Tell me all about 10-year-old you

I have recently started my new school and I really like it, though it's weird. We are not allowed to draw outlines, and we write in thick crayons. I am learning about the Norse gods and vikings at the moment; we do a play and I am Freya (I do not in fact master the use of the semi-colon for another 7 years.) Television is frowned on at school, but we still have one. I can't remember what I watch.

For my tenth birthday I had a Care Bear cake. I am not allowed Barbie, but I have some Sindys and my friend Miriam has a brilliant Sindy house. My other favourite toys are Sylvanian Families, My Little Ponies and my collection of identical teddy bears. My best friends at my old school were Cara, Miriam, Amy and Stephanie. I still see them and Stephanie is at my new school too, but sometimes I hate her.

The books I like are mainly by Enid Blyton and I have a crush on Dick from the Famous Five. I also like The Railway Children, Anne of Green Gables and A Little Princess.

I think we went to Corfu for a holiday. And I probably broke my arm again this year.

Singing to plants is supposed to be good for them. Instead, I play violin to my favorite plant. I am especially fond of Beethoven's Romance. I have played violin for five years, but my friend Caroline is much better than me. She's a prodigy, and I wouldn't want to practice that hard anyway.

My older sister and I adore Duran Duran. I have a thing for Nick Rhodes. We have all the albums and know all the lyrics and find trivia about the band members in silly magazines. We always watch Saturday Night Videos. A friend of my sister's is obsessed with Van Halen and so we watch the video for "Jump" over and over and over. I think Eddie Van Halen is pretty cute. We listen to our Pyromania record a lot too. (Yes, I know, it's unusual to get along so well with an older sister. She's more of a friend than a sibling.)

I read a lot. There's a boy who follows me around at the library and makes fun of how I leave with my arms piled with books. The librarian tells me that the boy later checks out piles of books himself. I am baffled by this.

It becomes well known that I laugh readily, and this is taken advantage of frequently at lunchtime, especially if I'm drinking milk. Milk-shooting-out-of-nose ensues. I find this embarrassing but funny. I have a crush on the boy who makes me laugh.

Second half of year ten: I am back at home in San Antonio, absolutely abhorring the heat and sun and humid air and burnt brown and yellow-green of it all. I am now in the fifth grade in a rather good Catholic grade school, still wearing the itchy plaid uniform skirts and suspenders. The best thing about living here is that we are living near a large amount of our family now and can participate in family functions. The worst part? You want me to run down that list for you?

I am starting to get into classic rock, though more of the pop side of classic rock, such as Steely Dan and Fleetwood Mac. My favorite songs are "Do It Again" and "Rhiannon". We (my parents and I) find out from relatives back at home that I have a new little cousin and her name happens to be Rhiannon. I am surprised. My one good friend is a girl named Angela, who is in the fifth grade.

My favorite TV shows to watch are "Comic Strip Live", "Life Goes On", "Northern Exposure" and "America's Funniest Home Videos". I remember getting freaked out by Arachnophobia in the theaters. Mom and I were one of the many who went to see Dances with Wolves in the theater, and we also watched Die Hard 2, Edward Scissorhands, Ghost, and tons of other movies, since we go to the movies once a week.

I am a happy-go-lucky kid who also takes herself too seriously and who is a bit of a loner. This is made possible due to the fact that, as always, I am a freak. My favorite possessions are my Fisher Price record player, my little TV (I have a TV in my bedroom for the first time in my life!), my bicycle, my two favorite teddy bears (although I would never admit to actually still be into teddy bears), and a blue outfit I've decided is my favorite. My favorite colors are blue, white, and purple. I love books -- the school librarians know my name. I am studious. I make nothing but As and Bs in my courses, including P.E. I am just starting to get into playing tennis. I think it is the absolute coolest thing to do.

I am into stand-up comedy. My favorite stand-up comedians are Elayne Boozler, Paula Poundstone, Rita Rudner, Sam Kinison, Ray Romano, and Jay Leno. I root for the San Antonio Spurs and am happy they got this guy named David Robinson into their team, because they seem improved by his presence. I am still more than a year away from discovering the '80s, music-wise.

That's it. I think. Me in a nutshell, age 10. From what I can recall, that is.

I like Nik Kershaw, Duran Duran and Howard Jones, and religiously tape the top 40 every Sunday on my lovely new "portable stereo" (actually mono as it only has one speaker). In fact I like all chart music as I have yet to discern a proper taste in music for myself yet. I read Smash Hits and Look In and have posters of Charlie Nicholas, Tucker Jenkins (even though I'm not allowed to watch Grange Hill) and various pop stars on my wall. Although I don't know it yet, my obsession with the Top 40 will win me many a pub quiz.

I play Hopper on our C64 when I can get my dad off it.

I read Frederick Forsyth and Wilbur Smith books that I borrow off my dad, as I like big books. My favourite books that I borrow from the library are the Ramona Quimby ones. My mum reads me the serialisation of Adrian Mole from her Woman's Realm (possibly Woman's Weekly) every week and we think it's great.

Every Friday night I get a Cadbury's Dairy Milk and I answer lots of questions on whatever game show is on. My mum lets me stay up late on a Saturday to watch Cagney and Lacey (my younger brother is allowed to stay up late and listen to the theme tune - it's his favourite).

I have just got a new puppy called Sandy and a new big brother called Michael (he's fostered). I'm quite happy really considering the school thing. I'm also on Valium (but my mum isn't happy about it, so it's pretty short-lived).

Sometimes kids make fun of me because last year I used to cry because I thought I was going to miss the bus. I would get scared that I'd be trapped at school and wouldn't be able to get home. The kid who makes fun of me most is this girl Sara. She's mean and I want my friends to hate her but they won't. She's stupid and her mouth moves funny when she talks.

My favorite thing in the whole world is the Beatles. I don't remember why I suddenly got obsessed with them, but I remember exactly where it happened: on the crushed gravel walkway leading up to the school orchestra practice room, I suddenly said to myself, "I am going to be a Beatles fan" and a warm light washed over me. The first Beatles tape I bought was Rock 'n' Roll Music, Vol. 2. Soon I started buying records. By next year I will have reissues of every record they made. My favorite thing to do while listening to my Beatles records is stare at the gatefold of the Rarities album which has the picture of them in butcher's smocks with chunks of bloody meat and dismembered baby dolls. Gross!!

Earlier this year I went to my friend Mitch's birthday party where we watched Revenge of the Nerds. It was funny! It also had naked women in it. This is the first time I've seen naked women. I felt guilty about it, and when I got home I told my mom. I liked seeing the naked women but not with Mitch's mom in the room.

Grandpa wanted to buy me a BB gun for my birthday but mom wouldn't let him. So he got me a skateboard instead. Except I can't ride it because the road in front of my house isn't paved. I'm not going to cry about it though. I'm bigger now and don't do that anymore.

Troon doesn't have a proper cinema, but my friend Barry Dunlop's dad runs a film club in the local town hall, showing films about the time they'd go to video years later, and I get in free and am even allowed up to the projector room. Once, Barry and his dad, Johnny, turn up at my house with the projector and a screen, and we watch the Doctor Who movie about Daleks in my living room. Cool!

