Kevin's Watch

Here's a little hub to tell important/formative moments of your childhood. Did you almost get in a fight? Did something happen to make you the man/woman that you are? In any case, it'd be interesting to see what was important to you in those early days.

I've actually got an interview here concerning mine:

Foul's Childhood

Cheers!

"I was born a poor black child..."

Right after we moved to the Mountain, Heidi and I got lost in the woods. We spent the night huddled together under some fallen timber. Ah, the memories.

I was attacked and hospitalized by my dog Casper when I was 4 or 5. When I was 12, my aunt's dog Sam also bit my face, but it wasn't his fault; he was trying to bite my dad's hand as it was hitting my face.

moved 16 times between birth and 18......
and other shit.

lorin wrote:moved 16 times between birth and 18......
and other shit.

As did I...28 different houses in my first 20 years...Navy brat.

I went to 11 different schools k-12 and still have friends from many of them. It was a great experience for me that really taught me how to be a social chameleon. I might not have known everybody, but I guarantee everyone knew me.

Plus I'm the product of a divorce. My Dad's family is old money- like with a maid that served them and stuff, and my Mom's family were farmers. I really got to experience both worlds.

LF, your grandfather sounds pretty cool.

Harbinger wrote:I went to 11 different schools k-12 and still have friends from many of them. It was a great experience for me that really taught me how to be a social chameleon. I might not have known everybody, but I guarantee everyone knew me.

It's so interesting how two people can have the same experience and different results, isn't it? I do think my constant moving helped me in SOME ways as an adult. Although I don't love change, I don't fear it. It did help me in that way, but as rule I hated moving every year. I was always the new kid, always struggling to find my niche. Of course it may have something to do with geography. My parents didn't move us from town to town or neighborhood to neighborhood, it was continent to continent and country to country. Denver to Berlin to NYC to Switzerland to Paris to New Jersey and on and on and on.

lorin wrote:

Harbinger wrote:I went to 11 different schools k-12 and still have friends from many of them. It was a great experience for me that really taught me how to be a social chameleon. I might not have known everybody, but I guarantee everyone knew me.

It's so interesting how two people can have the same experience and different results, isn't it? I do think my constant moving helped me in SOME ways as an adult. Although I don't love change, I don't fear it. It did help me in that way, but as rule I hated moving every year. I was always the new kid, always struggling to find my niche. Of course it may have something to do with geography. My parents didn't move us from town to town or neighborhood to neighborhood, it was continent to continent and country to country. Denver to Berlin to NYC to Switzerland to Paris to New Jersey and on and on and on.

I had the exact same experience. Even when it wasn't a new neighborhood, it was always new school or new house or what have you. I don't think I spent consecutive years in the same house AND school from the time I was 6 until the time I was 16, one or the other was always changing. Friends? Here today, gone tomorrow. Material things? Meaningless to get attached to.

Huh. And I found "stability" over-rated, nearly pure evil. Only lived 3 places before I joined the Army. The "big" move growing up was 10 miles. Now, it was an extremely small town which probably makes a difference, but my social milieu was mostly fighting in one way or another. I had exactly 2 friendships in my hometown that lasted more than a year or two from 3rd grade on.

Auleliel wrote:LF, your grandfather sounds pretty cool.

Thanks. It was tough (but rewarding) to grow up alongside him. I mean...under the shadow of his oak.

The details of my life are quite inconsequential... very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink. He would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Sometimes he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy. The sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical. Summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds- pretty standard really. At the age of twelve I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum... it's breathtaking- I highly suggest you try it.

High Lord Tolkien wrote:He would make outrageous claims

...like father, like son....

We didn't move a lot when I was a kid, but I did change schools a lot. I grew up five blocks from Lake Michigan, but in the blue-collar neighborhood. We even had a street next to the railroad tracks where black families lived. And in those days of desegregated schooling, that meant that my neighborhood got sent to whichever public elementary school needed to boost its numbers of black students that year. Sooo, I went to first and second grade with the farmers' kids, third through fifth grade with the kids from the upper-class beach neighborhoods, and sixth grade with the farmers' kids again. In addition, I tested into kindergarten early and the farm kids' school didn't have a kindergarten program, so I went to yet another school that year. And for half of my third grade year, we lived in Illinois.

Anyway, all the elementary schools I went to (except the out-of-state one) funneled into the same junior high. So the net result for me was that I knew just about everybody in my seventh grade class on the first day. But it wasn't much fun when I was going through it.

That is one wacky interview LF... I love the back-and-forth where you go over something and it's just like, "you know, your grandfather wakes you up at midnight to tell you it's raining.." the interviewer is like "wait back up..." Was that you and a good friend putting that interview together?

Okay... growing up, I thought so much about the GOOD things that made me strong.. but now so much about the things that aren't so great that give me weaknesses.

Hmm, well, for me so much was colored by my dad's worry that "these kids are never going to learn anything." (We were homeschooled.) Whenever he was mad or stressed, he was on my case or my sister's case, flipping out and swearing at us over some little thing we'd failed in or hadn't learned yet.

There were also lotsa beautiful sunny days on our farm, and my dad's amazing decision to let me own PONIES, even though he was afraid of horses.

Lina Heartlistener wrote:That is one wacky interview LF... I love the back-and-forth where you go over something and it's just like, "you know, your grandfather wakes you up at midnight to tell you it's raining.." the interviewer is like "wait back up..." Was that you and a good friend putting that interview together?

Nope. He was actually a reporter from the Rome News Tribune (a local newspaper). My grandfather's a bit of a legend in that town!

Though--Michael Jackson and Charlie Sheen interviews were my inspiration.

LF- I just helped run a scavenger hunt last night. I thought you needed to hear that. =)

Btw, I was like "Oh my..." at the part of the interview where you were casually like, "There was a time around 6th grade where the scavenger hunts got really complicated but..." Amused by the dry comment...

Probably the most major formative moment for me was all the grandparents I knew dying within a year of each other, when I was 12-13.

I guess losing my mom at 21 and Daddy at 27, both to different forms of cancer, were the biggest formative "event." Mom was originally diagnosed when I was 14, and although she went into remission after a double masectomy, going through high school swapping the scars on her flat chest with iodine will affect someone, you know?

And yet, it was almost freeing when mom passed. But I know I lack in social graces, and I sincerely think mom being ill throughout my high school years and passing as I entered my twenties may have a little to do with that.

Menolly wrote:I guess losing my mom at 21 and Daddy at 27, both to different forms of cancer, were the biggest formative "event." Mom was originally diagnosed when I was 14, and although she went into remission after a double masectomy, going through high school swapping the scars on her flat chest with iodine will affect someone, you know?

And yet, it was almost freeing when mom passed. But I know I lack in social graces, and I sincerely think mom being ill throughout my high school years and passing as I entered my twenties may have a little to do with that.

Yeah, high school's an important time. I still bear the scars from some of my experiences there. Some of my other experiences there still give me a warm feeling to think about.