I want to post some memories and get a response without being concerned for how they sound.
My father was a reader. I spent a lot of time reading as a child. Whole weekends were spent reading at the advice of my father and thought nothing of it except that I was lonely. Instead of R L Stein and splashy books for junior readers that the parents picked out I chose books that would bring me closer to my parents’ decades. Think the movie The Sandlot….I think if I hadn’t read so much as a child I wouldn’t have been able to coast in high school which is really where it should have counted. More on this later. Maybe.
I took Latin in middle school. I used to get ahead of the class , skip in the book, and make flashcards. The way most people behaved in high school going out for athletics and the musical and getting straight-As, that was me in middle school —until they say I did a 180 personality turn at thirteen.
So I switched middle schools but it was the same Latin teacher. Im skipping a lot here of the whys. And I decided when the teacher called on me—-because she knew I was good, I would now purposefully give the wrong answers, so I would seem cool to my classmates. We went to a competition and I remember I was prepared but she locked me out (made me stand outside) because I wore gothic makeup as I did for a brief period at thirteen.
We also went to museums as a family like every weekend, from elementary school age until fourteen. We also went to the movie theaters. I got so sick of museums. And then this one time in sixth grade I wrote for school about a guy who was following us in the museum, I later realized he must have been keeping behind us a pace and not wanting to get ahead of us. I got so sick of fucking museums.
I watched a girl on my swim team read Catcher in the Rye. I loved that book and Go Ask Alice. Unfortunately these books made me want to get into drugs and sex at a precocious age. The scene from Catcher In the Rye where Holden attempts to lose his virginity to a prostitute will be forever burned in my memory. I have not seen the movie since made from the book.
I wanted to lose my virginity at fourteen. My grandfather was dying of cancer at the beach house and I met up with someone to lose my virginity that summer. I also tried acid and attempted suicide all in the same year. It was a heady year. I think I threw my parents marriage license down a trash chute. I attempted to go to clubs.
Skipping back a pace, my father would take me to Toys R Us on weekends to play with the toys when we were not going to museums or I was not going to swim meets. I have a memory of standing in front of the Speak N Spell. They say I liked the toy 🚗 car at Toys R Us. My dad wouldn’t buy it but he would take me there on weekends to drive it around.
My childhood as I read it back was something out of one of those French Madeleine books. My parents wouldn’t buy those either.
I have never really learned to be alone and play myself I had friends on my teams and in school and but I think if I had gotten into video games it might have saved my life.
fin tbc