My friends and I build dens and fight with older kids that try to wreck them. Even though I've been badly beaten a few times and had to have three stitches in my forehead after a half brick hit me on the forehead, there's glory in these conflicts, and I often feel like a maverick hero in a grand adventure. Our gangleader, Paul (Magoo) has a sister, Julie, who's not as annoying as most other girls, and kind of pretty. I buy 2000AD, but sometimes Battle, Tiger and Roy of the Rovers, though I'm not so into football as my dad, who supports Rangers and hates Catholics. Most of my friends are Catholic and I'm glad this annoys him as I know he's being silly. Sometimes, I argue with him, but get nowhere. My bestest friend is Mark, who has a lumbering laborador called Prince, which flattens me with an affectionate leap every time I visit. My bike is a Grifter, metallic blue with rainbow stickers, battered now, and stuck permanently in 3rd gear, but I love her more than my little yellow boxer and I've twice outpaced bullies in racers that were trying to catch me and give me a kicking.

At school, I have Miss Ridgeway, who's done a lot to stop the other kids from bullying me. Occasionally, I've encountered Mrs Kalogeris, who I know is to be my Primary 7 teacher, and will spend the next year undoing all Mrs Ridgeway's good work, partly because of her feud with Mrs Young, partly because she's hated me since I started at Troon Primary. My gran and grandpa on my mum's side (or nonna and grampa as I call them - nonna's Italian for grandmother. My aunt married an Italian) sometimes take me to Kelburn, a country park which is really cool because it has a mock army assault course complete with death slide. They spoil me a bit, because grampa is managing director of the local shipyard and can afford to.

My dad listens to loud music on his stereo. He's not into punk anymore; these days its Dexys and the New Romantics, though he occasionally goes back to his AC/DC albums and prances round the living room playing air guitar. I've got some singles too, including the smurfs, mull of kintyre, and my Bay City Rollers gatefold albums, which I'm still not embarassed by. When I grow up, I want tartan trousers just like theirs. My dad lets me watch the Young Ones even though it's past my bedtime because mum goes to gran's the night it's on. It's our little secret.

When it rains and there's no one about, I like to go out walking and think. Sometimes I write little stories, usually using words I learnt recently (everyone is "burly" in one, even the girls) which I illustrate also (badly - I can't draw hands or feet, so amputate all my subjects). The thing I want to be the most is a writer, though a detective or a pirate would be fun, too.

Somedays I'm happy, somedays I'm not. Life's not so bad, though, even if Mum and dad fight a lot.

My brother and sister recently moved to the US and I miss them, but also enjoy the lack of teasing and general older sibling abuse. Plus, I get to take over my sister’s room as an ‘office’, which I use to do my homework in and store my books. Additional bonus, their best friends come and take me out all the time to go see films or hang out. I insist on repeat viewings of Foxy Brown (four times in the theatre)

I’m bored at school but love my friends. Most of them are a few years older than me so I’m like a lil brother/mascot. I’ve started reading with an absolute vengeance and spend more and more time with my nose buried in a book. This combined with my new glasses earns me the nickname of “professor”. I am fascinated by history and mythology and decide I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up.

I’m working my way through my parents’ record collection (mostly jazz, Ethiopian & classical) and my brother and sisters (reggae, funk, disco). I love it all.

I kiss a boy for the first time. We agree this is something we do not discuss at school.

My stepdad has left and gone back to the States, and none of us have ever been happier. He was an asshole and he broke my mom's ribs. I have murderous dreams about him, and will for years. I've made a great friend in Chrissy - she lives down the hill from me, and since my mom works all the time and my brother is never home, we hang out a lot. We go to the beach, go horse riding, the the movies, to the pier, to the tide pools - anywhere and everywhere. I love her and she'll be my best friend for years, though we'll fall out of touch when I move back to the States in a couple years.

I read a lot, and spend a lot of time dreaming about what my life will be like when I get older, and I think I want to be a veterinarian because I love animals, and I miss my dad.

My friends are all KISS fans. I have an OK social life, a good circle of kids to play baseball and have birthday parties and run around the woods with, but I'm still hugely insecure in social situations and prone to temper tantrums that often involve me throwing things at people (and always missing -- for a while I thought I just had really bad aim, but over time I realized it was deliberate -- some part of me knew that hitting someone in the head with a baseball or rock would probably not be a good thing). My best friend is also named Jesse**. He has a cool older sister who listens to the Adolescents, and his aunt is P.J. Soles who was in "Rock 'n' Roll High School" and gave him and his sister a bunch of Ramones albums -- ergo, I discover punk rock, although it doesn't hit me as hard as "You Shook Me All Night Long," which is ruling the "Hot 5 at 9" on the top 40 radio station my sister (18 months younger) and I listen to every night. Somewhere in here I buy my first American 45: "Ah Leah" by Donnie Iris.

(**Three years later, Jesse and I go to see the Ramones play at SUNY Brockport. We jump up and down in wonderment. About two months after that, Jesse's in a car accident and suffers permanent brain damage. He's been mostly institutionalized for the last 20 years. I used to have dreams about him sometimes and see him as he would have been without the accident, and we'd hang out and talk about music or whatever. But that stopped after a while.)

I love football, and feel proud that despite my terrible health I make the school team when I am fit enough to attend school at all. I read some, but have never had any encouragement at all in this, from school or home. I'm as keen on Marvel Comics, in this great Kirby era, as books.

I have zero interest in music - I'm in a house where there is none (nor books). I love TV of course, and some of it is in colour now!

I live in a village called Sherston halfway between Bristol and Swindon on the old A4, where my dad owns the butcher's shop - we live over it in a fantastic 17th century ex-coaching inn. I have a brother three years younger than me. There aren't so many kids of my age within walking distance, so I'm sort of friends with those that are, but skipping a year at school has kind of separated me from them, in some ways.

ah, if I think more about this it'll be depressing - my mother made my life a misery a lot of the time. I'll leave it there.

How many of you kept a journal when you were 10? I started one when I was 8. I'll try to remember to bring my 10-year-old diary in next week when I get back from my vacation. Wouldn't want to miss any details.

I live with my mom and my stepdad. I'm an only child, and while not spoiled with toys and stuff, I can probably get attention if I need it, which isn't very often. I read a *lot*. 'The Dark is Rising' is my favorite book. I like Fig Newtons. I'm not very social and rather quiet apart from very rare outbursts of impetuousness, which is maybe why I'm being taken to a therapist. She is old and boring. I'm not really into pop music yet--my parents listen to classical and jazz. I like the loud grim Russian composers.

This summer my real father will take me away for a week to his house in Texas, where I will enjoy learning to water ski but be resolutely miserable the rest of the time. In school we take the California Standardized Test (or maybe the Iowa?) and I finish each section early and read Isaac Asimov's 'Inside the Atom' while waiting for the next one. I'm a GEEK. Missy A. is the first student to grasp the technique of long division and I have a crush on her--she has red hair and doesn't spray imaginary disinfectant on the things I've touched like some of the girls. I like to draw maps of places, some of them real and some not. Pennsylvania is easy because it's mostly straight lines.

