What sucked when you were a kid?
 

Remember all the little injustices, hurts and bullshit that happened to you as a kid?

Today Junior crashed his bike right before soccer practice. He went through the whole practice with his leg hurt and bark and dirt in his sock. It was 95 degrees outside and he was just FRIED when practice was over. Then he hopped back on his bike to ride a couple more miles - doing stuff he did not want to do, but had no choice. We had to pick up his brother, then ride home.

All he wanted to do was go inside, take off his socks & shin guards, and clean himself up. I could see it in his eyes. But he was toughing it out. Not complaining.

Then he crashed his bike again.

into a pile of pine needles...

and dog shit...

and he landed on the leg he hurt in the previous crash.

And it was a BIG pile of pine needles and there was LOTS of dog shit in it.
Man... that sucked.

What kind of BS suckitude did you endure as a kid?

Well with the parents I had as a kid I had to grow up fast. My parents were always drunk or stoned. They always had there friends over and all I remember was how the apartment I lived in always smelt of beer and smoke. I remember going to the hospital in the middle of the night after stepping on broken glass from a beer bottle, afraid that I would be taken from my parents. I remember going to the hospital after my parents got into a fight because I got in the way. I remember all the lies I had to tell to keep my family together. But my parents have changed. They still have problems with drinking and doing drugs but it is not a constant part of there life anymore. I just wish things could have changed sooner. I left when I was 16 and I am glad that my kids will never know how there grandparents used to be. My parents love being grandparents. This is what I dealt with as a kid.

What sucked was my freakin' tooth. I completely blame my parents for placing me in that hell hole. I told them I didn't want to go to that school but they never listened!! Now at this point in time I am popping generic vicodin after having it removed.

Also that stupid school was cold!! Part of the reason I hate the cold. It makes me miserable. I just really hate the cold man.

I would have to say my worst memory as a kid was swallowing a pill for the first time at my dads. So I got sick one weekend visiting my dad. He gave me my medicine and it was in pill form. I was so scared of taking pills then because I thought I was going to choke and die. NE ways I finally get up enough courage to take it and I end up choking and spiting water on my dads welcome mat. My dad whipped my ass and literally threw me in bed. I know that probably doesn’t sound that bad but on top of it he told my mom to never send me to his house again when I was sick. Number one it’s a fucking welcome mat you ass, and number two I’m your fucking kid douche nozzle.

My entire childhood sucked. It wasn't one day or one event, it was the whole thing.

I was raised by my grandparents. My grandfather, a WWII vet, was extremely short tempered and very southern baptist. He was also a little suicidal and obviously suffering from untreated PTSD. One crazy sonuvabitch. He was short too, made him real bitchy (little man syndrome).

I was beat with a limb often. A "whipping". Sometimes monthly, sometimes more, sometimes less. It was often in front of my friends. The typical limb was 6 feet long and fresh off our elm tree. They left blood stripes that my grandmother took pictures of once to turn him in, but they were discovered and, well, that plan backfired. One time it was a flexible grappling hook. One time it was a rake handle. I would get jerked around, choked, yelled at, and if they were drunk, I was the one mediating the fight that ensued, which they forced me to mediate. At 6 years old. I remember being told I was "a damn bum like your father" when I was 12 or so. He was a damn bum, actually. He lives with my grandfather again now. They can have each other, I'll never see them again.

My grandmother died when I was 13. I got thrown in an orphanage when I was 15. That was more pleasant, even if I did have to fight to establish pecking order. Things got better after that.

By comparison to some of the above, my life didn't suck all that much as a kid.

There were two things that did suck...

1. My Mom's boyfriends. Most were assholes that tried to be my father. They weren't.
2. Bullies at school. For much of grade five and six I was mercilessly bullied at school. It really sucked.

Age three to six my mother beat me a lot. Otherwise ignored me.

Wow...I was lucky lol the worst thing about my childhood was the boy that lived behind me got an Atari 2600 6 months before we did, and then my parents didnt buy the "cool" games. Everyone lined up in his living room to play space invaders...all we had was Pac Man, Pitfall and Haunted House

I had a rough childhood too, but those relatively minor occurrences that seemed HUGE as a child?

In 2nd grade, I thought my teacher was absolutely the amazing. She was from North Carolina, young, slim, blonde, pretty. I yearned for her approval, but she played favorites like no other. Every week, she would invite a few "good" kids who had done exceptionally well on projects, tests, behavior, or whatever for pizza in her classroom at lunch time. 90% of the time, these "good" kids were 4-5 girls from the same privileged clique whom I grew more and more jealous of as the year went on. Not only were they smart, nicely dressed, well-off, and with great families, but the teacher loved them. Every week I hoped the teacher might notice I had been doing well and invite me for pizza, and every week I was let down. At the time, I was really upset and angry, but now I look back and I'm just angry at the teacher for playing favorites with 7 year olds. Very unprofessional.

