no boys allowed in the room!!!!

you were cooler than me - i did logic and math problems with my dad, when i wasn't making up elaborate sci-fi epics with barbies with sabrina.

l u know ilu!

I was pretty wild about Anne McCaffrey, too.

xp - logic and math and Barbies are also cool!

Yes, we did logic problems at the dinner table, and also "Think of words that include the syllable '-round'" (ie around, surround, roundhouse, quarter-round, etc) sort of family competitions.

we played "i'm thinking of a word that rhymes with" games on long road trips - my dad's West Virginia accent was kinda a handicap in this, because he believed that "since" and "fence" rhymed.

People in books that I read were always going on about the Beauty of Nature, and communing with the woods, and getting a spiritual charge from wilderness, and blah blah blah. I remember sitting in a tree and trying to feel something, but nada. I guess when you live in the country it's hard to find the outdoors remarkable?

because he believed that "since" and "fence" rhymed.

Haha! I like this. We sang songs in the car -- rounds and hymns and folksongs and show tunes from all of history that my mother knew. She had a song for every occasion (still does).

I don't even know where half of them come from, tho I bet I could google.

"I love you a bushel and a peck / a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck" <--- why I knew that a "peck" was a unit of measurement

lol that's like how where i grew up "pin" and "pen" rhymed!

xp - that's from Guys and Dolls, i believe.

tza - according to my dad, pin and pen also rhyme.

I really really wanted to be a top rollerskater and have a satin jacket that would billow out with the wind. Unfortunately for that dream, I wasn't allowed to go to the roller rink much b/c the kids there were too "rough" and because it cost money (sending us out to play in the woods was free).

i was a cat girl - i drew cats on everything when i was a kid. i think i also liked stories about large families where there were a lot of kids, because i was an only child. but maybe the large family thing was due to me liking epic things with a lot of characters. i was also really into greek mythology.

would like to be a top rollerskater and have a billowy satin jacket right now

I know! Someday I would master the cross-over cornering maneuver and then I would be So Cool.

i can do that maneuver! or i could when i was 10. /braggin 2010

I had a book on how to draw cats. I was really into it.

Still can't rollerskate, though.

yeah, I can't rollerskate either - there was a period in high school where my friends were into rollerskating, and I went with them sometimes, but I was horrible at it. And there was this guy, Steve, who wore hypercolor shirts and might have had a crush on me, and who I then threw non-dairy creamer at and hit him in the face, and I think if he had a crush on me before, he didn't after that. I forget why i threw creamer at him.

I think I accepted that, no matter how many "Learn to Draw!" books the Scholastic Bookclub offered, it was an art, inherited only by the elite, and beyond my abilities. I went with origami instead.

we used to have rollerskating birthday parties. they were the best. now the roller rink is like, meth central :(

tbh i can't believe it's still there!

i'm still a pretty good rollerskater iirc

got my own skates, no big deal

I'm pretty sure that both La Lech and Jenny would have been out of my league in coolness in jr high.

I'm so glad we're (nominally) grown-ups now.

with better haircuts and fashion sense.

Naw, girl. I was generally well-liked and didn't get stuffed in lockers or anything, but I was too poor/fat/smart/non-athletic and then later stoned to be in the popular clique.

i was totally not cool in jr high. for example: remember how i said i went to all girls school? i didn't know a SINGLE BOY from K-7th grade. no cousins, no neighborhood kids, no brothers or friends with brothers, no boys at all. it's difficult to impress how weird this was, but it was true.

in 8th grade, i went to public school. on the first day, in homeroom, these boys whose names started with R or S (hence in my homeroom) descended on me because i was new. i just sat there, terrified. from that moment on, i was not cool. i was weird. i went from being an affable and sort of weird 12 year old to being a totally withdrawn, bored, terrified, antisocial 13 year old. what else did i have to do but listen to records and rollerskate by myself? that doesn't mean i was cool. i was quiet and weird.

Well, if you say so. I probably would have thought you were kind of tough, though. xp to Jenny

if anyone had bothered to get to know me, maybe i would have been kind of cool?

Single-sex schools with no non-school integration makes for a WEIRD LIFE for SURE.

The healthiest person who went to an all-girls school that I know is actually Australian. I think they do it differently there. Also, she got to be in some kind of quasi-military Junior Cadets program in which you actually FIRE WEAPONS and PARACHUTE OUT OF THINGS and get to order around boys of your own age. I can't think of a single thing that would have been more fun at age 14.

went from being an affable and sort of weird 12 year old to being a totally withdrawn, bored, terrified, antisocial 13 year old.

