardian's villas in ruins ... we had just got on the road, we saw armed men with mechine guns behind sand bags. I forgot to tell you about the terrorists. We drove to Pompie. At our campsite we met some kids from New Zealand. their names are Sarah, James and Anne. We played till 10:00! ..."

"May 6th [Italy]
...We saw a rainbow that ended in our campsite. No gold though ..."

"May 16th [Germany]
We saw a skeleton inside a glass coffin, half-dressed ... We saw tiny figures that moved when the clock struck 11:00am, or your time in America 3:00 am. We went to a science museum and saw things that you could push, pull, bend, twist, turn, mix, fix, drope, brake, phone, smell, ring, play...etc.It was really fun! We got back to our camper just 2 seconds before it rained!"

May 24 [Germany]
We went to Dozeldorf. We saw three museums. One was historical and had many pictures of people, places and things. The second was modern. The modern art was neat. The third was the art museum. The art museum had real neat glass.We drove to Hannover. We found a campsite. We saw a poor dead rabbit. I made a grave for it."

"May 26th [Denmark]
We spent the day in Copenhagen. We saw a prade full of people, one was on stilts five feet tall that was Uncle Sam. We saw more shops. We went to Tivoli fountains and gardens. I broke my record! I found three coins on the ground instead of one!"

"June 2nd [England]
Queeny day. We went to a British museum. The museum was famous for statues. Egypt, Rome, Greece and Syra. We went to a small bench and had lunch. We saw stores shops etc... we found another nice museum full of pictures. We saw Buchingham palace. We saw them get ready for the crown serimony. Fireworks and all ..."

"June 8 [England]
In Great Briten they have newspapers for kids! Full of comics like Mini the Minx Play Ball and Rodger dodger. We went to town after some churches ..."

"June 14 [England, last day]
We woke up and prepared for the train to take us and others to Gatwick airport. We got filled out and checked out ..."

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Why?

Mike, I have a fortune cookie fortune on my wall that says :
"do not compare yourself to others, you will be happier."

(I'll ILX ponder if that means you'll be happier if you don't compare yourself, or happier if you do compare yourself ...)

Regardless, I think this is a great thread, and I'm fascinated by all the answers -- brief and rambling, funny and sad, mellow and intense.
Will we have a thread to project what we'll be doing 10 years from now too?

this should read : "I'll _let_ ILX ponder if that ..."

*snickers*

My spelling and grammar is still awful!

:)

Mike, don't you dare!

These are the just the events that made us who we are. We're not comparing...

The question should be: "Will we remember to post about the things we'll be doing in 10 years?"

And yes, I sure hope so.

Welcome back, stripey, you've been missed.

Spot on. No one here will judge you, Mike, only take in your words....and perhaps apply them to their/our own lives.

- The days when we're served sausage stew in the school diner; I dread them weeks in advance, and I can feel the sauce sticking to my tongue and teeth (this I finally tell mum and dad about, and they're really good about it and call the teacher who allows me to go home for lunch those days. Dad comes home from work and makes me fried eggs and hamburgers instead and I love him so much for that).
- Me/my house/my school being smashed by a snowplough, with a loud engine, running me over with those big wheels and crushing me into a bloody mess. I run whenever I see a plough in the winter, heart racing and feet cold.
- My grandma looking down on me from heaven being displeased (she has died and I have attended my first funeral). I talk to her often in bed before I sleep at night, apologising and asking for advise.

My older brother and sister have moved away from home. I miss them so much, and I sometimes write letters to them but it's not the same. The weekends when they come home to visit are wonderful, mum cooks really great food and I cling to my brother like I was five and not ten.

My little sister is six, she's in pre-school. We all treat her like a baby, calling her cute names and pampering her. Of course we can't know that in 15 years she'll be gravely anorexic and still depending on mum to get by. And of course I can't know that I will be blaming myself for treating her like a baby all her life, as I'm sure all the other family members do too - though we won't ever discuss it.

I spend my days reading books. My best friend from last year has found a new best friend, and I try not to care though naturally I do. I hate sports and I feel chubby even though I'm really not.

fuk.

1974-
I am 10. I live in a mobile home park in Southern California.
My mom has thrown my dad out of the house, for good reason.
My little brother is 3. He has severe, emergency-room asthma.

My 30 year-old dad is living in a motel with his alcoholic brother and fucking an 18 year old who will then become pregnant and call my mom to cry about it.
My dad doesn't give us any money nor pay any child support (and never will).
There is no family to help, and no savings account or property.

