Look back at your childhood years. Can you think of anything that you now consider odd?
When I was a kid, I never owned a bike. Never wanted one, actually. In fact, I have probably been on a bike maybe twice in my 37 years.
After the age of 9, I pretty much stopped playing in the dirt. I wasn’t obsessive by any means, just didn’t like it.
How weird do you think that is? I’d give it about a 5.
I could (and still can) crack my elbows,like one cracks one’s knuckles.
I never wanted to stay up past my bedtime. I have always loved sleep beyond all other activities.
I also loved going to school and would actually throw tantrums during my many strep throat outbreaks when I was told I would have to stay home. It got to where it took me almost passing out for my parents to realize I had strep because I would never admit to having a sore throat!
Here’s one small example of my warped and twisted childhood mind:
When I was in the third grade, my teacher accused me of sharpening my pencil way more often than I should. Which I found odd…so I liked a really sharp pencil, so what? And it’s not like I was running up to the crank-operated pencil sharpener by the blackboard every 5 minutes, I had my own little sharpener in my desk.
So, as punishment, the teacher confiscated my pencil sharpener. This angered me. I was filled with all the righteous indignation an 8-year-old could muster. At the time, I was reading a book about monsters, one of which was a part man, part goat creature known as Goatman.
Inspired by the book, I wrote a note with a red pencil, drawing the letters to look like they were dripping blood. The note read “Beware the Goatman!” While she was out of the room, I placed this on her desk. I don’t remember what the logic of this course of action was.
So yeah, I was a weird kid.
Incidentally, somehow she knew it was me, and she punished me by confiscating all my red writing utensils.
Probably the tie dyed ultimate funk llama i was forced to ride to school every day of the 8th grade (incidently, i was one of the first kids in my class to try LSD)
Oh, dear. What a question. Can we just accept that there was nothing–from my habit of perching gargoyle-like in high places to my fascination with neutronium–that didn’t seem odd?
I make no bones about it–I was a weird kid, and I liked it that way.
When I was first learning to write I thought about it way to much. You know how you write from left to right? Well I thought when you flipped the paper over you were supposed to go exactly the same (right to left). It flipped the shit out of my teacher when I handed in a paper with backwards writing on one side. Also I never threw any tantrums. I don’t know what it was but I was always a really quite depressed little kid. Never had many friends, was always scared to talk to anyone, hated school, I just wanted to lay in my bed and forget about the hellish life in early grade school… Okay I’m gonna stop now honest. I really don’t like to think about those years. It really sucked.
Mishell’s Goatman story reminded me . . .
One of my teachers in Jr. High (still a kid, or was I just a weird adolescent?) insisted that we correct the papers of our peers, presumably so she didn’t have to do it. She also made us put Corrected by: Mysphyt on our papers (or whatever our name happened to be . . . thirty Corrected by Mysphyts wouldn’t do much for her) so if we intentionally made errors on the papers of our little prepubescent enemies we could be punished appropriately.
I, for some reason, decided I didn’t like this.
I responded by refusing to put my name on papers. It didn’t exactly make sense, but that’s what I did. Instead of c/b Mysphyt I’d put c/b The Phantom Corrector. Then I’d draw what was supposed to be a little skull with a dagger through. The dagger, inexplicably enough, was dripping blood, notwithstanding the fact that it wasn’t a head, but a skull. No flesh, no brains, nothing that could bleed, per se, but that’s beside the point.
It didn’t accomplish much, because there were thirty c/b Janes or c/b Johns and one Phantom Corrector. Deductive reasoning took hold rather quickly.
Except for the fact that I started a trend. Mid semester, half of the class had codenames. It got to the point where my teacher couldn’t keep track. She made me quit, 'cause she remembered who I was.
From that day on, each paper I corrected bore the stigma of the Phantom: TPSLA–The Phantom Shall Live Again.
I got in trouble for that bit too.
It was either my love for broccoli, or the third arm growing out of my left testicle.
Thank God. I thought you were going to bring up the toothpaste again…
Well when I was about 3 1/2 I began regularly smoking pot also tried hash. I remember going to deseeding parties and having a lot of fun licking the green gunk off of my fingers. Anyway that lasted about a year till I was ready to begin school, Kindergarden, anyway I came to my mom and told her I had to quit since I didn’t want it to interfere with my grades. Hmmm, maybe that’s why I can’t recall too many memories older then a few years …
After my sixth birthday I decided I didn’t like them and refused to have birthday parties from then on. Although my mother forced me to have at least a family party. I remember how MAD she got when I tried to stop that practice too when I was 14 or so. I almost didn’t have one at all this year. Maybe next year I’ll be clear …
Other then that I am exactly like every other person on this planet.
I’m another in the “what didn’t???” category.
I was an exceedingly, painfully introverted child. I was probably not all that socially adept for my age, whatever that would mean, when they figured out, three weeks into the year, that I was too smart for first grade. So they bumped me up to second grade, where I was easily the smallest, geekiest kid in class. I pretty much withdrew into myself until my teens, and lost all sense of how normal people related to one another.
Fortunately, that was a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
I had accordion lessons at age 7. I WANTED accordion lessons. I still have my accordion in my closet, and to this day, 40 years later, I still play it like a 7 y/o. Well, except that now I have tits and it hurts to play it if I’m not careful.
Never mind…
Lessee… first I have to kill Mercutio, then I have to kill Dijon…
All righty, my schedule for the next week is set.
Oh lord. where do I start?
How about being the only kid that could do a Morrissey impression and wasn’t able to fall asleep up until the age of 4 unless MEatloaf’s “Bat out of Hell” was playing?
And these are just the normal things…
I was one of those annoying child prodigies…reading and writing by age three.
If I couldn’t go outside,I’d read. Well one time at my grandparent’s house I had read all my books so I started reading the encyclopedias. Started with A and read straight through to Z.
Also, I was a night owl from birth. Probably the only seven year old who’d stay up until 3 am and sleep until noon if I could:)
I was a late talker. Three or so. My mother thinks I was too shy, and didn’t want to be ridiculed for making baby talk. I NEVER said “mumumum mum” or “da da”. I waited until I could construct grammatically correct sentences.
My first words ever?
Why, “That’s a hole”, of course; what else? I was pointing at a machined hole in the woodwork on the back of a sofa. Make of that what you will.
Another precocious brat here. Loved to read to the point of obsession from age 4 or so. Other than that, pretty normal…
What made me an odd kid?
Well, I remember that every time we all lined up in class, no matter what grade it was, I was always 3rd, 5th, 7th, or 9th in line.
Mysphyt’s story brought another nice example to mind. I was prone to numbering papers (particularly spelling tests for some reason) in binary. One teacher insisted that I stop, so I started numbering in trinary instead–with my name in trinary-encoded ASCII equivalents for good measure.
Lots of smart kids become teachers’ pets–I preferred to be their very own personal demon. Only the ones with really flexible senses of humor ever liked me.
02110 10121 11000 10121 11002 10200 10202