:(

i see him only on the weekends, every other saturday, from 10-5. this isn't a lot, but it's all i remember ever seeing him, really. he still lives in phoenixville, where i was born and lived until second grade. plus we get to go out to lunch to places like pizza hut and we usually get to see a movie at the end of the day. my dad has just started dating a woman named lisa, but i don't think he's living with her yet. we spend a lot of time at her apartment because my dad lives in a studio apartment (or, as i saw it, one room) in a kirk van houten style batchelors flophouse uptown. she is also divorced. i don't like her sons. they're older and mean to me. plus they have red hair and look funny. but they have a nintendo entertainment system, which i don't.

music is confined to weird al, the beastie boys first album, and pop radio, but i am beginning to get my first taste of wider music. i am briefly obsessed with george michael. he upsets me, but i am also fascinated by his "faith" video and the song "father figure." it sounds strange and eerie.

school is hard, and i don't like it much. but my school also has the best playground ever, with a giant tireswing hung from a dinosaur made of wood. my best friends are andrew (who shares my love of drawing comics and weird al) and eric (who i find out is adopted, which makes me sad...also he has a weird hippie family who put honey on pancakes which are made out of wheat.) my other best friend is seth who doesn't go to our school and lives a town away in wayne, in an apartment above a store. i remember it being subtly impressed upon me that this was something to look down on, even though we lived in a double house owned by my stepdad's parents. still, his mom is cool; she lets us watch movies like robocop when i sleep over. also he has a crazy computer which hooks up to the tv! i want a computer.

i am probably the happiest i will ever be, socially, for the rest of my life.

most of the summer is spent at the ymca swimming pool, with my mom's best friend and her two kids. they're my friends, but i don't ever see them outside of when my mom is around and i dont like them much, really. but they have a nintendo too. why don't i?

in the fall of 88 i remember being briefly obsessed with "pour some sugar on me", going so far as to be caught out singing it in class and being laughed at. i'm too embarassed to ever sing again in front of people, until two years later when something similar happens. i also play team soccer and our team end up being the league champions! i get a trophy! it is the only time i will ever be remotely "good" at sports.

i also read a lot, including the dark is rising books too, asimov's foundation (i don't get most of it), the lloyd alexander prydain books, and tolkein.

i write a report on a smorgsboard restaurant in lancaster, pa (that's where the amish are from and where my dad's brother and his horrible family live...it is 45 minutes away and feels like another planet, all outlet malls and farms) which wins an award and is so convincing about the quality of the place that my teacher calls my mom to get its address. my mom is convinced i should become a "writer." it's all downhill from there.

But my home is a mostly fun place to live in. Jimmer and Jeff and Gary are my best friends. We roam around the cornfields and throw mud at the cows. One day I tried to climb an electric fence. My brother and I have a tree house and we fight a lot. I read lots of comics and my favorites are Spider Man, and The Fantastic Four. I also get books on astronomy and a Heinlein juvenile each week when I go to the library. I watch Doctor Who on the CBC. My Mom and Dad are pretty unmusical, and most of what I hear is on my donut radio I put under my pillow at night. Two of my favorite songs are "Mr. Jaws," "Rhinestone Cowboy," I liked ABBA when I saw them on TV, but Jimmer tells me ABBA is for girls and that KISS is much cooler. His parents buy KISS 8-tracks for him whenever he wants.

That's all, bye.

but i loev this thread :-)

I'm noticing divorce as a trend: everybody's doing it. About a month after we move to the new house, my dad is demoted to the sofa and that's the beginning of the end for my parents. Still, the highlight of my week is staying up late with him to watch Saturday Night Live (due to a habit of NOT asking my parents what things I hear, see or read actually mean, I look everything up in the dictionary, which is good since ours is grown-up enough to have 'fuck' in it) though I worry when Gilda Radner starts joking about penis envy. I'm allowed to stay up late and watch the news; my dad watches All-Star wrestling on the weekend (which I hate) and horse racing (which we argue about, he had horses when he was growing up and I am mega-jealous because I am not allowed to ride). To compensate, I collect Breyer model horses. There are six girls at school who also do, and we compete. We are officially horse-mad. My best friend is one of those girls who are the family's baby, and she gets to paint her room purple and lavender, which is way too Barbie for me.

We have an antique armchair that is the perfect size for a ten-year-old to sit bucketed in with legs falling over the side, reading until detected way past a reasonable bedtime. I'm into Watership Down, Judy Blume, Oscar Wilde, and spend hours at my aunt and uncle's place four houses away, reading fairy tales, mythology, their National Geographics, my aunt's Jackie Susann books, anything. I draw on paper my mom brings home from work (she works long hours, occasionally my dad disappears for a few weeks when he can't explain where the bill money's gone). Mannequins, horses and rabbits. Surprise surprise, I really want a rabbit: we get one called Muggs. Muggs is black, gets on with Casey, our third poodle (poodles one and two having met horrible deaths a la Spinal Tap drummers) and rides in my bicycle basket. I have an old one-gear two-tone bike with '50's chrome flourishes and FINS. I wear Adidas tops and boot-cut Levi's, gaucho skirts and cotton blouses. Sometimes I cook dinner for me and my sister if my mom is running late. Sometimes I run into the kitchen on bills night to tell my folks to stop fighting NOW.

School absolutely and totally sucks. I'm in a 'combination' class for fifth and sixth graders taught by the psychopath who taught me in third grade, and from day one I just don't want to be there. We sit at tables and store our stuff in cubby holes, which the teacher will empty, flinging one person's stuff on to the floor in front of the whole class, shouting at them to pick up their mess. I feel separated from my friends in 'normal' fifth-grade classes with DESKS. I have a hopeless crush on Jeff N, who looks like a sixth-grade Keanu-alike. He's never shitty about it, but his friends tease me. But anything kids might have to say pales in comparison to Psycho Teacher because she's HORRIBLE to me. I am blamed for every last thing that goes wrong in the classroom and I plummet from straight As to quivering mass in the corner, worried that I will wind up repeating the year, repeating it under her instruction.

I think I want to be an actress. I think I want to be an artist. I write all the time.

I taped some songs of the radio. Communards "Don't Leave Me This Way". My aunt cuts my hair :( I have to start wearing glasses :(

I wish my dad would buy us a video recorder, everyone at school has them and watches Nightmare on Elm Street.

I've just moved schools, from the local primary to a really posh one where they have uniforms and everything. I'm kind of angry about it, because even though I was miserable and my teacher hated me, it feels like I've betrayed my old school. Also, everyone at the new one knows more than me, and the year before they all got badges for being able to say their times tables up to twenty-five. I don't even know what seven times eight is, and I'm in the bottom stream. I get moved up into the top stream by the end of the year, though, which means I'm going to go into the top class next year and then I'm going to get into a good senior school. In the top stream classes, we have to do handwriting lessons, and I hate Mr Borg who takes them. I don't know why his name is funny. The music teacher really likes me, though. He's fat, black-bearded and bass-voiced, and loves opera, and I've been in a real opera and can sing plummy. I'm also in a proper choir, and I get to go on summer camps and sing stuff from musicals and hang out with the cool girls three years older than me, who get into massive trouble for having their boyfriends in their dorm room.

My best friend at the new school is called Tess, and she lives in this amazing house with a stainless-steel fridge that makes ice, and she gets her breakfast cereal from America and has an au pair and a housekeeper. She barely ever comes over to my house: I'm a bit ashamed that it isn't big and neat and shining and new-looking like hers is, even though our garden is better, because it's got strawberry plants and applemint and lemonbalm. My room is also better, even though it's smaller: my bed's raised up really high and at night I can look out over all the lights of London, the BT tower blinking a red goodnight. We play dress-up in her basement, which has a multi-gym in it that we're not allowed to touch, pretend we're people in books and off the telly. Everyone else watches Neighbours and Home and Away, but my alder brother doesn't like it so neither do I.

