At another's suggestion, I attempted to write an autobiography once. I got to about age 5 I think.
At another's suggestion, I attempted to write an autobiography once. I got to about age 5 I think.
what more could a child want than dinosaurs and lego?
oh
of books about dinosaurs?
OH YEAHOriginally Posted by Cyclops
I remember K-4. I was always in the time out chair because I never liked anyone and I liked to bite people.
Then in 1st grade, I was always talking and getting up and doing everything I wasn't supposed to do. I was a total weirdo tbh.
Then second grade rolled along, and my one best friend moved away. So I had no friends and everything compounded up. So all I did was keep to myself and read read read. That lasted until 8th grade.
Then high school guys!!!! All I did was talk and talk and talk.
El fin.
D-SEI9w1
This is me and my dual being scientific together
I remember when I was a kid I spray painted all over my walls...oh wait that was last year.
HAHA.
my mother says i was a quiet baby who never cried and slept perfectly, but that around the age of 2, i became her most difficult child. i distinctly remember feeling sad in the crib, often aware of watching from afar. i watched things spin, sucked my thumb until i was well into grade school (i still have scars from this), ground my teeth, and had frequent kidney infections and bronchitis/tonsillitis. i wouldnt say i was a sickly child, but certainly not consistently healthy. i also had (still have) problems with TMJ (and the corresponding pains). i also had a high pain tolerance, i guess often injuring myself and never complaining about it. because of this, i was often called "tough."
i was a misfit within my family unit, so many of my childhood memories are of being treated unfairly or of being somehow set apart from others, feeling judged, uncomfortable, and so on. near constant frustration wouldnt be an overstatement. i bottled emotions, but had a temper on occasion in front of my family. most other people who didnt spend much time with me thought i was pleasant and cooperative. my dad, though warm at times, was essentially stoic. my mother, on the other hand, required emotionalism at its finest. she sought approval from me for things that should not have concerned me. i felt overly monitored, stifled. as being overly monitored was, and still is, very unpleasant to me, i found this hard to overcome. i am not the type to do well with someone looking over my shoulder.
my parents, fearing that i'd otherwise not be reared in the ways of the Lord, did not allow me enough freedom to do what i wanted to do -- explore. i wanted to be "an explorer" when i "grew up," and id tell people this when they asked. i envisioned discovering unknown land. some combination of trees and island came to mind. i thought this experience would make me happiest -- taking some journey alone, not telling anyone where i was going, finding something nobody knew existed, and keeping it a secret for awhile in order to enjoy it. i never imagined telling everybody about my discovery (or to broaden it a bit, my achievements), no matter how significant. i imagined keeping moments of happiness/connection/success myself to ensure they would not be ruined/cheapened by others.
i got excited about figuring stuff out, would sometimes feel like i was about to explode from excitement i wouldnt allow myself to reveal. i liked experiencing many things privately, hoarding meaning, gleaning insight only relevant to myself, developing complicated questions that nobody would understand.
i was very stubborn. i would ask "inappropriate" questions, generally because the answer was not supposed to be revealed until i was older. i became pretty bitter if i was lied to. i couldnt for the life of me understand how it was ok for parents to lie about holiday icons or to act as if jesus christ had spoken to them through an ant. i remember feeling terrible one time after i'd lied by telling my father that "berenstein bear christmas tree" was on television, when in fact it was not on and i knew it was not on. i was often described by my teachers as "inquisitive," but i gradually stopped asking so many questions as i grew up. i became increasingly argumentative, not willing to give up an argument when i knew i was right, or at least when i knew i could use reason to be convincing.
when i was in elementary/middle school, my teachers would sometimes have to call my parents to see if i was "ok." i dont recall feeling terribly depressed at that age, but it was often said that i had a look of worry and seriousness. i hated that my teachers would ask my parents these questions and not ask me. in general, i couldnt stand being spoken for. i also didn't like when others were spoken for, especially incorrectly.
i worked too thoroughly on school work until about the age of 10, and was often given extra credit assignments. in 3rd grade, i apparently spent five hours on homework one night. i remember lying on the floor to do homework and repeating exercises a lot, being in a corner out of view. i think i found the mindless activity of doing more work than i needed to relaxing and a way to remove myself from what i considered an unpleasant, or sometimes simply boring, home environment. i especially enjoyed doing projects which allowed me to make visuals such as posters. i enjoyed drawing maps by looking at a map, but considered tracing "cheating" so would erase or start over if i messed up even a tiny bit. i became quite elaborate with my projects.
i had other perfectionistic traits as a child/adolescent. for a period of a few years, i would make myself get up in the middle of the night to make my bed. i would shut the door to a crack and straighten the sheets and blanket for an hour or more on some nights, then go back to bed. in hindsight, i wonder if i developed this behavior out of anxiety that i would wet the bed. i wet the bed for a long time. my parents seemed ashamed of me for this, and it was honestly one of my biggest daily worries as a kid because i simply could not control it by peeing before bedtime or drinking less at night. waking up to a wet bed sucked. i thought about how to prevent it all the time. it prevented me from being mature, in my mind. anyway, i stopped making the bed in the middle of the night probably around age 11 or 12, and stopped wetting the bed (for the most part) around the same age.
i started musical instruments at a young age , excelled, so quickly became known for this talent. i easily picked up new instruments "for fun." i entered a few music composition contests, started playing piano in church around age 10, and so on. i wasnt very excited by the idea of traditional practice. i wanted to practice but not to please anyone else, and not following their assignments. if i felt like doing arpeggios for an hour, i would, perfecting them. but if i didnt feel like doing any of the pieces assigned to me, i would just make stuff up instead. i didnt like being told what to play, didnt mind playing in front of people too much, but didnt like being publicly evaluated. also did not like my piano teacher. i apparently mouthed off a few times to her, which was rare when i was in public. i was too quiet to mouth off.
