Tell me all about 10-year-old you

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.

My best friend Tricia Murphy said that Kevin Dunn's parents told him the facts of life right there at the dinner table. I am stunned by this information, mostly becuase I don't know what the facts of life are. When I asked my mother, she told me alot about birds and eggs, and then handed me a book about bees.
I feel that "the facts of life' are, indeed FACTS - and RULES - that everyone will become privy to as they grow older. Kind of like going from brownie to girl scout.
FACT: Work hard and you will progress.
That sort of thing.
I feel that my goal should be to figure out "the facts of life".
I am devastated when I realize it's just sex.

School starts and I have the teacher known for strict alphabetical order and forcing people to learn all the state capitals by heart. A boy I barely know let a crush on me fester all summer. He presents me, silently, with a thick handful of notepaper on which he has written my name, over and over, 4 columns to a side, each side, 5 whole sheets. I will still have these in my possession, 35 years later. Although we continue through school together for 7 more years, we never mention this incident. This is the year I want to be a detective. We have to write formal letters as a class assignment, so I write to President Richard Nixon, informing him of my current skills with cyphers and codes, asking for a job with the FBI.

I earn some money by babysitting for various neighbors on our quiet street and use it to buy an MIA bracelet. My parents (mostly my mother, for some reason) and I fight about it. I will wear it every day until I am 15.

My mother plays piano and our house rings with the music. We have a turntable in the living room and my sister and I play Tom Lehrer's album, the one with the red, white and black cover, with the devil playing a curving keyboard, over and over again, until we have it all memorized. Then we produce skits, acting out the songs. I don't understand the implications of My Home Town or The Old Dope Peddler for two or three more years. We see the high school production of Annie Get Your Gun. I fall in love with the guy who plays the lead.

Toward the end of the school year as my 11th birthday approaches, I proceed to fall in love with a boy in my class (not the one who had the crush) and scheme up a way to kiss him. Quite cleverly I say "Let me tell you a secret" and when he leans down I kiss him by the ear. He doesn't realize what has happened, wants to know what secret. I am overcome with something, possibly shame, and can not speak to him until we are seniors in high school.

It is a good year. The next year, life started falling apart, but when I am 10, things are okay.

~Rambling of a Procrastinator~

"Thank you, come again" - Apu from Simpsons

http://www.subsidesports.de/de/images/product/large/livass92.gif

- and wore the whole thing with pride. My best friends were M4rk Ashcr0ft and Ne1l Bra1den and on Saturday afternoons we used to go to each others' houses to play football outside and video games. Mark had Streetfighter II on the SNES so we used to play that a lot though I wasn't very good. When we went to Neil's we sometimes played Subbuteo though I could never really see the appeal. The prettiest girl in my class was called C4ther1ne Wyl13. She was beautiful but way out of my league. I fancied Judy Ch4n but she ended up going out with Neil, despite sending both of us Valentine's cards. I was sad but not surprised. He was funnier and better at football than me. And not as nerdy. I was one of the brightest in my class and used to have healthy rivalry with J0hn Denn1s0n and Ph1l1p And3rson for who would come top in class tests. I got 76/80 once in a mock 11+ - we did these every week. Once J0hn got 78 and I was a bit jealous. I'd never beat that.

When I was 10 my (paternal) Grandpa died. Mum got the phone call just as we were coming home one day and, crying, told us to stay in the car - presumably so we wouldn't hear it from someone else. The Troubles were still going on (I'm from NI) so I thought there might be a bomb in the house. There wasn't, but there was much crying when Dad got home. Mum and Dad didn't take us to the funeral, which I'm still not happy about. We were far too overprotected. We went to a memorial service a couple of weeks later though. I liked Grandpa - he always gave us Mr Kipling's almond slices when we went to his flat, and he had a moustache that bristled when he kissed me.

My brother and I were childminded by a friend of my mum's called Etta. We went to her house after school and during the holidays. I hated having to get up early all summer, but we could watch TV and play football in their huge garden with her boys, who were both older than us. They were pretty cool, and liked bands like Nirvana, the Chilis, Dead Kennedys, Alice In Chains and Mudhoney. I was a little intimidated by this stuff.

In all, I was a happy ten-year old, but probably a bit too precocious and nerdy for my own good. This would catch up on me at "big school".

6th grade.

Only been in North Florida less than a year.

Breakdancing, although very bad at it.

Hip-Hop fanatic!

I asked the Black girl in my class what she listened to hoping for the presumptious answer of the R&B/rap station Magic 95, but she said "Rock". I said "hard rock or soft". "Hard". Asked her about Quiet Riot and she never heard of them. (?!)

Remember seeing The Disco 3 on Video Soul. They announced they were going to change their name to The Fat Boys. Then they spat all over the place.

I began spitting all over the place.

The next door neighbor insisted on calling me a "Yankee".

I discovered the Lifetime Network and the Regis Philbin show. Thought I was on some underground shit.

Couldn't understand why I had gone from being the class comedian in Michigan to a total outcast in Florida.

Now know they were rednecks.

It was 1988, jeans were pegged and parachute pants were aplenty. I was a 5th grade student at Southern Elementary, here in Lexington, KY. I'm not sure what was big on the radio, but I owned 2 cassette tapes at the time: TMBG's debut LP and Fishbone's debut EP. I probably only knew who either of them were because of my dad.

I had a crush on a girl named Erin Gr4bh4m. Twice I had dreams of rescuing her from mountain lions wtf. Names kids called me: "Nicky Fumes" and "Stinkweed", insinuating that I smelled bad. I showered daily and even began wearing cologne, but they continued to berate me for my supposed consistant unpleasant odors. I promise I wasn't a farting machine or anything.