I think "book" means "novel", and I'm going to be a writer when I grow up. My favourite book is David Copperfield, but I still have a slightly shameful love of the Swallows and Amazons series. I don't know how to sail, but I do know how to ride horses, which is really useful because at my new school everyone's into horseriding. They buy Horse and Pony magazine, where all my friends at my old school bought Shout and Just Seventeen and were into Take That and boys. I solve the confusing question of boys by deciding that they're useless, anyway, and the world would be a better place if we just got rid of them except for breeding purposes.

As for Take That, I decide that they're no longer any good and burn my tape of the first album. I don't really listen to pop music much, only the old stuff we have at home, like the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and my favourite song is "She's not there" by the Zombies. I really like Benjamin Britten, and want to be a good enough singer to do the solo in "Balulalow", and I hate Michael Tippet with a passion and make up the alto part in "Crown of the year" instead of learning it. In my opinion, it would sound bad no matter what I sang. I don't see why people want want to listen to something that ugly.

(Good lord that was long.) This thread rocks.

it snowed once, and my pal stuart and I, we ran through the falling snowflakes and pretended we were flying through hyperspace.

This is honestly the best thing I've ever read anywhere. I wish I could print it out right now and laminate each page so it will all last for eternity. Some of us seem to have had an idyllic childhood, some of us seem to have had it rough growing up, and the rest of us are in the middle.

Oh yeah, as to the reason why we moved around (we moved around several times when I was little): my mom was in the civil service and moved us around several times so that she could get her G.S. level up. (I trust a few people around here know what that means.) She retired with an amazingly high income for someone with "just" a high school education. She's always been a real go-getter, which I feel with great pleasure I'm turning into.

I read a lot, mostly RL Stine and Christopher Pike books and the Xanth novels that my mom gives me. Near the end of this year, I also read a copy of Good Omens stolen from my brother. I doubt I understand much, but it's still hilarious.

All my friends are girls, for some reason. I'm the biggest kid in my class, so I still don't get picked on, even with such an obvious target.

I'm a huge 49ers fan. Joe Montana is Allah, Buddha and Jesus all wrapped into one.

When I was younger I would visit my grandparents and play with the girl next door to them, who was my age and named Jennifer. Suddenly now I lived up there and Jennifer was in my class. There was some sort of prepubertal emotional thing going on between us but it never made much sense and nothing particularly illicit occurred.

I watched Transformers and collected them; my friend, who was a year younger, had more Transformers than me. I was a latchkey kid, and wasn't allowed to have anyone over until my mother got home, but I would sneak my friend in and we would play. Sometimes my mother would come home before he had left and we'd have to sneak him out.

We didn't have much money, although I was totally unaware of this back then. But for a while, we didn't have curtains in my room -- instead, some of my mother's nightgowns. One was pink, one was blue.

Manic Monday was on the radio a lot, and the proto-Zoo radio show had a segment called "Miami Mice" in which squeaky voiced detectives... well, you get the idea.

I think I might have begun reading D&D rulebooks around this time. I was fascinated by the rules (both the wonkiness of it all and the attempt at life simulation, I guess) but never got into actually playing the game.

One of the things I liked about my school was that it had a big painted map of the lower 48 states in the playground. One day I pointed out to my teacher that Connecticut was wrong in that map, because it didn't have the little notch that's missing (in the middle of the northern border).

channel 9 reruns old episodes of saturday night live from the 70s at 3 am, and i tape them on our beta and watch them with my mom sunday afternoons. i try to ingratiate myself w/her whenever i can in hopes of placating her violent temper. she was still mysterious & godlike to me then, i couldn’t understand how she could hurt me so impulsively. my dad is sort of a schizoid nonentity. he has paranoid episodes every once in a while where he says frightening things. i had ignored him for years at this point & would remind my little brother (age 6) and sister (3) to do the same. i am a terrible older sister, always using my size/age against them, just because i could.

mom has started working 3-midnight shifts at the nursing home friday-sunday. every friday after school i am allowed to let myself into the house & stay there alone until my dad gets home. my brother and sister have to stay at our next-door neighbors. they have a nintendo & lots of brand name junk food over there but i prefer to have those 3 hours by myself. the possibilities of being alone were endless, though i'd usually wind up running down the list of all the things i wasn't supposed to do. so friday afternoons were spent listening to beatles records (don't touch!), dancing on the nappy orange carpet to madonna (catholicism is serious business), sneaking drinks from the liquor cabinet (i poured myself a coffeemug full of whiskey once) and watching mtv & 'you can't do that on television' (never understood what was so offensive about that last one.)

i came down pneumonia twice this year & missed about 3 months of school. i was excused from gym when i finally went back. that was awesome.

my best friend is my cat, willie nelson. i don't have a best person friend anymore; i won't have any friends at all for another 6 years. this doesn't really bother me, except for when i'm placed in unescapable social situations. i'm not scared of anything besides tornadoes & my parents. i read and draw and write compulsively and love to walk deep into the woods behind our house. if you walk back far enough, there's an empty farmhouse with a hole through the second floor to the first. i have developed what the professionals call a 'rich interior world' & have begun to leave it less and less often.

(eep, that was wordy.)

I live in Claremont. It is my third new town in several years. My mom left my father for my stepfather when I was five or six, and my stepfather was a nightmare, so she moved back in with my dad, bringing me and my sister along. Only that wasn't going to work out so good, either, so we moved in with my grandmother in Claremont, which is where my stepfather found us, and started paying visits & insinuating himself back into our lives with lots of apologies & promises, and now we live with him again, only he hasn't really changed.

I spend more and more time alone in my room listening to music through headphones. I buy beat-up vinyl LPs for twenty-three cents: Jethro Tull's Benefit, Genesis's Foxtrot. For Christmas I only ask for two classes of things: books and records. The music means so much to me that I cannot articulate it, nor do I feel like it's necessary to do so: how could anyone not feel that music was the only reason to go on living? I hold a cassette recorder up to the AM radio and night and tape songs randomly. "You Make Lovin' Fun" by Fleetwood Mac. "Gold" by whoever that guy who did "Gold" was, the one about "When the lights go down in the California town."

I want so badly to be liked by the girls in Mrs. Vancil's class, but I am not cool. The cool guys like to hang out with me because I'm funny, and I can swear like a grown-up, and I've seen & heard things that they've only thought about before, but I am only marginally of their number. When I go to their birthday parties, I feel like I'm on somebody else's planet. I can't invite people over to my house, because that would mean my stepfather would have to get dressed, which he doesn't like to do.

My stepfather enrolls me in Little League. I am very bad at it and I get beaten & yelled at when I take a called third strike. It makes me so angry! Doesn't my stepfather know that if it'd've looked like a strike to me, I would have swung at it? I am learning to hate things I'm not good at, and I hate that feeling, and it's a vicious circle. I feel like if the girls liked me better, life would at least be bearable. It's not that they're mean to me; they're actually kind of nice, and they like talking with me. But it's plain that I am not going to be anybody's boyfriend. I fear being alone.

