What were you like as a kid?

[Nirvanadragones]

A friend and I were talking today about our childhood, and what we were like then, compared to now.

I was quiet. I preferred to spend my time daydreaming, lying underneath my grandmother's piano, feet flat against the bottom, feeling the music resonate through me. I loved hiding - in the garden especially. My imagination would run wild with pretending to live in other worlds and times.

I preferred to observe, and watch, than take part. But when I did, whatever I did, I gave it my all. I would run with abandonment, climb trees, twirl around and round till I fell down with dizziness, laugh until my sides hurts.

Bare feet. I hated wearing shoes. And I read everything I could find. Sometimes more than once.

And dancing. I was always dancing. My earliest childhood memories, is of dancing. I've danced through my life. I still do.

I wasn't particularly naughty. In fact, I was pretty well behaved. I started going against the grain as a young teenager. But I was clever, and made sure I was never "caught" in my experimenting with an alternative lifestyle. Even through the really bad stuff. I always hid it will.

I always believed in magick. Yet, I was always part of the darkness on some level. I became aware of that part of me at a very young age. Self-awareness was always there, as far back as I can remember.

What were you like as a kid?

 

[glynndah]

I was also a very quiet, obedient child. I didn't have many close friends or even family connection because I learned at a very young age, I could be taken away at any time.

 

[damppanties]

Quiet. Behind the scenes. Like I was observing life, not living it. Through school, I didn't have a 'best friend' and only talked to a couple of kids. I remember watching the popular girls play during breaks. I observed their games but never felt jealous or the need to join in. I still love watching people. I can spend hours doing it.

At home I was completely different. I was the tomboy in our group of friends and was never comfortable with the role of a housewife in 'House'. I was always part of the group who went out and earned money.

A lot of my childhood memories are of climbing the guava tree in my grandparents' house and then on to the roof. They had a lovely old house that eventually passed to my uncle and he chopped the tree down and added to the house to the point that it doesn't have the old charm anymore. I was pissed at him for years when he cut the tree.

Other memories I have are of spending the evening in my mother's clinic. She is a doctor and had her own clinic then. She spent 7-10 pm there and we usually went with her to do our homework. (No supervisions, no homework )

Academically, I was pretty unremarkable. Very good grades, but not at the top (except for Urdu in which I topped every year I was in school. ) I started doing better in high school and college.

My parents tell me I was naughty, but I feel like I was just a child. I fought with my brother a lot, but we were inseparable. When I look back, I don't really remember specific moments, just a vague pastel-colourful period labeled childhood. I have no idea what I really did back then.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

I was also a very quiet, obedient child. I didn't have many close friends or even family connection because I learned at a very young age, I could be taken away at any time.

Sounds painful.

Something else about me. I was always "ready". For whatever would happen next. The next move, the next school, the new mother-to be in my life, the next change. At times, the only stability I had, was knowing that I had to be ready for the next change.

 

[scheherazade_79]

I played an awful lot of soccer. All day every day, and in the evenings until my parents would embarrass me by turning up at the playing field to take me home. When I wasn't doing that I was competing against the local boys on my skateboard and BMX, and trying to prove that girls weren't so useless after all. And when the weather was bad, I stayed indoors and played ZX Spectrum games for hours and hours on end. I loved adventure games, where you typed commands and had to find ways around problems. I guess it was the challenge of trying everything you can come up, knowing that in the end you were bound to get the solution.

I never got into trouble, but that was only because I never got caught. I was good at hiding and being quiet, and because I did well at school no one ever suspected me.

I loved school work, but my favourite classroom activity was creative writing. Just loved the endless possibilities of worlds you could create. Creating worlds also spilled over into my free time, and I wrote lots of futuristic / alternative reality stuff.

I was really shy around adults, and with other kids to a certain extent

I got crazy ideas from time to time. Like one day I decided that everyone's heart only had a certain number of beats before the battery ran flat and they died. Logically, this meant that exercise was similar to suicide, and I spent an entire day sitting in an armchair refusing to move... until I was shouted at for being lazy, which made my heart race, then I got angry and called my grandmother a nasty name, and ended up getting slapped... which in itself took at least a decade off my lifespan.

