The self-identity thread!

[FatCat]

The point: We post things about ourselves that we would be hard pressed to admit to even lovers. Anything goes, from the embarrassing to the funny!

I'll start, obviously. In senior year of high school I had a 30% attendance rate. This was due to me reading constantly and hating the fact that I was suppose to go to class. All my friends were in the grade above me, so in my senior year I had absolutely no friends because the people I hung out with went off to college. Fantasy rescued me in those dark days, and I spent a retarded amount of time ignoring the future and reading escapism like a drug.

Let loose, this is the internet after all!

 

[Ankari]

In middle school, me and a group of friends were so obsessed with AD&D (2nd Ed) that we used to call each other and play our sessions over the phone.

I find myself hard pressed to keep the tears from falling when I watch movies involving emotional climaxes between kids and parents.

I actually shed a few tears reading Deadhouse Gates. The last scene killed me.

 

[gavintonks]

The South African race and army obsessed brainwashed people, had a liberal dropped amongst them who had been witness [I was told in graphic detail by his friends who were there and shared the story and others even worse with me as a listener] to my brothers friends killed in battle [a line of 10 he stepped on a landmine and had the back of his body blown to mincemeat] etc so was very aware there was no glory in senseless murder.
Eventually those you were sent to kill become your neighbors and best friends, when politicians are left out of the equation. We were forced to do cadets at school which was marching up and down and pretending to be soldiers for a seamless transition to mandatory conscription and 2 years playing army army. I hated this false facade and all the teachers who saw themselves as some glorious savior of the nation as they played out their weekly 'army army' games with hundreds of school kids as their little toy soldiers.

I decided to rebel for the first time in my life, and had set up a marine fish tank which was quite cutting edge in 1974 for the school so when the school focused on playing games, I retired to the biology lab. To ignore the consequences of authority was a big thing then.The entire country was ruled by an authoritarian regime modeled on Hitlers state just without the killing. [Only 8500 people were murdered for politics during apartheid]

Well they happily played out their army games games and I did my thing when one day a teacher we called 'shark' as he prowled the corridors like a shark looking for 'bad boys' who he wold cane or give detention to opened the door and looked in to see me cleaning the tank.
He was so incredulous that someone would be there he automatically gave me an alibi, as the thought of someone breaking the rule of authority was just too much, so he would rather create an reality where I was innocent and he would not be faced with a really bad child.
I immediately followed up his alibi and got a doctors note which then medically discharged me, the doctor dreamed up something for me, he understood the emotional dilemma I had.
This is not something you could discuss in this obsessed environment. Years later after I had attended College and was training as a shoe designer the same thing happened, this time though were 2 massive army police who were checking on all men who had not completed army call up. They had become desperate and conscripted anything white that moved.
Thy said I could work in an office I said, I do not support a mission that is based on racial inequality. So I eventually landed up at the Army psychologist who gave me ink blot tests. To the one I said it is a moth at rest [his card said moth in flight] he asked me to please explain.

The moths wings beat at 50 000 beats per second and cannot be seen by the human eye plus the pattern is camouflage and is only viable at rest. I never heard from them again, I never even received discharge papers just left the office and was never bothered again. Nelson was released 3 years later.

 

[Aravelle]

I have a way of "meeping" when startled. I will literally say "Meep!" instead of screaming. I am easily startled, since I daydream and focus on things heavily. It adds to my supposed cuteness, which I am not a fan of.

 

[Chime85]

In junior school, I actually got into trouble for reading Stephen King books. My year six (10-11 years old) teacher told me she thought the content was too advanced and grown up. She assured me that if I enjoyed horror, they have plenty of Point Horror and Goosbumps titles in the school library.

I got in even more trouble when I scoffed, telling her that she was more scary than those books. As I waited outside the Headmistresses office after this little spat of name calling, I could only frown at the thought that a school was actually going ahead with stifling a child’s want of advanced reading.

I felt even more out of place when asked if everything was okay at home. To me, the school came across as judgemental and quick to jump to conclusions. Despite telling them again and again that I simply enjoyed King’s works, there was still a phone call to my home.

Needless to say, this escalated beyond reasonable measures. I continued to read King’s works, enjoying each one in turn. However, after that incident I felt like I had to be sneaky with my reading, as if I was reading a dirty magazine. To this day I still get angry when recalling these events, a group of adults attempting to bully a child into submission. If I ever have children, I would encourage them to read whatever they want. With so many adult themes in adverts, tv, the news, I doubt very much a book would add insult to injury.

Anyway, I’m going to stop right there. As I said, I get angry every time I recall these moments. Before I say “what kind of world are we living in?” I shall cease. But really, what kind of world are we living in, when a child is told to read at a lower level than she wishes?! There, I said it.

x

 

[WyrdMystic]

It took me a whole week of sitting with a dictionary for me to get through LOTR when I was eight. I had the same trouble with school as Chime85, though for me it was Shaun Hutson and my own explicit creative writing in English class.