The one thing I have besides my stereo & my headphones is my ability to write. Mrs. Vancil praises my writing & I know that I deserve it. I feel like it's the only thing I have that can't be somehow stripped from me. Sometimes I think to myself: "What will you do if you can't become a famous writer?" I can't even stand the thought of it. I wonder whether suicides really go to Hell.

I have a dog named Puppet, a cat named Moosey (among several other cats, but this one is mine). Naturally, my stepfather is mean to my cat: not physically, but he talks with open contempt of this particular cat. I can't understand it. I write my own words in my head where no-one can hear them for Kenny Nolan's song "I Like Dreamin'," which song I don't really like much, but it gets stuck in your head, you know. My version is called "I Like Moosey."

There's more but I really can't do this.

Anyway. Tep.10. 1985. Fourth grade. Weird year. They had finally taken me out of all the remedial programs, and wanted me to skip a grade, and I didn't want to because I'd already gone one year where all my friends were in a different grade than me because of this "Readiness" program they did between Kindergarten and 1st grade. So instead they put me in an accelerated reading program: 2 4th graders, 2 5th graders, 2 6th graders. I don't remember what we read, besides The Call of the Wild, The Trumpeter of Krakow, and Bless the Beasts and Children (which landed me in the guidance counselor's office when I didn't want to talk about the suicide scene; I'd attempted suicide earlier that year).

My fourth grade teacher didn't like the fact that these gifted programs existed, so made me do the reading homework for my regular class as well. It never really occurred to me that it wouldn't have mattered if I'd skipped it, since she wasn't the one giving me my reading grade.

We had to write essays every week for this accelerated thing, which meant my mother sitting by the keyboard with me every damn night it rolled around, prodding me for each sentence. "What's the answer to the question about the symbolism in the second chapter?" "Blah blah blah." "Well, write that down, then." Took hours. Harder work than anyone asked of me until 10th grade or so (although I'd dropped out of the honors classes by then, or that might not be the case). Wouldn't be as nice a writer now if my mother hadn't had the patience to do that. The program didn't last much longer -- it briefly morphed into a touchy-feely "tell me about your dreams" crapiculum -- because it was turning us all into prepubescent hypercompetitive neurotics.

Okay, let me think, what else. I played a shitload of poker. Every Friday night, my friends would come over to my place and we'd buy Cheetos and Welch's grape soda and Reese's peanut butter cups and whatnot and we'd play poker for either chips or nickels, depending on whether we all had money or not. I hadn't discovered roleplaying games yet; I mean, I'd discovered them, but I was forbidden to play them, so this was my gaming geekery at the time -- five-card poker, usually with someone throwing in like a dozen different wild cards ("Yeah, uh, okay, the game is five-card draw, and ... suicide kings, black queens, jacks, deuces, and the three of hearts are wild.")

My closest friends were more or less the same friends I would have through the end of junior high, except that in 5th grade I met Matt, who was my best friend until I left NH. We spent Halloweens watching horror movies and trick-or-treating two nights -- Hollis did it one night, and Nashua always did it another, and by 4th grade at least some kids' parents had divorced, and all divorced fathers lived in Nashua because there were no apartments in Hollis, only large Colonial houses and newer sunroofed/swimming-pooled cul-de-sac developments. We went to Red Sox games five or six times in the summer, and if I'm remembering my timing right, it was the days of Roger Clemens and Wade Boggs and Oil Can Boyd.

... yeah, I'm remembering my timing right, because 1986 was the Series and Buckner. Goddamn and goddamn.

Those Halloweens also meant the Playboy channel, because Nashua had cable and Hollis did not -- you were always jealous of children of divorced parents back then, because they got to watch Danger Mouse and You Can't Do That On Television (what on earth can't you do on television? the rest of us wondered - it must involved nakedness!) on weekends -- and divorced fathers quite naturally always subscribed to the Playboy channel. We would put it on mute, play poker, and trade our Halloween candy: I got every damn Almond Joy in the room, man. Nobody wanted their Almond Joys. I could trade a Sugar Daddy for like three of those puppies. I was the fucking man.

I got online for the first time, on my dad's .. XT? AT? ... whatever was his computer (mine was the PCjr still, with King's Quest and PC Pool and the BASIC cartridge you had to pop in for some games and Qwerty for homework). CompuServe, I think, but it might have been the Source. We had a 300 baud modem and my father had some kind of answering machine program running, but my mother didn't want him to use it because he was out of town or at work late so often (he ran a computer store and maintenance service thing) and it was a DOS command-line program she didn't feel like using "when we could just buy an answering machine, for heaven's sake, if we really needed one.")

"Getting online" in 1985, btw, mostly consisted of logging on, sitting there for a minute, and then telling the friend who was watching wide-eyed as I did so, "Yeah, I'm gonna, uh ... hack NASA now," and then hitting a bunch of keys which usually brought up a message-board discussion of Fortran or Lotus 123 or some damn thing. We'd watched Wargames and Whiz Kids too much.

I didn't have Nintendo yet. I don't remember if it was out, only that I didn't get it for a few years after my friends did, because a) I mentioned the PCjr with King's Quest, right? Who the hell needed Super Mario Brothers when I had King's Quest? and b) I had an Odyssey^2, so until that broke and I couldn't play Pickaxe Pete anymore, I had zero interest in any of this newfangled shit.

At the arcade, I was horrible at Dragon's Lair but plunked two tokens in once every visit, because you just had to. I was okay at Spy Hunter and Punch-Out. I fucking owned Tron Discs. My intials were on that bitch's topspot right up until the day they rolled it out to make room for the Blockbuster.

We had a VCR, emphasis on the R since there was only one place around that rented videos, and it was across the street from my father's store. Once in a great while we rented movies: I picked one (Star Trek or Indiana Jones, or a comedy that I managed to convince my father didn't have any swearing or sex in it; we were only allowed to see R-rated movies if they were rated R for violence) and my younger brother picked one (almost without fail, that one was a Chuck Norris movie). If we took too long to decide, my father would invoke his fiat and rent a James Bond movie or a western instead.

Television ... this might have been the year I would occasionally sneak the black-and-white rabbit-eared television set into my room so I could watch Facts of Life and Manimal even though they were on later than I was supposed to be watching television. Diff'rent Strokes and WKRP, in just-after-dinner syndicated reruns, were my daily fare. Jennifer from WKRP and Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman were two halves of my Ideal Woman Coin.

I read a good deal, several novels a week, whatever I could get my hands on. I wrote ineffectively and immaturely but with great attention paid to the summaries I would write in my notebook before starting the story (rarely making it more than a page or two beyond that summary). I'm not sure if I had started listening to music much yet. The first song I remember being on heavy rotation on the radio when I started listening regularly is "Point of No Return" by ... Nu-Shooz? (It's the spelling I'm not sure of, not the band.)

Eleven years of posting here and coming across something as remarkable as CB's post, something as memorable as Liz's, something as familiar as Ned's stickers on a mirror -- all for the first time.