He buys a TV on credit and forges my mom's name. Creditors come to the door on the weekend, my mom sends me to answer, I hand over the Carte Blanche card to the nice lady who cuts it in half.

When the phone rings I am instructed in the many things I must say in order to not have the family broken up by the state, as I am too young to legally be home alone. I do not want to go into foster care, so I memorize the lies as best I can.

My 30 year old mom, who has a high school education and no life experience is working from 11pm to 7am for $3.65 an hour in an electronics factory.

(Who is at home during the night you may well ask? Me. Taking care of my little brother).

She works from 3pm to 11pm cleaning offices and houses. She sleeps when we are at school.

I mow lawns, wash cars, and clean other people's houses in the neighborhood, where I am a target for every perv.

I change my brother's Toddler Pampers, make the food, go to the store, do the laundry as best I can, and deal with my Dad's drunken visits to the domicile. On the weekends I help my mom clean the day care/preschool where my brother goes in exchange for a discounted rate.

On Sunday we are sent to church on a bus.

That is when I was ten. Just the facts.

I live in the nicest house my family will ever live in, a large ranch on several acres of land in a nice rural community outside of Ann Arbor. The house is set into a hill, with the driveway going down into the garage which is underneath the house and opens into the basement. Our basement is huge, it's a big playroom for my two brothers and me. My brothers are 8 and 12, I'm the middle kid. We have 3 cats and a dog, a basset hound. I hate having to clean up the crap in the yard from the dog, I don't like her much but my dad does. Our back yard has a big hill, at the bottom of it is a sand lot and woods that stretch back to the river. In the spring, the woods get really swampy and patches of quicksand appear; luckily, none of us get stuck in it, though it's one of my greatest fears.

I have to live in a room with my little brother, but it's ok for the most part. It's a big room. We push our beds together at night sometimes and pretend we are in the cockpit of an AT-AT from star wars. I think star wars is possibly the best thing ever in the history of humankind, and am constantly trying to figure out how I can get to their galaxy somehow.

I read non-stop, and always have. My earliest memory is from right before I learned how to read at age 3, looking at words and knowing all the letters, very frustrated. I don't remember how I learned, but knowing how to read made the first 4 grades of school pretty boring, and I had teachers that would get angry with me because I would wander off to read while the other kids were being taught about Mr T and his Tall Teeth along with the other letters of the alphabet. My family didn't have TV because my dad said it would rot our brains. To this day, I think it was probably the best thing my parents ever did for us.

I'm smart in school, particularly because of my reading/comprehension skills. I'm only OK in math, but the reading and language skills are so high that I always get treated like a whiz kid anyway. We have a class called 'special projects' where I get to leave regular class and go to a different room with the other smart kids, including my friend Frank, and do things like go to the cemetery next to the school and make rubbings of the gravestone inscriptions with wax paper and crayons. Luckily, this year my teacher is Mrs. Wol***ger, who was the same teacher I had last year. She's young and really cool, she switched grades so she could be our teacher for two years, and just about every single kid got to be in her class again. She makes us learn how to square dance, though.

I'm kind of a slow social developer. I'm not really interested in girls for another year or so, I'm more interested in the army. When I stay at Frank's house, we get up in the middle of the night and dress up in army gear his dad has left over from Vietnam. We tramp around out in the country around his parent's house for hours in the dark. He also reads voraciously, we've both read 'the lord of the rings' and all kinds of Piers Anthony and other fantasy books. We don't stay such good friends in middle school, though we still hang out sometimes. My best friend is a kid named Matt who comes from a very poor family, their house is barely more than a broken down cottage. His mom is really depressing, she's divorced with three kids. I'm at their house a lot, but I try not to be around Matt's mom. Matt is not good in school, but he's a great natural artist, able to draw things with uncanny precision, and pretty creative. He also is obsessed with the army, so are our brothers. We play army all the time.

I paint a picture in art, a stencil painting of a bird on a branch, repeated four times with a different colored beak each time. It gets sent to Japan for an art exhibition and I forget about it; seven years later it is returned with a letter thanking me for it, matted and in a nice frame. It's on my wall right now. Things at home are starting to worry me a little. My parents fight more than ever, and it's really loud. Also, my dad is starting to get really violent. I'm beginning to realize that other kid's dads don't punish them quite like ours does. One time he comes home at night with my older brother, whose face is totally covered in blood and swollen up. He makes my brother go back out to the car and clean the blood off the seat. When we hear his car in the driveway at night, everyone hides and is quiet, even my mom. He is a respected political figure in our town. Kids pick on me because of who my dad is all the time.