This year I had a friend whose name was also Nick, he was a year younger than me, and smaller, hence we were called "Big Nick" and "Little Nick". His sister was a 14 year old classic babe-in-disguise, her hotness masked by monstrous glasses and a horrible hairdo. (I remember this because it was around this time I got my first erection.) He shoplifted a LOT and after awhile I tried it too. I shoplifted a couple candy bars, a plastic parachute man, etc., until once my mom caught me and made me return the stuff to the store. I was then grounded for 2 weeks, during which time I took apart a crappy TV and never successfully put it back together.

(What I remember about 1998...A) I threw an awesome Halloween party, and B) I knocked up my girlfriend.)

Okay, sorry, back to 10 years old.

Oh yeah, crushes, schools, bands, and stuff...

In the 5th grade portion, I like some girl who's name I can't even remember now (lame). I kinda overheard her telling a mutual friend that she "liked that new guy because he looked like Ricky Shroder" (for the record, I grew up to look more like Gary Oldman -- oddly enough, I'm Mexican). Anyway, never had the balzac to make a 10 year old move on her.

In the 6th grade portion, I like Jennifer B, only because the puerto rican guy in the class told his friend that "she looked kinda good wearing a tie". This may've been my first lesson in fashion as a turn on. Frankly, she wasn't necessarily pretty, but just having someone else put her attire in a new perspective was enough to carry me for the whole year. We were nothing more than acquantances though.

During high school, my music partner had dated her in 9th grade or something. I had so many crushes during that span that I never even thought to mention to him that I had a crush on her in 6th grade.

As far as that 5th grade-9th grade era, I attended 8 schools in 5 years.

The Jacksonville Florida school system had these crappy "centers" instead of proper middle schools (6th grade center, 7th grade center, etc)...and my parents being new to Florida and haven't yet found their niche moved once a year in the middle of each year.

I always tried to get my friends into a "band" also. I'd scavenger their houe for "instruments", which always turned out to be their younger siblings toy piano or something. I was the jackass that'd actually try to charge neighborhood kids to watch us "perform" in the backyard.

Major fears at the time: probably quicksand, dinosaurs, and anything I'd seen/read in a scary book. (Somehow I managed to get my mother to let me read The Amityville Horror, which spooked me).

I'm going to visit that dam for the first time as an adult in two weeks.

I didn't know you were from Orange County. I'm sorry.

I had to create a recipe in a class using all metric measurements. I forgot to do it, so my recipe that I came up with at the last minute was 1 glass of 7-up and 1 scoop of Wyler's (powdered drink mix.) (Fuck me if that ain't metric too.)

It was a drought year and the president was telling everybody to conserve energy, so I remember being reminded and scolded a lot for wasting water and leaving lights on. It was hot all spring, summer, and fall, yellow and sere. I remember going down to the Valley with my dad and Yosemite Falls was a mere trickle.

I read or re-read a lot of history that year, Churchill, Bruce Catton, and various books on the Civil War. We had an old mattress on our porch that I would lay down on with my book and read, mostly oblivious to the mule deer on our 'lawn', or the raucous cries of the scrub jays. I wrote this a month or so ago about my cat at the time:

"...Trinka. I still picture her often sitting still, silent and leopard-like on the branch of an oak tree, her tortoise-shell coat the perfect camouflage in an early autumnal tree, so that the only thing that ever gave her away was the occasional flick of her tail. I remember her 'hunting' the deer and I remember the rage visible in her eyes when her gift of a bushbunny left a deep red stain in the middle of the white living room rug and she and it were tossed outside. I remember how she would very lightly rub her cool nose against mine to wake me in the middle of the night if she wanted me to pet her. I remember"..."'camping' on an old mattress on the front porch stubbornly refusing to re-engage with civilized living, watching the moon in the midnight blue sky strewn with millions of stars, and listening as Trinka, or the deer, or who knew what else rustled quietly through the yellowed grasses and crackling leaves in the penumbra."

My best friend was the son of the caretaker of the SDA summer camp across the South Fork of the Merced and about a mile down. Since we were godless hippies and his parents weren't always fond of sending him over and since my dad was often working, after school I'd go over to his place, where we had the run of the camp. We used to race golf carts up and down the property which snaked up a hill, or play starter pistol tag, which consisted of trying to sneak up on each other and shoot a starter pistol at the other. After an hour of creeping silently through a forest, when somebody surprises you by jumping out behind you and firing, the loud report maxes out your adrenaline and then reverberates eerily through the trees.

I went to grammar school about an hour outside the park in a town called Oakhurst. I remember scrimping loose change from around the house so that I, a lactose-intolerant child on a supposedly dairy-free diet, could buy an eskimo pie when I got off the school bus before my mile long hike back to our house. I listened to a radio station out of Fresno that played 60's and contemporary rock mostly but I remember loads of disco, some of which I liked and some of which I found boring. Looking at the top 40 for that year, I see some things that I liked at the time, but it wasn't a great year, musically for me.

That fall my mother tried to kidnap me for the last time, playing on my divided loyalties to her and to my father and I felt immensely guilty afterwards that, when faced with the choice of living with my heartbroken dad in Yosemite (his wife had recently left him) or my then-nutso mom, even more nutso step-father, and trapped brothers in the San Fernando Valley, I hadn't had the courage to be more forthright to my mother and tell her categorically that she lived in a dysfunctional household in one of the state's many armpits. More than any other thing, I hold that feeling of guilt against my mother, who should have known better.

Two years later we moved to Marin.