I guess it's why I keep coming back.

man this thread

i love you all tbh

I really liked K'Nex, "Jellyhead" by Crush, and watching QVC

my best friend at school was a skinny redhead named tony -- have no idea what happened to him after that year. we were both obsessed with the animorphs books.
my parents gave me my own room in the basement and helped me decorate it with all space stuff (a national geographic poster of the local galaxies, an airbrush painting of some planets, "a new hope" poster, silver foil wallpaper).
i got earthbound for xmas (with the giant box and the players guide with the stinky scratch n' sniff stickers).
we got a jack russell terrier named lucy, who was the family dog until she died just a couple years ago. best dog ever.
had a huge collection of rocks and minerals, meticulously ordered and labeled. often i'd line them all up in a long row and stare at them for what felt like hours.
my favorite music was a cassette of the jurassic park score that i'd listen to on a boombox with my ear right up to the speaker.
i probably still had a bowl haircut.

I found out that the "auntie" who was hogging my bed as I was relegated to the floor was actually my half sister.
I was knocking about with a future serial killer and a violent heroin addict gangster at school and never felt in any kind of peril.
Me + my older brother frequented a computer club above a town centre pub and progressed from wanting a Sharp MZ80k to a Commodore 64. He is now a big-shot programmer living in Dubai and I am me!
Went to this weird cunt's house a couple of times for First Confirmation preparation, rebelled against it. I wasn't That rebellious, cos I still turned up to be confirmed by Bishop Fuck-face or whoever!

I was wholesome and I liked to bake things with my grandmother

In the fall of 1978, I was in the sixth grade at St. George's School in Spokane, WA, my family having just relocated from Bethesda, MD. It was horrid, as I missed my old friends and school. Over the summer I had gone to camp in Maine, which was more horrid still, as I could make no sense of the culture and hated most everyone around me. Worse, I had tried to feel up a boy who seemed approachable, but he freaked out and called me a "faggot" and ran away yelling about it. The spectre of this, the idea that all the other kids were whispering unheard behind my back, hung over the rest of the summer.

In Spokane, I was meant to be memorizing my times tables but did not. As a result, I had to stay back in class every Friday as the other kids went to the roller rink, our reward for proper recitation. I knew this was meant to be a humiliating punishment, but I rather enjoyed the time spent alone reading pervy science-fiction novels. There was also a health class in which we got to learn about fallopian tubes and squish bits of cigarette lung encased in plastic.

I had a crush on a girl named Shelly, though I rarely managed the courage to actually speak with her. She was pretty and blonde, with thick wire-framed glasses and a reading habit. At the end of the year, Margaret wrote in my yearbook that maybe I didn’t know it, but Shelly liked me. I decided Margaret was probably just fucking with me. Or Shelly. One way or the other.

This period in my life was so traumatic that I essentially forced it out of my memory long ago. My life timeline seems to skip directly from age 8 to 13 when I think back on it nowadays; I know what happened in between but it's too uncomfortable to think about even decades later.

in July 1991 all I can say for sure is that we were living in donegal and I was going into 5th class that September, my fourth year in a row at the same school, which is twice as long as any previous best.

I'm not sure in which house I'm living in atm, its a somewhat fuzzy time to recall and there are three or four contenders - the most likely one is a big old awesome place with an orchard, a patch of woodland a lumberyard next door and sheds filled with stuff left by the previous owners like cannonballs and highwayman looking pistols and rusty badger traps, all of which we are left to our own devices in and with.

we are four brothers, one older that tends towards violent temper and the physical ability to indulge well in it- i worship and hate him will do for many years yet- and two younger and therefore of little interest beyond the way extent to which their adoration boosts my enormous ego or my frequent tormenting of them amuses me. the nearer of them is not as bright as I or the youngest and I'm merciless with him, in no small part because he's already almost my size and goodlooking. the youngest has a gap of a couple of years on the rest of us and is a violently tempered but brilliant redhead midget and I teach him to read before the rest of his class on a whim that lasts longer than most.

I am youngest in my class of ten and tallest and fastest, and cleverest along with one other boy who was kept back for two years to attend with his brother. he is diligent and mannerly and reserved and an unfortunate contrast in most other ways too but I dont blame him for that and get along fine with him and everyone else in the class, except the girls who are to be avoided in terrified panic wherever possible although I love lor3tta with the Spanish skin fiercely and jealously even after talking to her (normally the point at which I decide people aren't worth bothering with) and she gets glasses.

I'm already losing teeth, four in a single public health dentist visit this year, and I attend school smelling of urine most days, though the headlice seem not to mind.

I haven't formed any opinions of my parents beyond that which is normal in childhood just yet, but I have begun to have inklings about the amount and ferocity of the fights when my dad is home.

I read everything. everything comprises black plastic bags full of Enid blyton books from cousins, old western pulps from grandad and uncles, readers digest collections on the occult and anything else I can find.

I'm gullible and prone to being made a fool of in class or by my peers, or by myself in front of them, but this is OK by me and not unusual in a small school so I don't take it to heart.

I lived with my schizophrenic mother and her abusive boyfriends. My sister moved out when she was 14, leaving me alone with them.

I turn 10 in March 1995. That's during grade four -- I'm always one of the oldest kids in my year.

The snow is going to melt soon which means I can ride my bike everywhere again. I have a new-ish bike. It's teal and has 18 speeds. Having lots of speeds is really cool.

Later that spring we get a puppy. He lives until February 2014.

During summer vacation I play along with The Price is Right every morning. Then I ride my bike, and play some Sega Genesis, and read books, and build houses out of Lego, and maybe play Batman with my little brother until he annoys me.

Sometimes I convince my mom to let me stay up late and watch Married With Children reruns. I think she lets me because she knows I won't get any of the raunchier jokes.

My best friends is Lisa H. Her family has neat things like a computer and a car phone. We play Wolfenstein 3D and Day of the Tentacle.

I take 'piano' lessons once a week. We can't afford a piano though, so I only get to practice on a cheap keyboard with hilarious presets.

In grade five there's a chart on the wall where we can put a sticker next to our name for each book we read. By the end of the school year, I have 75 stickers, by far the most in the class, and I am very smug about this.

Sometimes I secretly read books during class because the lessons bore me. My teacher notices and writes about it in my report card and asks me to stop. I find out years later that my mom didn't want to skip me ahead because she thought the kids in the year above me were all delinquents.

During lunch breaks my class listens to the radio or CDs. Weird Al's 'Bad Hair Day' is our favourite.

I listen to Rick Dees and the weekly top 40 every Saturday. I am beginning to develop taste in music, sort of. For Christmas I get my very own CD player and Dance Mix 95.

wow, i barely have any memory of this year. 4th grade. i became friends with a kid in my class who had some anger management issues. i could sympathize with him so i hung out and we'd talk about shit. we became good friends and my hunch was right, his home life sucked worse than mine. i spent that entire summer hanging out with him and his older brother, and we'd literally spend every single day together because our parents were MIA. we were little juvenile delinquents, stealing candy and porno mags from the convenience mart, made makeshift slingshots and we'd fire rocks at cars, that sorta thing.

our friendship ended that fall when i hung out with him, his older brother and his brother's friend. we were hiking through the woods, and i remember his older brother got me to smoke a cigarette. as we walked through the woods we found this abandoned warehouse and we decided to try and demolish it. we smashed all the windows with rocks, broke the doors down, hurled cinder blocks through the walls, etc. and as we left a police officer "arrested" us. i remember riding in the back of the police cruiser feeling so incredibly ashamed of myself. my mom said "don't hang out with them again" and i didn't. never saw him or talked to him again after that. about 10 years ago i ran into his older brother and he told me he had just gotten out of federal prison for grand theft auto and a few other wonderful offenses. guess i was better off never seeing them again and going in a different direction.