I'm mediocre at sports, but still playing most of them. I like soccer a lot, and I play baseball and floor hockey, which I also really like. I can't watch sports on tv though, so I don't know as much about them as the other kids. When fifth grade starts, I'm in a different school. All the kids want to be like the older kids now. I don't get picked on quite as much, I'm a little more anonymous in this bigger school. I don't like my teacher because she patronizes me. I hate all adults that patronize me, and most of them try to do it.

I've just changed schools. I'd been at the first school since the age of 4 or 5. The school has a large playground with a long wall with goals painted along it. We play football at breaks and lunchtimes. Due to it's layout we can't have the two goals facing each other, so we have this odd arrangement where we choose two of the painted goals and play in a semi-circle between the two. I'm a good footballer and get asked to join a Sunday league side, the Red Rockets, but my parents tell me I'm not allowed. There's a field next to the school which we use during the summer months - years earlier the school needed to expand to take more kids and they built classroom huts on the edge of the field. There are three of them slightly raised off the ground. We can't get underneath them but we imagine that they must have rats underneath. The one that was my classroom for a year also has my Starsky & Hutch Ford Torino model car underneath somewhere. In the boys toilets, there's a pair of y-fronts stuck to the ceiling - no-one knows how they got there. There's also the sole of a shoe. My best friend's little brother points at it and says 'David Soul'. My friend Dan saw an episode of Starsky & Hutch while he was on holiday in France. He says that, over there, the theme tune goes "Star-skiiii A 'utch la-la-la-la-la-la".

It's a strange time at school because we don't really have a teacher. We have a continuous stream of supply teachers. I don't think there was a curriculum, as such, and I don't remember learning much at that time. For the 20-30 of us in this class it's a really odd time - there is a palpable sense of community within this class. All the other kids in our year have had proper teachers but we are the 'lost kids' who get the supply teachers. We like Hong Kong Phooey - someone has a book which he claims is the 'Hong Kong Phooey Guide to Kung-Fu'. A lot of my friends have the 'Spy's Guidebook' - it teaches you how to write in code, the best places to leave messages for fellow 'agents' and how to work out whether you neighbour is running a counterfeiting operation. We all want to be spies when we grow up. My friend Dan, who has all the Doctor Who books, also has the Grease soundtrack album performed by the Smurfs. Years later I find out that he was just playing the stardard album at 45rpm. There are two girls in my class that I like - Heidi and Louise. I like Heidi because no-one else in the world is called Heidi except for the one in Switzerland. Heidi wears her hair in plaits. I don't know exactly why I like Louise, but I do. She has long blonde hair and is quiet. I name my bunny after her.

I like it at this school and have many friends, life is good. Then I get uprooted from this school and placed in another, a Church of England school. The new school is smaller and all the kids know each other really well. I'm an outsider. I'm really unhappy. We do a lot of verbal reasoning tests, in preparation for the 11-plus exam. Because the older you are the more intelligent you should be, there's a sliding scale of percentage points that gets added to your score depending on your relative age to the class. Being born in March I get 5% added to my score. In the test I score 98% so my final mark is 103%. We haven't really covered percentages at the time but it still doesn't make sense. I'm moved into a the 'A'-stream (crazy fule), so have to join a new class of people I don't know. Again I lose all my friends.

Why did I have to change schools? Because my Mum had a dream where God told her to put me in a new school. Both my parents have become religious. My Dad is being confirmed. My Mum becomes a Sunday school teacher. I have to go to church on a Sunday. I join the church choir and have to sing at weddings (for which I get paid exactly one of God's English Pounds). Sitting at the front of a church looking at the congregation gives me a unique perspective. The front of the church is full of people who get dressed up to go to church as a social engagement not because they have any faith. I hate church but my parents tell me I have to go. At no point do I ever believe that there is a God.

Life at home is dull. My Dad doesn't like having visitors to the house and my Mum doesn't like me going to other peoples'. It's as if I'm locked away. I have a sister but she's two years younger than me and we don't play together. I spend most of my time playing with Lego. I like to make space ships because Star Wars rules. My ambition is to make a really big (well, life size) Millenium Falcon (and still is). I worry about colour with my Lego-making. I prefer to make things all in the same colour, or at least make the colour symmetrical. My Mum has a friend who lives around the corner who we visit once in a month of Sundays, her son used to me my best friend at my first school. He says that the other kids at the first school thought that I had died. We play Lego together and he mixes the colours up - blue blocks with red blocks with yellow blocks. Nutter.

