I was another early reader. I remember one summer being so bored I read the encyclopedias, reread the Childcraft books and tackled I Robot.
But what really made me weird was my brother, the Jr. Deliquent. Made me twitchy. Looking over my shoulder all the time. Little weirdo.
I think my first words were bird and boat. I was fond of the ploseives.
I’ll confirm this with my Mum, just to make sure she meant spoken words, not words read.
I had a goddess-like dream friend called Betty Alison. She wore dresses and hats that matched, and she had magical powers. I wish I could remember more about her. Mind you, a lot of kids have dream friends. Not everyone had someone so wise as Betty Alison.
I believed everything, everything, EVERYTHING schoolmates told me.
That’s not odd?
Well, it’s the reason (one big one, anyway) I’m so fucked-up now:)
Extremely stubborn… In the kindergarten christmas show, I didn’t say my part because I did not like it. Also, in second grade(7 years) I did not read a piece of poem assigned because I thought it was BS. This trend has continued through my school life.
I learned to read at age 6, but I was a fast learner, I could read encyclopedias by the end of the first semester or so. This mean I was the kid in class who knew that whales weren’t fish, or the correct name for female horse in Spanish(English is my second language).
I also liked to slept late…Seeing adult TV shows. My love for Brazilian soap operas comes from those nights.
My attention could be captivated by small things like seeing an anthill, picking fruits, seeing the leaves. Yet my mind wandered during school hours from first grade onwards.
I was a shy inquisitive child.
At the age of 12 I became obsessed with juggling. This continued into my high school years.
They stopped laughing when I started making money at it.
I had a great childhood, but definitely different one. When I got older, and swapped growing up stories with friends, I realized just how uniquely I had been raised. But while weird, it was mostly all good. I present, for your edification, an encapsulated version of my childhood.
I wasn’t allowed to wear T-shirts (for play/casual times). Had to be collared blouses, sleeveless shells, or sweaters. (Okay, I hated that rule.)
My sister and I had to perform on holidays for relatives. She played the piano, and I read original poetry. We also had to serve drinks and hors d’oeuvres to guests. Great fun, actually. What child DOESN’T like to be the center of attention? And parties at my parents’ house lasted a LONG time and my sister and I go to drink wine from the ages of nine and seven respectively. Awesome!
Food was permitted only in the kitchen and in designated places in the family room. No drinks or snacks in living room, bedrooms, hallways, etc. Kept my mother and Miss G. sane.
My father played stimulating mind games with us at cocktail hour. One was called “Match Game.” (Not to be confused with the old TV game show of the same name!) It was really a “stream-of-consciousness” exercise. He’d say a word, and we had to tell him the first word that came to mind. Then we’d talk about why we chose that particular word. I loved that game. We were also taught how to grind semi-precious stones by hand. It was fascinating to create beveled edges on a piece of feldspar with wet sand and a grindstone. We worked every Friday night on those stones until they were really pretty.
Every night, after my sister had finished piano practice and homework was done, my father played the organ and my sister and I sang along. Mostly old show tunes. My father has a fabulous baritone voice. I still love singing with him.
Every Sunday, after church, we spent several hours visiting old aunts in various nursing homes. And I do mean every Sunday. I grew up conversing and being socialzed largely by people over 65. One aunt in particular whom we visted actually lived in a place called the Keswick Home for Incurables. But it was cool; we got to have ice cream. And the old folks doted on us.
Speaking of church, my sister and I went every Sunday, dressed in matching coats, hats and little white gloves. Kimmie and I still wear hats to church (when we go). Thank God we’re both getting married; she and I would be THE quintessential Old “Miss Daisy” Maids!
I loved to dress up in various costumes, all year round, and wander around the neighborhood. My personal favorite was a nun and a Confederate soldier. I liked that one a lot… I carried my grandfather’s WW1 era bugle and blew it with great enthusiasm. My mother would get phone calls all the time telling her to come and get me, as I was disturbing to look at, I suppose.
That’s basically it. As I said, a bit different, but pretty cool.
My staunch refusal to be childish (part of an attempt to be taken seriously by the world). My apparent lack of emotion, my isolationism, my excommunication of the ‘human’ side of things.
Hell, I’m STILL an odd kid. It might be the fact that I still refuse to stop dressing up for halloween (not just slapping something together, but REALLY dressing up, going all out, like the panda suit, or the zelgadis costume), the stand up comedy (I’ve played a club! Just once though…), the cross-dressing, the highly eclectic taste in music, the staunch refusal to smoke pot (it’ll make the fact that I do weird things SO much weirder!), the ultimate frisbee team, the grind-core band (ten ton shadow baby! We RULE!), the willingness to admit that I’d have sex with brad pitt (I’m a straight male, but he’s cute, dammit!), and that’s just in high school.
When I was in about third grade, I realized that no one gave a flying fuck about me. I had a sense of humor, and I was willing to do a lot of things that most kids wouldn’t do. So I did it. I was the kid that jumped off high structures, that played in the mud, that one time never mentioned to anyone that he’d broken a rib, despite the gigantic amount of pain he was in for a long time (it healed wierd, it sort of sticks out more than the rest of my ribs), and I found the other kids that enjoyed it. Namely, every other male kid. I was not popular among the ladies in grade school. It’s been kinda that way into high school too, though I know that there are ladies that do like me… I’m just not too into them. But enough about me, tell me about yourself!