Kind of related to my shitty parents, but I went to sleep-away summer camp almost every year from like 9 - 14. There is nothing more crushing as a child than visiting day, when every other kid is excitedly waiting for and greeting their parents as you sit there alone wondering whether anyone is going to come see you this year. It gets worse by the hour as more and more kids trickle away grinning. Just when you think it's over, all the kids come trickling back, bags full of goodies, crying about having to say bye. And no one came to see you at all.

Yeah, I gotta say my childhood was pretty good. Although it is obvious NOW that my parents were absolutely miserable being together and they only satyed married "for the kids' sake." Both of my parents were very supportive of anything I/we wanted to do. Whether it was little league, band or whathaveyou. So they lived through us, not eachother.

What really sucked wasn't in my childhood, rather after it. Dad died when I was 22 (I was a very immature 22 year old, however) and after his death we found some letters he'd written, apparently just for the sake of writing his thoughts down. He was a very depressed and lonely person, and I had never picked up on it. I wish he'd let his emotions be known more, because I think we could have bonded much more than we did. I always took for granted that he'd be there, then all of a sudden, he was gone.

Jesus jumped up Christ. I didn't mean to start such a sad, angry thread. But it is what it is.

As far as my parents and homelife went, it was pretty idyllic.

In grade 3 my teacher moved me away from my seat beside my best friend (because we were being disruptive) and sat me instead next to a GIRL! EWwWwW!

I was teased about it mercilessly for the whole year, handled it poorly and quickly became an over-sensitive introvert, especially when it came to relating to girls.

Fast forward to Grade 6 (the first year of Junior High with lots of kids from 2 other elementary schools now mixed in) and I was completely blind sided by the reverse shift from girls as objects of scorn to objects of status.

Being a thin-skinned, clueless introvert led to more teasing and awkwardness, but even worse, badly missed opportunities. "Woulda, Should, Coulda..." but damn those years could have gone a lot better. It took well into high school for me to come out of my shell.

That girl I sat next to in Third grade? We've been married now for 10 years!

Okay that's not at all true but we are Facebook friends and do get together with other friends every now and then. :)

Shit, you people had awful childhoods.

The worst I had to endure was being forced to eat my vegetables and family vacations ... now I love both those things, so go figure.

Well I forgot to add a few things on my other post. I have two younger sisters that I had to share a room with. We had one king size mattress that was on the floor that we all shared for a couple of years. At the time I thought it really sucked, but now looking back at everything I think it brought me and my sisters closer together.

Its crazy how something that seemed like a bad thing ended up being such a good thing.

I once told my parents (after several times in college where other people were sharing their "divorced parents/rough childhood" tales of woe, and I had NOTHING) that I was going to start a support group called Adult Children of Normal Parents.

I had a great childhood. There was stuff I whined about, but that was me being a whiner, not my life being hard.

Huh. My parents divorced when I was...eight? That part wasn't so bad, since they were terrible for each other. For the next few years, though, my brother and I were put in the middle of every argument. They liked to badmouth each other, and we just kinda looked at each other and shrugged. We also had to have two of EVERYTHING...Mom didn't want us taking anything she'd bought over to Dad's, and he felt the same. It was annoying, and not so fun having our loyalty tested on a weekly basis. Luckily, they finally called sort of a truce, and backed off.

But, relatively speaking... not so bad.

Church. I was absolutely terrified of it as a kid. I hated going, I hated the mention of it. My dad saying "get up kids, we're going to church today" used to send an immense dread that I can't explain all the way through my body.

This. I was so unbelievably introverted and self-conscious when I was a kid that it made me dysfunctional in school sometimes. Until I was 18-19 I was this way. Then when I got into college and was removed from my hometown and the people I grew up with, I "came out of my shell" and grew into what I am now. I'm still introverted, but I'm very confident in myself and no longer feel anxiety when forced with public situations, or situations where I could be embarrassed or ridiculed.

It also sucked going from my dad's house to my mom's house back and forth every 2 weeks when they had joint custody of us. None of this is as bad as the abuse that the others endured, but hey, it still sucked as a kid.

I shared a room at the orphanage as well, with 3 other boys. Sometimes they were cool, sometimes I got stuck with total asshats. One roomie sold crack, another went to jail for having a gun. One guy, get this, shot a mailman. That same guy shot his load on another guy while he was trying to sleep, and peed on another that often wet the bed. He also dry-humped people, which was actually pretty funny to witness. I could write a book, seriously.