Sometimes I did things just to see what would happen - even when it was obvious. I got my head stuck between the stairs leading up to the attic, slid the bolt across the bathroom door and discovered I couldn't get out, and threw my mother's favourite vase, just to watch it smash as expected.

I also had a weird thing where I raided my nan's purse on a regular basis, took bank notes out and flushed them down the toilet. When I was asked why I did it, my response was that I liked the smell of money. Don't tax yourself over that one - I still can't figure it

I refused to wear skirts and dresses, and the only socks I'd wear were multi-coloured ones. I collected stamps, and adored organising them into different countries.

I also used to lick the full length bathroom mirror. No one worked out why, but I was stopped by regular patrols in that area.

I was into reading big time - Famous Five, Secret Seven, Enid Blyton boarding school series.. Total book worm. I don't know what went wrong.

 

[DesertPirate]

The same quiet adorable angel I am now

 

[Nirvanadragones]

. . . and because I did well at school no one ever suspected me. . . .

Of what?

 

[damppanties]

I was into reading big time - Famous Five, Secret Seven, Enid Blyton boarding school series.. Total book worm.

Oh yes. Me too. Probably why I didn't have as many friends at school. I was always reading.

 

[scheherazade_79]

Of what?

If I told you I'd have to kill you

 

[Nirvanadragones]

If I told you I'd have to kill you

I'd rather lick my full-length bathroom mirror.

 

[mellowgyrl]

The same quiet adorable angel I am now

LOL Did you duck out of the way of that lightening bolt? Tee hee!

I was pretty much the same way I am now. A quiet tomboy....only now I've acquired a nice halo to match my jeans and baseball cap!

 

[scheherazade_79]

Oh yes. Me too. Probably why I didn't have as many friends at school. I was always reading.

Do you think they had secret subliminal messages in them that told you to keep reading more?

 

[damppanties]

Do you think they had secret subliminal messages in them that told you to keep reading more?

Probably. You loved George(ina), didn't you?

 

[Weird Harold]

At a Great Aunt's 80th Birthday celebration (when I was 16 or 17) I met a distant relative of my father's generation who hadn't seen me for over a decade.

He looked me up and down a couple of times and said, "The last time I saw you, you were such an oernery little brat I wanted to beat the snot out of you; but then you were too small. Now, You're too damned big!"

Apparently I was able to inpire a decades long grudge at the ripe old age of four.

 

[Guest]

I loved to read, playstation, dance and watch movies. (still do)
I was kind of quite though, a bit shy back then.

For some reason though I was usually in trouble with my family. For the record I was never to blame for any strange practical jokes that occurred around me. It was just one of those strange, un-eplainable phennomenons.

I've grown however and matured into an angel ...
when it suits me.

 

[Recidiva]

Silent, solemn, fey.

I read books and I ran around in the woods barefoot at all hours.

I loved to sing and listen to music.

 

[CrimsonMaiden]

I was the shy, quiet, fat girl who always had her nose in a book. I really only had one close friend through elementary school and then one close friend through high school. I did spend some time outside when some other kids from the neighborhood would come over to play kickball in our front yard (my sis was a tomboy). I was girly through and through. I had a huge collection of stuff animals (mostly teddy bears, which I adored.)

I was a cheerleader in junior high school. At that grade level, you were judged by teachers on your ability and not on your popularity. I was also the "smart kid". I was top in my class in 8th grade and 3rd in my high school class.

In high school, I was in the band. If it hadn't been for that, my high school years would have been spent with my nose entirely in a book with me unaware of anything going on around me. That was pretty much my sole social experience. I found out my senior year that a lot of my classmates thought I was a snob because I was so quiet.

 

[rgraham666]

I was a quiet loner. Since my family moved at least once a year the first decade of my life I learned not to form close attachments. I knew they'd be bought to an end soon.

And my family was not exactly the most comforting place for a child since my father believed all that was required to raise a kid was to clothe, feed and house them. You did not ever praise them for doing well. You did berate them constantly for being disappointments.

When my family did settle down they picked the whitest place in North America. It did not accept and it did not like people who did not fit into the pure WASP oeuvre. So I got beaten a lot. School and family shrugged. "Learn to fight back."

"Sure," I replied, "against six kids bigger, stronger and more vicious than me." That got another shrug.

I hated being a child.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I was Bart Simpson.