I got Garfield's Nine Lives and the Monkees' Pool It! for my tenth birthday, and they were perfect gifts. I'm pretty sure that was the same year that my mom's cousin was working at a restaurant owned by Jim Davis and arranged for me to meet him. I wept when I found out it was happening. I guess the Monkees were riding high on their '80s resurgence at the time, and I was way into the old records (all of which my mom had and gave to me).

I got glasses for the first time. Big, doofy ones. I had no sense of my vision fading but I guess my mom noticed me sitting way too close to the TV.

I stayed up late almost every weekend and watched as much Night Flight on USA as I could before I'd pass out. I also watched a lot of WWF and GLOW. And Captain Power!

I think my dad was gone most or all of that year (serving with the Navy). We moved back to the town I was born in to be near my grandparents, at least partly because my mom had just given birth to my sister a few months before. I never really thought about it until just now, but I imagine that was pretty rough on her (particularly with three other boys to wrangle). The beginning of fifth grade marked my sixth school (of thirteen, counting all of K-12).

Ten was the age when I last threw up (for non-alcohol-related reasons). The whole family had stomach flu. I staved it off for a while but finally relented while Taylor Dayne's "Tell It To My Heart" was on MTV. I couldn't listen to that song for years.

Bobby C00ns was a completely mental kid in our neighborhood who threw a stick in my spokes when I rode by him on my bike one time, and who one other time crawled out of the school bus window while we were stopped at a red light and ran away. Would not be at all surprised to discover that he's currently dead or in prison.

I was way into Spaceballs. I drew a ton of comics, many of which were Cracked-esque parodies (Cracked seemed much more aligned with my sensibilities than Mad was). I got really good at drawing ALF, and I was way into creating mazes.

I saw Revenge Of The Nerds at a friend's house and was completely scandalized by the full-frontal nudity on display. I didn't think they could show something like that in a mainstream movie.

I drove a chisel into my hand while making a pinewood derby car for Cub Scouts. There's still a scar.

i have one more to add. i can't remember whether this is age 9 or 10 but it's in that time frame.

it's the mid-'80s and my parents are part of the new york folk music/environmentalist community. one weekend we go upstate to a festival, and like a lot of other people there for the fest, we go camping instead of stay at a motel. this happens to be the weekend i get my period for the first time. the campsite has a small restroom facility, but the line for the ladies' room is very long. my mom -- not shy about these things -- announces to the queue of women that her young daughter has just had her first period, and asks if i can skip to the front of the line. i'm HORRIFIED. i think someone offers up a pad, but i can't remember. that night, i sleep in a tent, with blood, cramps, and mosquito bites. not sure we ever go camping again after that.

I played Tiny Tim in our 5th grade stage rendition of A Christmas Carol, not because of my acting but because I was the smallest boy in my grade.

Ten happened during a harrowing period in my childhood. I keep trying to write about the good or interesting parts, but it keeps coming back to the harrowing parts.

I do have really good memories of walking to the store for Archie comics every chance I got, and going to the laundromat with my mom, which was awesome because I got to hang out with her and I always got a diet Dr. Pepper and a Klondike bar.

This is so amazing:

"Here's an actual entry of mine (I brought my first diary in to work today, pages 59-61):

"Monticello" "10 3/4" Real Late May 1988: Today in school we went to visit Monticello, Ashlawn, and U.V.A. On the way there I sat with Suzanne. We both wrote "I love Jeremy!" on our hands. Everyone found out. Then I wrote a note to Jeremy that said, "I love you" and it also had clues of who it was. He did find out that me and Suzanne wrote it. In the afternoon I sat with Nichole. She just had to write notes to Jeremy. They said stuff like, "Sarah loves you!" I felt like killing her. Then came the biggie! She asked him if he'd go with me. He said no. I could understand that since he was going with Suzanne he wouldn't want to go with me too. But Nichole just wrote more notes. Finally he said he would not go with Suzanne either. Then he started staring at me for a long, long time. Before he had asked me to look straight in his eyes. I was SO sad that almost cried. Noah joked about it. Then Jeremy said he'd go with me if I would love Eric just as much. I liked Eric only as a friend, and was afraid there was a catch to it, so I said "No." Then he stared at me some more. I showed him my hand, but he didn't budge. Finally, when we got off the bus at school, Noah said he'd call Jeremy tonight! - end

― Sarah McLUsky (coco), Monday, June 23, 2003 6:33 AM (11 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

Gayer than now, in both senses of the term.

creepy stuff imo

Then he stared at me some more. I showed him my hand, but he didn't budge.

Some rando out there reading this just flipped his fedora.

On my tenth birthday, burned that I was the only kid whose parents hadn’t bought Super Mario Brothers 3, I made a very short birthday list: 1. Super Mario Brothers 3. Before my grandmother let me take it upstairs to play it, she made me explain what the game was about, what happened “after all the mushrooms and stuff”, and was very inquisitive about what kind of species of creature was Bowser. Even at that young age I recognized there she was grilling me out of a kind of disgust that a video game would have me so antsy to leave the party, and I associated my love of Nintendo with a kind of shame.

I lived in the country and went to a school in the city near my step-father’s work. It was a forty-five minute drive. We drove a kid named Oliver, who went to the same school. I didn’t realize what <Nike Airs + parents owned a BMW + riding lessons> meant at age ten, but Oliver was rich. One day, he looked at my step-father’s seven-year old beat-up peach minivan, and said “why don’t your parents buy a new car?” We were both really into the new Batman movie, which I had to watch in secret at Oliver’s house.

I was playing violin two hours a day. I was just starting to learn unaccompanied Bach. I was excited, because one of my favourite tapes was of Pinchas Zukerman and Midori playing the Violin Double Concerto, and I was learning Bach. I was given a radio, which I listened to in bed for a couple of hours a night. My favourite songs were “Iesha” by Another Bad Creation, “All Around The World” by Digital Underground, “Let Your Backbone Slide” by Maestro Fresh-Wes, “Do You Really Want Me Baby” by Salt-N-Pepa. There was a period where it seemed as if Timmy T’s “One More Try” was always in this station’s top ten; I hated that song. I remember hearing commercials on the radio station that tried to convince me to buy StarTropics. “You can talk to dolphins,” was the selling point. I was not interested.

My older brother (fifteen) had just bought an amazing new PC and was designing the artwork for a game called Jill Of The Jungle. I would sit next to him and watch him work. Sometimes he would switch over and play other games: Xenon 2, Speedball, Captain Comic. He would let me log on to BBSes and play TradeWars, but never often enough that I could actually get anywhere.

I was reading Lloyd Alexander.

Right before summer break, my friend Brian had a birthday party and invited about fifteen kids. We went to the town fair and bought combs that looked like switchblades. He had a pool and we all changed in the bathroom, separately, leaving our clothes in a big pile. When it was time for me to leave, I accidentally put on Scott’s underwear. Scott called me that night and said “you are wearing my underwear”. The other kids made fun of me the next day, “look at his face! he enjoyed it!” Unfortunately, because it was right before summer break, I didn’t have time to repair my good social standing before going to stay with my father for the summer.