I wish to God sometimes that I could have lived with my sisters. I have 2, and I had to grow up separate from them. I did meet my wife staying where I was, so some very good things came of it. But to get there, fuck I wish I could have taken an alternate road.

We weren't members of the local religion and my brother and I (but not my sister) were both easy targets and singled out by bullies during elementary and Jr. high school. I was pretty much friendless until 9th grade. My mother is a drug addict and an alcoholic - although she is clean now - and she'd leave for days, binge, and then come home and sleep for days. She was pretty much absent from my life for several years. During one of her bad binges, she slit her wrists in front of me and my siblings. The cops came to get her and it took 2 of them to get her in the squad car. She fought the cops so much that the bedroom looked like a tornado hit it - the bed was tipped over, the lamps were smashed on the floor, the TV was knocked over...pretty much everything was on the floor. My brother was 13ish and had the good sense to make me and my sister leave the house while the cops fought with her. I think I was in 7th grade. My dad dealt with this by going on long bike rides/trips. During warm months, I didn't see much of him because he'd be gone all weekend.

Despite all of the shit - I do remember happy times from my childhood and I knew my parents both loved me.

When I was in 5th, 6th grade, and most of junior high, I was mercilessly bullied for the usual suspects: I was fat, bad at sports, didn't have the latest clothes/hairstyle or whatever. The teachers naturally didn't do shit about it and my parents' best advice was to just ignore them (yeah, like that's really going to get them to stop). As a result, I had very few friends (one of whom frequently took advantage and treated me like shit) and almost no social skills at all during that time period and it took a long time to overcome all that to be the somewhat-social person that I am today. Of course, it also went without saying that girls were basically out of question due to my introversion and extreme lack of social skills. Granted, all that seems lightweight compared to what many of you people went through, but that didn't make it suck any less for me.

I had a great childhood - the single worst thing that happened to me was breaking my collarbone aged 5 falling onto the driveway from a car, and to be honest I don't remember it.

If there's a single failing in my childhood it's that it didn't teach me much about how to cope with stress and failure, but I'm glad I didn't have to learn those lessons until I was an adult.

All in all, I'm like Shannon - my childhood problems involved not getting a VCR until a year after some friends, and never going on a foreign sunshine summer holiday.

It was only as an adult that I realised that all my classmates were really jealous that my family went on winter ski-ing holidays...

The only thing that pops into my head is the time I was left behind. I was probably in the 4th grade and participating in rec league basketball. We had a practice at the junior high gym and it was dark and cold (January) when practice was over. As everyone left, I stood outside by myself in my t-shirt and shorts shivering and waiting for someone to pick me up from practice. It was a solid hour before someone showed up - my father had the car and he had been tied up in a long conversation with a friend of his and my mother had no way of coming to get me. This was a good 25 years before cell phones.

That my last name begins with a W.

In school, that almost always guaranteed that I would be at or near the end of line, the back of the class, the last person called on, the bottom of the list, etc.

For some reason I read the title as 'What suckered you when you were a kid?'

When I was 6 - Freddy told me it would feel really cool if I touched my tongue
to the electric fence.

I never had a Nintendo.

Being 6' tall, 100 pounds, buck teeth, and wearing corrective lenses that looked like magnifying glasses for most of it.

Needless to say... I spent the vast majority of my childhood alone with my Tandy computer and GI action figures.

When I was in grade one, a little boy told me about how Jesus didn't love you if you didn't go to church. He told me about hell and sinning. He showed me a picture of Jesus on the cross.

For weeks I was worried that Jesus was lurking in the shadows of my room, waiting for me to fall asleep so he could take me to hell.

Hm.

I had a great childhood. Other than being sexually abused by my older brother. I didn't come out about it until I was 28. Life's better now (other than my crippling depression and self esteem issues lulz.) No one in my family speaks with him. All of us are better off, including him.

I always appreciated the fact that our reading groups in elementary ranged from gold (tops!) to brown (bottom). This was on the actual textbooks.

I was gold, but it must have sucked for the brown, gray, and puke yellow kids.

LOL

Yeah, I've just read the entire thread, then came back to this.

I was expecting kind of simple shit like, "I remember when I was 8 and my mom made me clean my own room" or "When I was 12 we moved away" blah blah blah.

But this is one HEAVY thread and I guess other than having to endure my parent's constant bickering my sister and I had it pretty good. We didn't have everything we wanted, but we certainly didn't want for anything. We had a pretty middle class upbringing in a 3 bedroom house with a cat and a dog and rented a cottage for 2 weeks every summer on Lake Nipissing. The cops never came to our house, there were never any bill collectors calling. We were never abused in any way, school was pretty good (yeah, there were fights, but that's the way it goes), and we both turned out ok.

