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Journal SlashChick's Journal: Looking Back... 18

Journal by SlashChick

Tonight, a friend of mine sent me a 66-page PDF of some childhood stories he wrote down and gave to his mom. As I've been reading them (I'm about halfway through) and laughing as I imagine a terrified little kid in church or him having to put up with his family's antics, I'm realizing I don't have that many childhood stories to share.

Growing up an only child pretty much guarantees an existence where you are left to fend for yourself on most occasions. I have snatches of memories here and there, but mostly just little 5-minute snapshots or memories of people instead of events.

My childhood was mostly filled with two things: 1) books and 2) Nintendo. I devoured books. I read quickly and grasped concepts even quicker, so I went through hundreds of books. By first grade I had read almost the entire Nancy Drew series and was starting on the Hardy Boys and Bobbsey twins. By third grade I had read the entire children's section of the library and was hankering for more, so my mother (always the mystery novel fan) started me on mystery novels. In 4th grade I was reading V.C. Andrews ("Aren't you a little young to be reading those?" I remember my teacher saying), and that's how I learned about sex. Yes, I learned about sex from a book where a paralyzed guy in a wheelchair got stuffed by a younger lady. That's all I remember. (Someday I fully intend to read them all again just to see what that was all about.)

My parents were 37 when they adopted me (I was adopted at age 3 days.) Thus, their friends' kids were all grown up as well, and my childhood was filled with the antics of characters in books instead of real friends. That is, except for Meghan.

When I was young (too young to have started school), someone started building a house next door to us. I was fascinated by this. They dug out the ground and built a basement first, and (much to my mother's chagrin) I was over at the construction site every day climbing around in the mud and thoroughly enjoying myself. Soon, the basement was finished and the walls started to take form. My dad and I would take walks through the house at night, and I can remember being utterly fascinated with knowing exactly where the toilet was going to go. "How do you know?!" I asked my dad whenever he said "That's going to be a bedroom" or "That's the bathroom." So he'd point out the plumbing and doors and I was totally amazed.

Eventually, they put all the walls on and started locking the doors, and I had to be content with staring at it while the rest of the house was built. Soon, it was finished and our new neighbors moved in. It was very fortunate that they happened to have a kid almost exactly my age -- Meghan, who was born 12 days before I was. I was just at that age where I needed a best friend (5 or 6), and soon Meghan and I were constantly together. Meghan was the oldest of 3 -- I remember when the youngest kid, Seth, was born.

Anyway, back to my other childhood passion -- Nintendo. Somehow, Meghan (I think it was her dad's idea) got a Nintendo as soon it was out. We quickly figured out that if you held the gun riiiight up to the TV screen, you could kill ALL the ducks in Duck Hunt. (My childhood was perpetuated with "Don't sit so close to the screen! You'll ruin the screen/your eyes/the Nintendo!") Of course, after playing it so often at Meghan's house, I knew what my must-have gift was that Christmas. I had to have that Nintendo.

I remember that Christmas quite vividly. My parents aren't religious, so Christmas never held more significance to me than "presents." That morning (knowing I was going to get a Nintendo, as it was the only thing I really wanted), I ran downstairs, found the biggest box (a Nintendo had to be in a huge box, right? After all, it came with that big gun for Duck Hunt.) I opened it...and found a pair of snow pants and a jacket! "Nooooo!!!" I howled. (My mom looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.) Furious at this "trick" that had been played on me, I lunged into the second largest box... and found my Nintendo, complete with Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.

I've been a video game junkie ever since, and I still have that Nintendo. If you look hard enough around my parents' attic, you'll probably even find that gun. My poor mother. I think she thought I was going to be blind before I turned 20...

So that's one of my childhood stories. I guess I had a few. ;)

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  • but we got a replacement one because of the homeowners insurance, and THIS on had the "PowerPad". Remember that? You had Mario Bros./Duck Hunt/Olympic games? We figured out on the long jump that if you ran and then jumped out to the side and landed off the pad and then jumped back on the pad after a second, you could beat world records. :-)
  • Being an only child is kind of weird. I have two brothers but they both moved out when I was 10. they are 6 and 11 years older than me respectively. Oldest went away to college and the middle to a residential High School when I was 10. So since then I've felt a lot like an only child. My brothers are becoming more brothers as time goes by but they were sort of just friends for a long while in there.

    As such I spent a lot of time reading and nintendoing too. I'd stay up most of the night the day a ne
  • affect your vision at all? ie, Do you wear glasses now?
    • cant speak for her, but i've been a glass wearing blind person since the 5th grade, when a manditory school eye test caught on to why I couldn't read the menus at the fast foods without squinting.
      ok i'm not blind, but thank god for the modern trend to cut the frames off at tthe inside of the curve...
      my coke bottle lenses had a good 1/4-1/2" of material at the outside edge, as the rep at walmart showed me, when i was deciding which frames to buy lol... blind as a bat i am... but it's gotta be genetics in my
      • Ever thought about laser surgery?

        I'll probably get my eyes fixed sometime in the distant future. Having to bother with dirty glasses is a pain.
        • no, I'm not going to get lasic... I'm waiting for the genetitally perfect, 100% guarenteed to accept petri dish grown cloned human eye transplant surgery to be perfected... it's potentially a multi-billion dollar industry (lab grown replacment parts) and nano bots can attach the nerve endings better than any neurosurgon alive today.
          all the fundamental science behind the technology is proven, so this is a technology that will be perfected, it's just a matter of time and money to make it happen... Oh and if
  • I was the youngest of 4, and the only boy.. and we moved a lot. I rarely had friends, and when i did they weren't very nice to me really ^^;;;
    well, When i read all the books in the childrens section, I started drawing my own... lol they were about the Exploits of aeiou, and sometimes Y, because I had learned how to draw letters, but couldn't draw much else, so I drew the adventures of the Vowels... I also moved on to the sci-fi scection, because a lot of those books were story collections, and i still did

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