My father lived in the country, north of Antigonish. There was nothing to do at his house, so I watched VHS tapes of Fawlty Towers over and over again. I picked raspberries and my step-mother bought some pectin and some jars, and I made 20 jars of raspberry jam. Twice a day that summer I would make myself a snack of sliced bread, butter and jam. I had no physical sense of self, and I put on a lot of weight. When I came back to my mom’s, my aunt saw me with my shirt off and said “wow, you look like a blimp!” I had a mild eating disorder for the next five years.

I remember virtually nothing from being 10-years-old except a deep appreciation for Allen Sherman.

a fflam is valiant

xp

I saw this picture in a library book:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/The_cow_pock.jpg

Not realising it was supposed to be satirical, I freaked out and didn't sleep for three days. Felt so relieved when I eventually told my Dad why I was looking like a zombie and he explained that people couldn't really grow cow heads out of their arms.

BUMP

You first.

No fear I went already

Wow, this is a great thread. I don't know how you all remember so much detail. Here's what I know:

It's the late 70s, I just got glasses, and it's my first year in this school/town/state. I love the new house 'cause it's a big split-level, with a huge yard and trees for climbing, tunnels through the bushes, and a fenced off section with walkways and a patio. The height of luxury! The school (I'll discover later) is way inferior to my previous school, but I'm the smartest in the class, even though they learned their times tables in third grade and my old school didn't and I had to catch up quick. My younger brother (by one year) is my best friend at home, but I can't remember him even being in my classroom at school (and he was, because we had two grades per room). I want to be best friends with the most popular girl, but find it impossible to break into their long-standing cliques. At my old school I was shy and kind of clueless, but somehow navigated social stuff like finding best friends pretty easily. Here, the one girl who talks to me smells terrible and is embarrassingly halting when forced to read aloud. I'm aware that I suffer socially from being an obvious "pet" of the incompetent teacher. Overall I'm happy. I'm in my own head most of the time and all this other stuff doesn't matter very much. Books matter, though. I read all the time – classroom books, library books, parents' books. I save all my allowance to buy books at Walden's when we go to the mall. If asked, I would say that my favorite book is Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth.

<3

You first.

did so 12 years ago; being 10 hasn't changed much for me since then

Just think: That 10-year-old would be 22 by now.

I think I was probably v weird and precocious and I really loved The X-Files and Super Nintendo

on my tenth birthday i remember getting this:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51WtjK5Go2L._SX373_BO1%2C204%2C203%2C200_.jpg
i spent most of the year reading it in detail

I was in fifth grade, and I feel that very little of my taste was formed, or at least it was dormant -- I collected baseball cards, I liked whatever pop/hip-hop everyone was listening to, which I remember including Boyz II Men/ABC/BBD, maybe Young MC (or was that fourth grade?). However, I did develop my first crush, on a "tomboyish" girl (who was the daughter of a somewhat well-known leftist filmmaker that my parents had heard of), which definitely prefigured my later taste in women. I think I may have been reading Lloyd Alexander books and John R. Tunis baseball books at that time -- I had been a very precocious reader but I was starting to develop an awkward embarrassment around being smart and a desperate desire to be more normal and popular, and I wasn't reading voraciously anymore. I won second place in a school-wide math competition, beat out by a legit math genius who is now a rising star academic. I was bad at sports but I had started to make an effort to improve my baseball skills, going to batting cages and such, and developed within the next year or two into a serviceable player and decent hitter, even playing first base at times on my relatively non-competitive little league team.

I developed a brief, semi-poseurish obsession with Michael Jordan. I bought air jordans, a bulls hat, and an MJ t-shirt and at least once wore them all together to school.

A mere year later I was already getting into Living Colour and Led Zeppelin and starting to move in kind of a different direction. And also, you know, getting fur in places where I didn't have fur before.

it's 1994/95. I live with my mum, dad, and 12 year old older brother in a 3 bedroom terraced house in a former mining village in lanarkshire scotland, now a commuter suburb of Glasgow. im tall for my age, and extremely skinny.

i play football with my friends Fat Cha', Docser, and Watson in the park next to my house a lot. i have a Super Nintendo that i play a lot, i also like to read, i can remember reading kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson.

i like pop music on the radio, especially dance music. i own cds by oasis, bon jovi and the beastie boys, my brother listens to rage against the machine every day, and while i enjoy them too, I am not a super fan.

We drive to Italy on holiday. It takes about two days driving to get from environs of Glasgow to Genoa. One of my great-grandfathers was Genoese, feels strange to have a connection to such an exotic place. The 1994 World Cup in the U.S. is taking place while we're in Italy, I love the World Cup, collect stickers, have a book where I update all the games' scores with a little pencil. When Italy win the semi-final we're staying in an apartment in Rome and the city goes crazy with people out partying and beeping their horns. When Italy lose the final Rome is like a ghost-town, we go out for a walk through empty streets.

Another night in Rome I am eating gelato on a park bench when I see a road traffic accident. A man on a motorcycle collides with a younger man on a moped at a T junction, the man on the motorcycle bounces off the tarmac and skids on his leather pants, but gets up and is ok. The younger man on the moped goes flying into a tree and appears to break his neck and die. By coincidence a group of his friends are walking down the street as this happens, they are the most distressed people I've ever seen. The next day there is a wreath at the foot of the tree.

i saw a boomer-soothing school play about hardworking preppies vs hedonistic dropouts called "bobbysox and yellow jackets" (originally "ducktails and bobbysox", presumably changed to avoid disappointing '90s kids to the point of riot) in which my 14-y/o babysitter, megan, already interesting in ways i couldn't account for, was a yellow jacket, that is a sarcastic greaser. (in my probably doctored memory she was one of the ones who kept her integrity, still unreformed at curtain. others were brought round by a fictional rock star with the same name as 50 cent.) on the car ride home i didn't even know what had happened to me. all crushes since have been shadows.

You all are great at remembering.

"I'm not sure in which house I'm living in atm, its a somewhat fuzzy time to recall"

In ur face

It just came back to me that I used to actually tape the top 10 countdown on whatever the pop station was, and also that I bought a Ralph Tresvant cassingle, possibly the first and one of the few cassingles I ever bought. I briefly tried to push a proto-challops line about Ralph Tresvant being underrated, although I don't even think I knew the word underrated.

my grandfather passed when i was ten so i remember that yr as sort of the beginning of the end of childhood

/maximumbummer

I was in the 5th grade and my teacher, Mrs G, was a stern and imposing woman. My best friend Amy lived behind me and I spent most of my time with her and her siblings. As an only child, I think being around a large family fascinated me. They drank milk with dinner which I thought was wild. For Halloween that year my mom made Amy and I matching witch costumes and threw the best Halloween party. We transformed our garage into a haunted scene and my dad got some dry ice for a cauldron that we pretended to stir. There was a note on the garage door to knock three times. When the kids did that my dad would open the garage door and put out the sticks with monster hands to try to pull the kids in. That party was one of the few good memories I'd have for the next couple years. My parents rented a ski house that year and it was a blast. Amy and her siblings would come up with us almost every weekend and we'd ski all day and then my dad would make big meals that we'd eat while we hung out around the fireplace. That spring her dad got a job in California and at the end of the school year they moved. I cried for weeks.