I also draw a lot. My Dad brings home from work reams of A3 tractor-fed continuous paper for us to draw on. My sister likes to draw shoes. She draws a small shoe in the centre of a page and then starts a new sheet of paper. My Dad is annoyed by the wastage. I get to draw on the back of the sheets that my sister's used.

My Dad is becoming increasingly distant. He's got a strange sense of humour and he thinks if he's wacky enough (in a Mork kind of way) then that'll see him through his parental duties. My Dad collects the bits of moulded plastic that are stuck to bits of cardboard when you buy drawing pins, for example - I think they're called blister packs. He fills these with plaster and sticks them to a piece of wood and paints it in different shades of beige. He mounts it in a frame and on the back he signs it with his name and underneath '1945 - 2010'. I've never asked him about this. He also collects milk bottles - at the weekends he gets up early and drives out until he finds a small local milk float and buys a pint of milk. He takes these home, takes a rubbing of the embossed dairy logo on the bottle and stores the empties in the loft. We have milk delivered but sometimes the top of the milk has been drunk. My Dad thinks it's the paperboy. He gets a fresh bottle of milk and carefully removes the foil cap and transfers the milk to another container. He washes out the bottle and then carefully fills it with white emulsion paint, replaces the foil cap and gets up early the next day to switch it with what the milkman brings. We stop getting the papers delivered.

My Dad's side of the family live far, far away in Kent, and visit rarely. My paternal grandmother adores my sister. We're in the kitchen and my sister, done up like a princess, has just flounced out of the room. My grandmother says to me "Don't worry, we can't all be beautiful" and follows her out of the room while I sit alone in the kitchen and cry into the sleeves of my Superman costume. All the attention and pressure on my sister will drive her into anorexia. Without any attention nothing as drastic happens to me, I got off lightly, but I will turn into a lonely, depressed teenager who finds it difficult to relate to other people and who will fail several A-levels and whose mother will beg him to say that he's on drugs, because she can't understand what went so very wrong. And so the fun began.

Hmmm, 1988. My family came back to England from Pakistan a year ago and moved down to Kent from the house we’d kept in Market Harborough all the years we were living abroad (since I was 2). I didn’t want to move to Rochester, as it sounds like ‘rot’. I like our new house, although the stair well is really big and dark at night, when the Victorian floorboards also creak because of temperature and humidity differences. We moved just after the big 1987 hurricane, and I kind of feel left out because our house roof didn’t get blown off. Dad's around intermittently, but still off freelancing in places like Bangladesh and Bhutan, but we've settled down as my sister is going to senior school next year, which is a good thing as she can't really handle it at our current school.

I’ve been going there for a while, and am learning lots of swear words. I didn’t know any before, and got told off one evening at dinner a little while ago for calling Eleanor a twat, when I’d just that second made the word up as a variation on ‘twit’. Some of the kids in my class don’t believe me when I tell them that I’ve lived in other countries, and I have to ask my mum if I can take a photograph from one of the albums in to show them. I have a pathological fear of not being believed when I really am telling the truth, and get hot and flustered when someone accuses me of lying. I am also starting to deal with being continually being called posh, when I just know a lot of words and how to pronounce them. I am busted one day for having painted the word ‘fluorescent’ in bright green on a piece of card that could have very well been used for lots of things if I hadn’t been so wasteful. They knew it was me because I’d spelt it correctly. One day a boy from the top class (which I will be in next year, when we will have to take peculiarly easy logic tests and copy out our best essays and send them off for the 11-plus people to look at) who has previously been known as the best person for drawing in the school, challenges me to a draw-off, as I have built up a reputation. I do a nice picture of a little fawn (I am a combination of very twee and horribly cynical at this time) in pastels on paper that isn’t really right and has the texture of cheap shiny bog roll and whup his ass to unanimous voting by all his mates. I can’t remember what he drew, but he is pissed off. It will be another year before I have an ongoing battle with the blonde chunky Daniel in my class as to who will win the weekly quickfire maths test set by the bestest teacher in the world, Mr Bryant.