Something embarrassing? I once fell off a telephone box…..when I say once, I mean twice. The second time was to prove I could get down without falling off

 

[Kit]

In junior school, I actually got into trouble for reading Stephen King books.
x

Gah! I started reading them about that same age, and I got that same reaction from teachers. Fortunately (well, unfortunately in some respects, but fortunately in this one), my parents didn't really give a rodent's posterior what I did... so any comments to them about it fell on deaf ears. It did get to the point where I felt like I had to wrap the King books in plain book covers, though.

 

[Chime85]

Gah! I started reading them about that same age, and I got that same reaction from teachers. Fortunately (well, unfortunately in some respects, but fortunately in this one), my parents didn't really give a rodent's posterior what I did... so any comments to them about it fell on deaf ears. It did get to the point where I felt like I had to wrap the King books in plain book covers, though.

Likewise, my parents weren't too bothered about the material I watched or read (save, pornography.) The only rules they had in that respect was 1) not to scare my younger sisters with it (which was reasonable)

and 2) To understand it was only fiction (which I did)

Unfortunately, my parents are very much a "keep up with the Jones's" sort of couple. If anything even remotely negative came my way, they felt they had to act. It seemed they would allow my literary freedom for as long as nobody else objected, something that I sincerely objected to.

 

[Weaver]

When I was a senior in college, I stopped cutting my hair so I'd look more like a character from some of my stories. (I have gotten my hair cut since then. Four times. )

I cried the first time I read the end of chapter 8 from Sign of the Unicorn by Roger Zelazny.

The last time I had to take an IQ test, my score was 86.

I would be absolutely devastated if an author I really admired read one of my stories and hated it.

On my 21st birthday, I hung out with my gaming friends instead of going to a bar and getting drunk like my parents wanted me to do.

 

[CupofJoe]

The point: We post things about ourselves that we would be hard pressed to admit to even lovers. Anything goes, from the embarrassing to the funny!

But nothing that would get the police or security services involved?

I have done a mid-summer fire dance naked...

 

[FatCat]

But nothing that would get the police or security services involved?

Post at your own risk! I still have active warrants in Indiana, damn Hoosiers!

 

[Kit]

I was once placed spread-eagled on my belly in a parking lot in front of an audience of tourists, while two police officers held loaded shotguns on me. My crime: Doing yoga in the park.

 

[Chime85]

I was once placed spread-eagled on my belly in a parking lot in front of an audience of tourists, while two police officers held loaded shotguns on me. My crime: Doing yoga in the park.

Yoga, sure.....

 

[Kit]

I swear to God. This is a true story. I was just standing there in bare feet and yoga clothes in the grass, with my knees slightly bent and my arms held out straight like a zombie pose. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in a public park. Some whack job called the police and told them I was brandishing a gun. Now mind you, I am a 5 foot tall 132lb woman; I look like a junior high school cheerleader. The fuzz put me on the tarmac, held me at riflepoint, searched my car and purse, and ran my plates before they would even tell me what was going on. It was truly surreal.

 

[Aravelle]

In junior school, I actually got into trouble for reading Stephen King books.
x

...That's pretty badass.
I went to private school, and used to read Anne Rice publicly in 9th grade. No one ever said anything, surprisingly.

 

[ChantyLace]

Reading one of the posts about Stephen King, I have a similar tale. When I was in about 8, I would read Sweet Valley High; an obviously advanced book for my age. One day we got a new Librarian who actually yelled at me to get off the ladder I was climbing to retrieve a new novel. She told me I should be reading age appropriate books and pointed my class mates out to me. I scoffed and went over to the other kids to read "baby books". Lucky for me, when I got home and told my mother, she called the school in outrage demanding them to explain why someone was denying her daughter "Knowledge".

To this day I am thankful my mother supports me no matter what I do, whether or not it's "Age appropriate."

 

[Weaver]

Reading one of the posts about Stephen King, I have a similar tale. When I was in about 8, I would read Sweet Valley High; an obviously advanced book for my age. One day we got a new Librarian who actually yelled at me to get off the ladder I was climbing to retrieve a new novel. She told me I should be reading age appropriate books and pointed my class mates out to me. I scoffed and went over to the other kids to read "baby books". Lucky for me, when I got home and told my mother, she called the school in outrage demanding them to explain why someone was denying her daughter "Knowledge".

To this day I am thankful my mother supports me no matter what I do, whether or not it's "Age appropriate."

The first time I ever got in trouble for reading books that weren't "age appropriate" was actually more for reading at all. See, I attended most of kindergarten in a place where it was considered normal for a five-year-old to learn more than the alphabet and eight colors and how to write their name. When I was transferred to another school (family moved), I was suddenly in a class with children my own age who didn't even know that much. I got in trouble a lot for reading to a few of my classmates - the teacher called me a liar for claiming that I could read. And we're talking Dr. Seuss picture books here, not The Hobbit or Gulliver's Travels. (Didn't read either of those until I was 8.)

I can see adults being concerned in some cases about whether the subject matter is appropriate for a child. (I wasn't ready for The Lord of the Rings trilogy until I was 11 - too scary for me before that, although I understood it all too well. But I was the one who made the choice about whether I was going to read it, not some adult who didn't want me reading 'that imaginary stuff' anyway.) I cannot understand why they'd ever discourage anyone from reading a book based on the words being "too big" or whatever.