think back think wayyy back

[implied]

I didn't have a fun childhood. When you don't talk, that kinda freaks people out, haha. Kids teased me endlessly. Some ass used to refer to me as "the mute", lmao. I hated every minute of school, I hardly went. But I had a lot of friends outside of school who were older. We'd always have sleepovers and what not.

But yeah, being fat, looking like a boy and not saying a word the entire school day really doesn't make you too popular. It stopped in highschool when i realized the importance of speech. It's funny now i see all the kids that treated me like crap and they're speechless that I can acutally talk and look like a female.

yeah, i had some problems with this sort of thing, too. i never had a problem with talking, just being teased mercilessly for how i looked.

[Quirk Satellite Div.]

Unhealthy amounts of daydreaming, to the point sometimes I would just sit or walk around for hours just daydreaming, not trying to socialize or actually participate in activities. I would hardly ever pay attention in classes, but I would still end up doing average in most of my classes. Because I hardly talked unless directly spoken to, teachers would think I was well-mannered boy and they would usually pull up my grade. I would often get tired of hanging out with friends for long periods of time and would require alone time. In middle school, I thought I was intelligent, but I really had no good capabilities beyond math, science, programming, and manipulating computer programs.

Basically, too much ing.

[munenori2]

Quiet, good student, read and wrote incessantly, created fictional worlds and storylines, fancied myself a strategist on a grand stage or a martyred do-gooder. Naive, foolish, lonely, a poetic soul, alienated but bearing a smile. Compromiser, mediator, inefficient, sensitive, desiring good intentions and good hearts. Misunderstood, melancholic, but with an ear to what others needed to hear. Sincere, honest, easily hurt, isolated except for my creative impulses. Family oriented, loyal, betrayed, silent, letting nothing out that was too dangerous or unacceptable or could be taken advantage of, self-contained, playing it safe. Good speaker, terse, empathetic, sympathetic, self-conscious, masochistic yet trying to spare others pain, always a child, self-effacing, humble, weak. Lost, seeking meaning everywhere, directionless, taking suggestions later to be judged 'not me', exploring, desiring peace or the piece that was missing. Sojourner.

[Gilly]

I was a hyper kid who couldn't stay in her seat or stop fidgeting. I talked when the teacher was talking... actually I just talked all the time. At lunch time I would sneak away from the verandas early to hide in the adventure playground.

I was teased incessantly for getting good grades and being a "walking dictionary", "walking encyclopedia", "smartass", "squid", and generally being smart got me universally disliked (but only in front of other kids, apparently).

I quickly learned that most girls in my classes were nothing short of horrible and proceeded to attempt to make friends with boys instead. If the boys didn't want to be friends with a girl, I had no friends (this happened very frequently until I made a few good friends in high school). I had a hard time making friends.

I played with Barbies, making them act out life as married couples. It was a bit soap-opera-ish, with plots and intrigues and crimes and how my protagonist would deal with the traitors.

I played with Lego, constructing houses, castles and lush tropical islands. I had a set of Islander lego men, with a couple of witch doctors included -- which I made use of, constructing elaborate altars and shrines where they would perform their arcane rituals (necromancy and human sacrifice were both common). I had pirate lego men too, who had to avoid sharks and crocodiles in their hunt for treasure (there was much blood-shed and losses of limbs -- hooray for lego men with their detachable body parts).

I couldn't roll my r's with the tip of my tongue, tie my shoelaces, catch a ball or ride a bike without training wheels until I was about 10 (lack of coordination).

I constantly had my nose in a book during the day. At night, I would wait until I thought my mum was in bed and then turn my lamp on to read some more (I never got much sleep, heh).

I was obsessed with dinosaurs, whales, dolphins, gemstones, volcanoes, mythology, ancient Egypt, fantasy/sci-fi (not the genre itself because I didn't really know of the distinctions, but I always liked those sorts of books best), tigers, leopards, sharks, Italian, Dutch, computers, shamanism, dragons, music, pirates, ninjas.

Nothing has really changed...

Heh, this sounds a lot like me. I played with Legos for years; my mom rigged this plywood platform in my room to stay up by the ceiling most of the time, but it could be lowered to the floor a bit like a lampshade by a couple of strings. She covered it in felt and made a little landscape thing; I used to build entire kingdoms on that thing I had mostly medieval sets, but also Western and city stuff, too.

And I was COMPLETELY obsessed with dinosaurs for all of my childhood. I had a whole bookshelf devoted to dinosaur fact books and such; I can still identify, or at least remember, almost all of the ones I see on TV on Discovery and such.

[Charismatik]

As a child I wanted to take martial arts, but my mom (blatant ESFJ btw) wanted me so badly for me to be a super-feminine girl and so she put me in ballet. I knocked a kid down onstage during the recital, didn't realize it and kept going. She took me out and six years of hard work later I earned my first degree black belt in tang soo do.

... not necessarily an ISFp story... but we are supposed to have an urge to be different and stand out, yes?

[hellothere]

what more could a child want than dinosaurs and lego?

[hellothere]

oh

of books about dinosaurs?

[reyn_til_runa]

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.