I work out that boys testicles really are that sensitive when, after being goaded and asked by a friend to kick him in the groin, I do, and he doubles up in horrible pain. He obviously didn’t know either, or thought he was a superman or something. He doesn’t retaliate, as he is a good sport and walks home part of the way with me from school. I don’t think he fancies me though, and I don’t really like any of the boys at school. They’re all dumb apart from Neil, and he’s a little cross-eyed and shorter than me, so that’ll never work, haha.

I am a show-off and immensely arrogant, but also terrified of too much attention. I sort of want the fashionable toys and particularly Wallaby shoes that some of the kids have, but not really as I have a sneaking feeling that they’re really stupid. My favourite recording artistes are Jive Bunny, Billy Ocean, Madonna and the Academy of St Martins In The Fields (for their recording of minor Vivaldi concerti). This year I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen for the first time, and think it’s ultimately cool. I still do.

I wish I had an Amiga like my friend Barry. His dad is a computer expert and a very strange man. When I once told him my family ate kosher, he asked me if I thought god would strike me down with lightning if I ate a pork sausage. I said I didn't think so. He is very grumpy and I don't like him being around. He also lets Barry watch stuff like Monty Python, Blackadder, and Not The Nine O'Clock News. I have never seen these before, but I watch them when I'm over at Barry's house and they are very funny.

I still have to go to Hebrew school every Sunday and I hate it. I think it is funny that we use a local Catholic school for our Hebrew classes and so there is a big statue of Jesus on the cross on the wall. In the week, I go to an all-boys school, so it is strange to see girls at Hebrew school, though sometimes they have differenet classes from us. I have a really big crush on Samantha Robin, but she is angry with me because me and another boy found a ribbon and started pulling it and playing with it and it turned out to be hers.

I really like pop music. I saw Michael Jackson and Kim Wilde at Wembley last year, and I also just saw MC Hammer and Snap, which was amazing! I read Smash Hits but I don't understand all of the jokes. I also listen to the radio and tape songs I like off of it, then record myself making announcements between them. My friend Daniel's brother also made me a tape with James Brown and LL Cool J on it. I listen to it until it breaks.

I am doing really well at school, especially English, because I have got the highest marks for every story essay ALL year, except for once when my friend Ian won. I LOVE writing stories and write in a sketchbook at home as well as at school. For some reason, I am good at everything except science. I get bullied a bit by some of the boys in the year above me, but people in my class know that I am funny so they like me. Soon those older boys will leave, I hope.

Every Friday I have to go and see a child psychologist in hampstead called Mrs Luchiani. It is because my teachers and my parents think that I have a very bad temper. I guess I do, but I enjoy having a bad temper, it is something I use to protect myself because I am quiet small. I think that they are all overreacting, but I had to start doing this because I beat up my friend Adam P1nk3rf13ld after school when he went around telling everyone that I am the devil. Mrs Luchiani is strange, she gets me to talk about my week and draw pictures. I mostly draw pictures of Garfield and Disney characters, which I am very good at drawing. Sometimes we just sit in silence and this makes me very uncomfortable.

Every Friday, my mum takes me to variety Video in Belmont Circle and I rent a film. She lets me watch most things even though I am young, and I see a lot of Steve Gutenberg and John Candy movies, as well as horror films like Poltergeist whcih scare me. I genuinely believe in ghosts and psychic phenomena, especially after my grandmother died and my mum says that she saw her ghost sitting on my aunt's sofa. I am also terrified of the possibility of World War III and a new holocaust, and have lots of nightmares about concentration camps and Nazis. I am convinced that a World War could start literally overnight without warning, and that people would come knocking on our door to take us away because we were Jewish. One night, there was an illegal rave in a field close to our house. I heard all the shouting and police helicopters overhead and was convinced that it was the beginning of the end.

Not much in the beging of being ten year old me. I had just started growing acustom to being the smartest one in the calss. Then Fourth grade was over. I went to NYC for a week during summer break. Spent the rest of summer in summer school. A couple of my friends were in the same summer school. Then I was off to Fifth grade.

In fifth grade a few things changed. As we all know, 9/11 happened. That was quite a day for a ten year old. You know, your grandma waking up at six in the morning and then minutes later wake you up by screamming at the television. Well, something else happened that year. A girl I only knew through one of my friend's sister had skipped a grade. She ended up in my class. So now it was, will Aja still be the smartest one? I think I was.