i spent a lot of time whittling stones to make perfect circles (about the size of a penny). i spent days on these essentially useless stone circles. i liked the heat i could generate by rubbing stones together, liked the process of perfecting something, didnt care that id never use it afterwards. the idea was to smooth all the roughness away. i played in the woods, sometimes just sat watching and listening. i made up rhymes and little songs while riding in the car and would make my younger brother sing harmony. i still remember the tune and words to the 2-part jingle i made up at age 6 while riding in the backseat with my brother.
i got in trouble in kindergarten for cutting designs into the edges of my classmate's worksheet, but generally did not get in trouble in school. as i got older (definitely by high school) i was much more of a slacker. still didnt get into much trouble, but was constantly neglecting work. my excuse to myself was that i was going through depression and other cumbersome issues or simply that i did not care about the work. i didnt want to share this with other people though, would rarely ask for rules to be changed just for me, was not at all "teachers pet." would occasionally be overly honest and, for example, request a grade be lowered because i had done nothing of value for the class, but wouldnt let other kids know what i was doing. i was quite the secretive kid.
i suppose i was likable to a point, but i learned early on that i didnt care to be pleasant in the way i was expected to be, and was never greatly interested in being "popular." i was, however, often lonely and wouldnt have minded another good friend or two to be available especially if things got rough or if i got into the mood to socialize. i had "friends," as i was not usually teased or anything, just couldnt connect well with my peers. when i was a little older ( in high school), i had some school friends based on common interest, but chose to rarely hang out with any of them outside of school. there was one person i didnt mind hanging out with, but even that grew tiresome. i generally kept "friends" separate from each other. school/church friends just could never go together in my mind.
i would avoid conversations which required me to talk too much or about something uninteresting so would often be tuned out during the process of making friends. once past that initial getting to know you period, id be more comfortable opening up to a person or perhaps being opened up to.
i was sort of tomboyish, but not very athletic.
i didnt have birthday parties for myself, and basically didnt want them, but threw a couple parties for my friends.
one time while in the hospital for 1 week or so at the age of 7, my mother brought me coloring books. i told her i didnt want them. she felt bad. i still remember this because, though minor in some ways, it was an early instance of my not considering a person's feelings, though not intending to be mean.
Last edited by reyn_til_runa; 02-09-2008 at 04:54 AM.
whenever the dog and i see each other we both stop where we are. we regard each other with a mixture of sadness and suspicion and then we feign indifference.
Jerry, The Zoo Story by Edward Albee
you should turn that into a business, ms mime
How much can you possibly remember from before age 5?
The average persons memories start from age four. I can remember from before then.
Yes, but how much?
Some things. It can take time to unlock the memory, and more things will come back to you. This is the same for any age.
The amount of recollection, say for tragic events can result in a high volume of memory recollection, and certainly may merit at least a chapter or two.
I began to speak late and my parents worried a bit that I was autistic. I was somewhat withdrawn, but had a fairly wide circle of friends from early on. I was a bit oversensitive and impulsive, but very nice and accepting of people outside my family to the point that my teachers would often have me sit next to one of the "problem kids." I was also able to spend many hours straight absorbed in whatever I was working on (and still am able). I was very thoughtful and invented many cool things with legos and read about geography and the natural world. I perused the weather page carefully each morning at breakfast and learned about the climates of the northern and mountain states, which I was interested in. In the kindergarten play I kept my eyes shut the whole time because "if I can't see anyone then they can't see me either." I was very self-conscious. I excelled at math (and all other subjects) and at school was a perfectionist and a last-minute procrastinator at the same time. My friends were studying their butts off to make the grades, but I pulled everything off with an air of complete ease which made many envious. I got the "President's Award" for physical fitness in fifth grade with was a source of great pride for years, because only two people in the entire grade got it, and I was hardly viewed as an athlete. I seemed like a "wise old man" to many people when I was still very young. I became fascinated with mountains early on, and still am. I felt my true personality only came out during hiking trips. In my early teens a youth leader at church told me, "You can't do everything. You have to choose one [group] or the other" (I was involved in two groups which had activities on the same night). I couldn't understand why he would say something so dumb. In school I was occasionally teased, but never bullied. I also preferred to sit in the back of class so that I could say witty remarks during class to my sympathizers around me and be more distant from the teacher. I took relationships with girls far too seriously and therefore never dated until about age 17. Once a girl (some ethical type) passed me a note in high-school with an invitation to go out. I thought carefully during class about what to do, and planned out my reply and delivery (which I still remember): "I don't think it'll lead to anything, but if you really want to, then we can." She smiled and said, "OK," and I couldn't figure out why she didn't call me after that. I was being sincere, as I always was. For some reason I came to really dislike popular culture, TV, and movies in my teens and was clueless about many things that "everyone" knew about. For instance, I could never remember the locations of sports teams and which team belonged to which sport. I was critical of American culture even before I had been abroad, and soaked up Slavic culture like a sponge when I was an exchange student. I taught myself to play the guitar at age 16, but wouldn't play around my family. I also hid my musical tastes from them and was generally secretive about everything that was important to me.
I think only bits and pieces of this are related to my socionic type. Sorry - I'm sure few people will read all this, but I enjoyed remembering the past for a moment and will at least save my text somewhere
Last edited by Rick; 02-10-2008 at 08:25 PM.
It is easier for the eye of a camel to pass through a rich man than for a needle to enter the kingdom of heaven.
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