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  • 1995...

    I was 10 years old and in the 5th grade.

    And I remember everything, huh? Hoo boy. Hoooo boyyyyy.

    First thing I do is write this list while it's still fresh in my mind:

    1. ADHD is real and it will ruin my potential if I don't face it head on. The medication won't work on me yet, though, so tell Mom and Dad I NEED to get back on medication when my brain is more developed in a couple years.
    2. Also, for future reference: it isn't actually a deficit of ATTENTION at all--it's really stupidly named by neurotypicals who don't fucking get it--it's TIME BLINDNESS and a deficit of IMPULSE CONTROL and EXECUTIVE FUNCTION.
    3. Sugar is going to make me extremely sick and all my weight and fitness issues come directly from carbohydrate overdose. STOP drinking soda, and avoid refined/homogenized starch!
    4. I'm about to enter the most painful and traumatizing stage of my formative years. The middle school I'll be attending starting 6th grade will be hell on earth. I need to keep my FUCKING mouth shut and not talk to ANYONE unless they talk to me. I also need to practice the skill of mindful dissociation and compartmentalization. Stoicism will be my only shelter.
    5. Yes the adults around me are morons and don't know what they're talking about, but broken clocks can be right twice a day. In this case, they're correct about homework and studying being important for the wrong reasons: It is NOT about satisfying the expectations of teachers, but rather it is entirely for practicing the skill of internalizing and recalling information. I will not regret time I spend on it.
    6. Mom and Dad are struggling financially right now. Dad's racking up debt while Mom is the only reliable source of income. That's why they would "hold onto" my birthday and xmas money "for safekeeping". it is neither kept nor safe; it's gone. All of it. HIDE ANY MONEY I RECEIVE... and tell grandpa to buy stock in Apple.
    7. Express early interest in nuclear energy and pursue it with everything I've got. Approach via Mechanical Engineering. I'll enjoy Computer Aided Drafting in High School.
    8. Remember the major incidents to come: Columbine and zero tolerance policy in 1999, also dotcom bubble crash, Al Gore will lose in 2000, WTC will be destroyed by a terrorist attack 2001-09-11, Bush Jr administration will cause the housing market to crash as well by 2008, America succumbs to Fascism in 2016, and there will be a global plague in 2020.
    9. I'm a furry and I am not actually a boy despite being assigned male at birth. Embrace androgyny. Get online. Find my tribe. Draw a lot.

  • Boot up my dad's computer and play some shareware off the magazine cover disk I got months ago.

    Or go to the library I guess.

    • I was probably playing Cannon Fodder at that time on our computer. 

       undefined
          
d:
cd games
cd cannon
(space)(space)(F3)

    • I still like going to the library and reading real books

  • Am I a grown adult that wakes up in a foster care home and the child that was there previously is gone?
    Do I have to spend the rest of my life without an identity, or clinging to the “delusion” that I was this child that mysteriously disappeared?

    Am I a child with 40 years of life experience?
    Not long after, When I was 14, my first consensual sexual experience involved an 18-year-old. We got caught, and folks widely regard/regarded her as being inappropriate/in the wrong. Huh. First girlfriend, high school dances/romances. College. Jesus - every relationship basically forever.
    If I proceed down the same path, does that mean I’m the creep now?

    • Envious of your first experience with an 18 year old

      • It was weird times. I mean, great. But weird and great to my half-cooked, traumatized, and hormone-addled teenage brain.

        She was my sister’s best friend at the time and, well, physically she was like the girl who’d molested me as a child, which definitely had (and still has) an impact on my physical preferences.
        I don’t exactly know what her deal was, but I think it was that any male attention just short-circuited her. I recall her telling me she loved me after a few weekends of sneaking around, and after about a month, spinning a yarn as pretext to try to move in with us.

        It’s probably a good thing we got caught a day or so after she moved in. Stupid football game. It pushed some TV show back, and my mom/sisters stayed up late to watch it. My sister (her best friend) came downstairs to check in on her and caught us in bed.

        As for the how - I don’t know. I was an awkward gangly teenager, and she was honestly a pretty attractive girl. She had some self-confidence issues, I think.
        It was like the first day she’d come over for a sleepover. I had never met her - my sister befriended her when we were in foster care, so this was not unusual - and I was instantly into her. I have no idea if she picked up on that or not. We were watching movies (me, 2 of my sisters, and her). The couches were occupied, and so I had a pallet on the floor. So did she. Our feet were under the big couch, hidden by the little skirt that all couches had back then, heads pointing toward the TV. I thought I felt her foot touch mine (but it was probably wishful thinking). I edged my foot over, discovering the distance between us was way too far for her to have accidentally touched me, and sort of bonked her foot with mine while awkwardly exploring. I pulled back just slightly and she immediately pressed her foot against mine. Footsie lead some sneaky suggestive glances, then surreptitiously bridging our blankets together and doing our best to conceal our roving hands. At one point during a bathroom break everyone had left the room, she told me her intentions, and I was very okay with them. We made a plan - I was going to go to bed, and she was going to find me after everyone was asleep. (She was sleeping in a guest room that was conveniently located - my bedroom was in the basement.) And that was that.

        She used to page me with “143” (code for I love you - which I don’t think either of us could know what that actually meant) and I used to page her back with same. We were so dumb and teenager-y. It was fun, but unhealthy. I didn’t get enough positive attention, and this sort of reinforced a belief that I could only be of service to someone sexually. If I wasn’t serving someone sexually, I wasn’t of value emotionally - another formative belief that was maybe not the best and is still hard to shake.

  • Try to find that cool looking Beavis and Butthead site I saw my brother browsing in the earliest days of our internet access. I had asked him where he found it and he couldn't remember, so I searched and searched and searched to no avail. I never found that Beavis and Butthead site. I just remember there was a lot of yellow.

    • Apparently there was an official Beavis and Butt-Head site hosted by MTV in the 90's. I didn't find any archives but there is a screenshot of it on the Web Design Museum. Not sure if it's the same one because there isn't a whole lot of yellow though.

  • Boot up my 486, call over my friends and play MK1

    Alternatively make some new M:TG decks using my new Ice Age booster packs and head to the FLGS

  • Hang out with my grandparents, ask them everything. I miss them.

    • Usually young people are not interested in learning about the past from the old.....until of course the old die and their knowledge is gone for ever

  • I'd probably shit the diaper and watch my parents fight

189 comments