I read all the time and had plenty of friends.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

My mother claims that I was born 40 so I suppose I never was a kid.

 

[impressive]

Rebellious. (Surprised?)

In the early years, I ran with the neighborhood kids -- who were all "bad influences." Mother (very status conscious, having come from dirt poor immigrant roots) put up with Holly because her parents came "from money," but we got up to all sorts of mischief. Yes, that kind. As well as dabbling in various drugs. Holly's parents were essentially on-the-job retired as far as supervision was concerned. We could come & go as we pleased -- and entertain whoever we wished -- as long as we didn't disturb them in their 3rd floor attic suite.

When I hit my teens, I was the straight A student that never took a book home, the 4-varsity sport starting athlete, the elite madrigal quartet's alto, and every other mother's Why-can't-you-be-like-Imp? poster child of a daughter. IOW, I was exceptionally skilled at concealing my less-than-angelic activities.

I was the activist who refused induction into the National Honor Society (to my mother's everlasting horror) because an African American classmate with a higher GPA and a more impressive list of clubs/activities was passed over.

And I hated my body. Thought I was "fat" -- even though I weighed almost 30# less than I do now & was in phenomenal shape.

I drank too much at parties, and I was very sexually active -- although I didn't lose my P-V virginity until after I graduated high school.

One of my classmates said, at our 10-year reunion, that everyone knew my name, but no one really knew me. I was an enigma ... a slutty, brainy, athletic enigma. Yeah, that fits.

 

[jomar]

Sports, friends, getting good enough grades (As and Bs) in school with minimal effort (per Imps post - I took the books home but never got around to opening them ), parties, hanging out, not getting caught for stuff, a few bumps and bruises along the way, but...all in all I had a great time.

 

[sutherngent985]

We REALLY do not want to go there LOL

 

[rengadeirishman]

I was my own playmate (get your minds out off the gutter), my days were filled with the, admittedly very watered down, for children, stories of ancient warriors. CuChulainn, Fionn MacCumhail, King Arthur and his knights, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, were all names i knew and emulated. Then i went to school, and before long i started hating everyone, I had almost no friends, when i was about 7 my parents sent me to a child psychologist, who reported extensively about the amount of anger and pain i showed, a friend of mine now, who knew me in fourth grade has remarked about how misanthropic i was in fourth grade. No child should be a misanthrope in fourth grade, but yet it seems i was. I spent alot of time getting in fights, sometimes winning, sometimes losing, always to my pacifist mothers horror and my tough mick father's quiet amusement.

Things continued in a similar vein until i was in high school, where seeming overnight i got alot taller and with my fathers rapidly deteoriating health and the necessities born of it i became much much stronger. I started fighting more, and losing less, drinking and smoking behind the gym those sorts of activites. By my first year in tenth grade i was became popular and didnt know how to deal with it, and when i was 16 my father died, and the various issues i still held manifested themselves in a series of bad decisions that culminated in my eventual expulsion and dropping out in junior year. After that i got involved with some bad people and worse things, hard drugs and hard liquor, but then i got my GED and somehow got into college, and found a bit of direction and purpose.

Now, i am what i am, more then i was and sometimes less. I drink, party, and fuck less then i did, and i rarely have to fight anymore, part of me, as it twisted as it may sound, sometimes misses that, that pitting of man against man (and sometimes men) and the exhiliration of each blow taken and given, the feeling of victory and the agony of defeat, smiling through a blood filled mouth and tying your ruined shirt around badly bleeding wounds. But the rest of me knows that i've done my dirt, and have nothing left to prove. So i will continue as i have, living when i can and surviving when have to.

 

[starrkers]

I was quiet, friendless and usually up in a tree with a book. My family moved every couple of years when I was a kid so I was always the new kid in town.
Usually the youngest in the class (and often the smartest too) also didn't endear me to others. I was also crap at sport. Not only was I younger than my classmates, my parents were older than theirs and had a different set of values.
My parents reaction to any trouble was to make a hell of a ruckus at the school - really added to my popularity.
So I was always the small, quiet, clever kid that hasdfriends for a few weeks until the other kids figured my family was "weird". Then I'd be progressively shunned, until I was alone, watching the other kids play.
Wanna know about ants? I know lots from observation