Aww - that was me going from 6th grade to junior high - except I was 11. That was the same time that sabrina and i stopped being friends. I think my one friend in 7th grade was this girl Christina, whose brothers were in a gang, and she admired my stubborn resolve to chew gum in class no matter how many times I got detention for it, because i thought it was a dumb rule.

Here's a question/discussion for you all. I frequently feel like I was more "myself" in early and mid childhood, say ages 8, 9, 10 -- and then went against all my personality traits and instincts for the next decade. For a long time, most of my mental "adulthood", I've felt more like myself at 10 than myself at 20, 21, 22, and maybe even older than that.

Does anyone else agree/identify with the statement that their adult mental/emotional journey is about getting back to being 10? I was a good 10-year-old.

yes! I was talking about this with my mom a few weeks ago! She was talking about how the thing she loved the most when she was 10 was getting to sit in the office of her dad's meat company and play with the 10 key calculator and have all these salt-of-the-earth men around that told dirty jokes and funny stories, and how her current job - which she really likes - is kinda like that.

I feel like, in a lot of ways, my adolescence was a betrayal of my more confident, more practical childhood persona; somehow I knew MORE about the important stuff when I knew less about the world.

Of course I had religion helping me undermine myself, but there's plenty of other things that'll do it for you too.

But yeah - I think there've been a lot of articles about this - focusing on girls - how they're really self-assured and awesome when they're 9-11, and then they start having a lot of the standard problems associated with teenage-ness and become unhappy/insecure.

I have read some articles about studies showing that girls tend to be very confident until they hit puberty, at which point the Patriarchy Oppression Machine really kicks in and girls start to report feeling like shit/hating themselves. XP!!!!

I had some rough childhood years from 7 until about 13, so I definitely don't identify. I think I first really started feeling comfortably like myself when I turned 30.

i was a lot more introverted as a child. even though i'm not the most outgoing person now, i'm like 10000x less socially anxious than i was at age 10. i don't think it helped that i transfered from nerdy montessori school where my weirdness was encouraged to public school in grade 4 and was immediately pegged as a horrible dork.

tbh i like myself better now than at any previous time in my life. it's fun to be nostalgic for old times, but i don't think i'd ever want to relive them.

Ahh! That makes so much sense. Probably in a few minutes either Amanda or horseshoe or Jenny will come along and tell us she did a dissertation on such things and it will all become clear. xp hah!

yeah - my childhood was a bit rough too - i hit puberty pretty early - I think I was 8 or 9, which was kinda traumatic, but it meant that i looked older and was taller than most of the kids in my class, even though i was the youngest. I was a weird kid, but I don't think i had a clue that i was weird, or that it mattered until junior high.

but when i was 10, i liked playing music, and making up stories with my friends, and performing, and reading, and making up lessons and lectures about things - and uh, this isn't all that different from what i do now that i really enjoy.

tbh i like myself better now than at any previous time in my life. it's fun to be nostalgic for old times, but i don't think i'd ever want to relive them.
truth bomb

Well no! I mean, look at how much of what we all thought about was purely aspirational? It was about what we wanted to BECOME, not who we were. Which strikes me as pretty healthy/normal for the younger ages but obv now is better!

Eeeee Sarah I remember being in fifth grade and a couple of boys snatching my purse and threatening to look in "that little zipper pocket" which of course contained a tampon. Gut wrenching terror.

Yeah - it's just working through the baggage of the interim years, and the things that constrained you when you were younger - some of that being the limits of childhood awareness of the world, as well as environmental and family stuff - but recognizing the hope and joy of those years, and a certain authenticity to self - maybe? But of course, it's better being in your 30s, because you have more power over your life.

xp - jenny - i got my period the day before my 10th birthday - and i was having a slumber party at my house.

yikes
i didn't get mine for real til i was 15, but i was built like a mosquito so

Also now if boys try to get into the little pockets of my purse, I just offer them a tampon. Or call the cops, whichever.

Aw, Sarah! That's the pits! I was ten when I got mine. I didn't get my first period at camp, but I went away to camp sometime during my tenth year, and of course had my period, and of course forgot to take a pad out of the pocket of my shorts, which the counselor washed, and then held up as an example to all the other bleeding girls about the importance of checking one's pockets before sending clothes to the laundry.

This is my "favorite" period story. The daughter of our junior high school nurse was in my class. During "The Talk," the nurse was talking about different kinds of pads and tampons and the importance of hygiene during that special time when she suddenly got really adamant and said, "And if you leak, don't just throw your bloody panties in the laundry for your mother to clean up! You wash out your panties yourself!" My classmate, who had obviously failed in this little test of responsible womanhood, likedta died, the poor thing.

holy shit!! that story is great!

oh gosh that poor girl!

TBF I have never thrown my blood panties in the laundry for my mother to clean up, and they say it's all worth it if you get through to just one kid, so...