What else happened was the first time I was accused of liking boys. I was always a tomboy, and still am, so it was strange that I would like boys this young. The truth was, I didn't like any boys. I had however become friends with more boys, especially a boy named Luis. He is like the kind boy who doesn't play sports. So then every one was saying I liked him. That was so wrong. He liked me. He even told me. I decided I still wanted to be his friend. He says he doesn't liek me any more but others say he does. I don't care. We became good friends when we started talking about the Simpsons everyday. I hadn't quite discovered music yet, so it was all about the Simpsons.

Nothing much else happened. It was pretty much the same as all the other years of my life.

I thought I was gay. (I wasn't).

I thought I was pretty cool (I wasn't).

I thought that I could communicate complex thoughts nonverbally with my dog. (Unproven).

I thought there could be no better friend in the world than J3r2mi4h King. (There could, and dissecting cow's hearts wasn't fun).

I thought that sex involved ice cubes and pee. (Occasionally, unfortunately, true).

I thought that if I sat on the swingset and closed my eyes and fantasized about ice cubes and pee and a certain girl in my class nobody could tell. (They could: it was the raging hard-on that gave it away.)

I went by "J.C." and I spelled it "Jaycee." (Why, why, why?)

I read Watership Down for a book report and got my first F, 'cus my teacher didn't believe I could understand it. (Marxist bunnies!)

Physically yes, but mentally?

Physically yes, but mentally?

mentally, he's 30

The housemaster is Quack Mendl. He calls me the "the fairy footballer" and, in exchange for exemption from corporal punishment, tries to recruit me as a spy. When I tell my parents proudly about this they say "I hope you're not turning into a clipe". I learn my lesson. I try to teach the other boys how to masturbate (it somehow involves crushing a piece of paper against the mattress with your genitals) but they feign incomprehension. Or perhaps they aren't actually doing it yet.

I'm top in English and bottom in everything else. They call me "Nidge" because my initials are N.J. Or sometimes "Rabbit", because I have rabbity front teeth. I doodle on my school jotters and riff so fast during guitar lessons that the teacher tells me to slow down. I run everywhere, playing a game called "Greek Drivers" which involves overtaking on blind corners. I win a drawing prize and appear as Black Patch The Pirate in a school play called "Ultima Ora", the last shore. I completely fail to memorize my lines, and improvise instead. I'm invited to sing at the boarding house end-of-year concert. I do an acoustic guitar version of "She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain" and everybody joins in. Callum Campbell, who I love but also hate because he's good-looking but also savage, tries to get people to call me "Humperstink" because I'm a singer, but the name doesn't stick.

My cassette tape recorder gets confiscated. Transistor radios are banned in the boarding house, but housemaster Quack has never seen a tape recorder before, and it's not included in the rules. He takes it anyway. He also confiscates a book of sheet music from "Hair", sex manual "The Little Red Schoolbook" and a US military cap I wear in bed. I'm reading Gerald Durrell and Paul Gallico and Evelyn Waugh's "Decline and Fall".

I only really feel happy in the holidays, riding my yellow bike around the "fast routes" of Psychiko with my brother Mark, listening to the cicadas, playing with other ex-pat kids like Sisi and Lala, the hippy twins, or Martina, the American girl with the glass cube house. Highlight of the year is probably singing "Hey Jude" with the garage band belonging to "Monster", a rich American teen who lives in a big Hardy Boys house along Narkissou. I've never sung with a band before.

when i was ten i had just moved to brighton, brisbane, australia from margate in redlcliffe. (like a five min drive from my old house)i came to a new school and was surprised at how small it was (350/360 kids), i was givin (literally) a friend named alicia and i hated it, but she was the only one who would sit with me so i sorta just blocked it all out. i had friends in my grade that i could talk to but in lunch hrs and stuff they went off and i just didnt fit in. i stayed at alicias once (please never again!!!) and she was trying to give me alchohol (i was ten!!)but i didnt drink, after that i got a bf and she was like "its between me and him choose" and i choose her (who else would sit with me), my bf ran downstairs wen i told him i chose her and started hitting his head on a brick wall. 3yrs he got a brain tuma and had to go thruough kemo ect.. hes getting a lot better thank good but i cant help think that part of that all was my fault. but everyone says it was when he went head over heels off his bike. lots of people hated me in primary school because i told them what i thought of them. alicia turned nasty so i told he to get lost. then i found friends that i knew i was going to be friends for life with. brooke, kara and jacob. we were best friends for nearly 2 yrs and brooke, jacob and i all went to high school while kara went to a diff school, we all still keep in contact with her and i can tell you that even though when i wa 10 i hated most of it, i made the best friends that will always be there for me and that truely makes me happy.