Wow…now I’m a little scared…and yet, relieved. I guess I wasn’t really * that * weird.
When people walk in my living room, they stare because the back wall is lined with bookcases, all overflowing with childrens’ and adolescents’ books. I adored reading from age 5 and wrote stories and poems as soon as I learned to write. Oddly enough, it does come in handy, courtesy of the vocabulary I earned.
Damn middle school. I started wanting to be like the others, and squished my weirdness as much as possible. But I still retain bits of uniqueness…
My fondness for carrots, yougurt…and the fact that I really, really like squirrels.
I used to stay up late whenever I could and watch TV shows like Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Sometimes there would be comics that used these really funny-sounding words like verklempt and meshugga. I had no idea what they meant or that they were Yiddish, I just thought they sounded funny. I picked up from context when to drop them into conversation. This was in utterly WASP suburban Dallas Texas in the early sixties, and here’s this little nine-year-old blonde shiksa who sounds like Lenny Bruce. I got a lot of puzzled looks from grownups.
Wow, evilbeth, me too! It’s so cool we both love to do the same thing! Maybe we can sleep together sometime?
(C’mon…that was at least a little funny! ;))
As for me, I was totally anti-social as a kid. I just refused to be around people. Anytime strangers were around, I would grab a book and go off to read by myself. This gave me a few social problems as I got older.
A Chronology of Moi Weirdness
[ul][li]In kindergarten, I ate markers. We had cheapo plastic markers, with this kinda felt piece inside. I would chew on that. (Why???)[/li][li]Later in life, I talked to trees, grass and flowers.[/li][li]I was another encyclopedia reader, and I was fascinated with spelling words backwards (including “encyclopedia”–try it! It’s fun! [sub]or sumpin’[/sub]).[/li][li]In one of my middle school science classes, I sat in the last row and would “mime” killing myself about once a week (gun, rope, pills, etc).[/li][li]As a high school senior, I managed to tick off the entire junior class and have a mob of them beating on the door of one of my classes screaming for blood.[/ul][/li]I don’t think I’ve ev-ah grown out of “odd,” just that bit about the markers…
The same things that make me an odd adult…
But that’s just who I am, and I wouldn’t want to change.
In high school I was obsessed with a book series called “Bloodletters and Bad Men” by Jay Robert Nash. I had these books on perpetual loan from the library.
A chronilogical history of murders, robbers, and whatnot in our country from 1700’s to late 1970’s. I really wanted, at that age, to be a criminologist. I wanted to be a detective in the police department, like NY, and become a chain smoking wise cracking been there done that kinda person.
Only my mother informed me that “nice girls don’t do that.” She never really filled me in on what nice girls could do, but apparently it involves dead end jobs, low pay and my ass becoming one with my office chair, but I digress.
Anyways, If you were caught reading a book in this one history teachers class ( a book not related to the fascinating aspects of the fuedalism of Upper Smega during the Paenceic Plague) the offender had to get up in front of class and give a report on the book.
The idea was that it would mortify the student, usually airheaded cheerleadersreading ditsy romance novels, and they would never do it again. I was rather shy, but public speaking was *never * a problem for me.
When I was caught, I gleefully went to the front of the class, tossed the book at the teacher ( this was required so he could keep it until the end of class) and started my review. I took up the rest of class ( maybe 20 minutes)
with my alphabetic dissertation of mobsters, murderers, perverts, phsyco’s and con men.
I still remember the way everyone’s mouth dropped open.
Today, if I would do this in a high school, I would probably be put under house arrest and physcoanalized as a potential gun man/woman/whatever.
I would just like to state that I was no where near the grassy knoll.
I thank you.
I have the same problem…and I’m a guy…and I don’t have an acordian.
Fairy…you make me laff.
Iwas pretty normal until I hit high school. I was in cadets, so my hair was very short. Quite odd for 1976.
I also wore logging boots. Huge, (size 12) steel toed numbers with leather toe tassles.
When everyone else is wearing North Star runners, it makes you stand out from the crowd.
I read every dog book (non-fiction, of course; I’m not into fiction books about animals) that our library had by the age of 10. I could (and probably still can, although I’m starting to forget them all) draw you a picture of just about every single breed and tell you something interesting about each one. I also used to go through my picture book and give names to each of the dogs.
I also refuse, refuse, REFUSE to have sex before I get married. In today’s society, I think that makes me at least a little bit weird. :-/
** FUB **, not so much weird as antique, perhaps?
well…that doesn’t sound nice…but “weird” doesn’t generally sound too great either. -shrug- Pat on the back, ok?
Remember the weird kid in the third grade that skipped recess so he could read the encyclopedias in the back of the room? That was me. After I got through the encyclopedias, I taught myself to type on one of the schools two typewriters. All eight year olds can type now, but it was pretty weird in 1967.
FB
sadly missing his long sig.
I wasn’t an odd kid…least that’s what all the child psychiatrists said…oh, um, right…yeah…