There was lots of shit that may have "sucked" growing up, but compared to the above it is truly trivial.

while I was going through it, it was major suckitude. My parents divorced when I was 10. times were hard in Illinois then. My mother worked a full time job and 2 part time jobs to get us in to our own home. When I was 13, I had to get my own summer job so I could get clothes for that coming school year. so at age 13, all 5 foot 2 and 95 pounds of me, had to tromp through knee deep mud doing corn detassling for minimum wage in 1980. After the summer job, I started working as a assistant janitor for a bar and grill in my small hometown. It consisted of starting at 430 in the morning, finishing by 730 so I could walk back to school.

Back then it sucked ass. now, I look back as the experience giving me the excellent work ethic I have today. I used to regret my mother never being home when I was growing up. Now, having to work full time to support an ill spouse, I have had a newfound sense of appreciation for all of the sacrifice my mother gave in order to provide her two kids with an actual home instead of an apartment.

the moral of my story is that you should always take the hardships of your young life and look at how it made you a better adult than the others around you.

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I had a really good childhood / homelife, with 2 sisters, one brother and on occasion one or two kids that we looked after for the children's age as foster kids. My mother was a nurse, but retired to stay at home, and my father was a highschool teacher for German and English. They stayed together, with the regular issues of a married couple, and pretty well left us to our own devices in the sense that we played outside, went bike riding, catching crayfish and stuff, with piano, swimming and accordian lessons thrown in with the baseball and hockey.

Pretty middle class idyllic Canadian eh?

But I do recall something that really sucked. The attitude at school of a certain kid who obviously thought that my German surname was a target. I got into a major school yard fight in grade 6 because he repeatedly called me a Nazi, and said that my father loved Hitler and was a Nazi too. He did it in such a way that it really goaded me. So I was hauled off to the office. My parents were called. But once the story was related, the principal gave the kid the detentions, and I just got a warning not to resort to fighting.

Kids will pick on kids no matter what. You could be named John Smith, and some playground wit will come up with, "Smithy Smithy, likes to Shitthy!"

You should have asked for his papers and then had him and his family finished by the Wermacht.

Cleaning out the chicken and/or pig barn. But honestly, I would not trade most of my childhood for anything. Apart from my parents divorced, it caused alot of separation between, my sister, brother and I. Sucked but oh well, we'd still stick up for eachother if we had the opportunity. Growing up, I think my parents divorce enstilled within us a greater sense of family. Atleast it did in me, I would do anything for my family and wouldn't have it any other way.

bed time and lima beans.
though, strangely enough, i look forward to both now.

as a kid.....we lived on ahill for a street...the kind we could ski down in the winter.

anyways..........one summer day,we happen to be riding our bikes (think 12ish)and i'm bombing down our hill,lose my brakes and go slamming right into the prickle bushes at the bottom of our street like 90 mph.......it hurt.


but i gotta say.......goin' in the prickles sure as hell wasn't as bad as tryin' to climb out.....

No kidding! Me too!

My mom collected thin bamboo branches to whack us with when we were bad. When my sisters and I all got into a fight, she cut all our hair off.

Hmm.. I played in the swamps in my backyard in Mississippi and ended up getting some type of warts from the bacteria living in the swamps. It's not contagious or anything and I don't get warts anymore, but I have tons of scars from the warts on my upper legs.

Rollerblading.. I ALWAYS tripped over little pebbles on the street and I would fuck up my knees real bad. Also my hands and elbows. I hated when my palms were scratched up and I had to write stuff at school the next day.

I was a lonely child. I had like two friends. At recess they wouldn't play with me, but they would play with me at home since we lived next to eachother.

I was teased and hurt a lot by kids because of my race.

Most of my teachers were idiots. I was wayyy smarter than them. I knew calculus at the age of 10 and I was reading "The Prince" one day in class and my teacher thought it was a fairytale. Seriously. But, by the age of 15 I got sick of being so smart and went out and partied my ass off. woooo

Somebody hacked into my friend's Neopets account and she blamed me out of nowhere. Everybody hated me because she was popular and I wasn't. A lot of them still hate me but probably don't remember why.

I was a pretty sad child. My first suicidal poem was written at the age of 7. I was emo before emo became hawt.

I loved rock but my mom called it Satan's Music and it wasn't allowed in the home until I was older.

I wanted to become vegetarian when I was 9 but my parents got mad at me for thinking of doing something so stupid so they locked me in the closet for a bit.

God.. this makes me hate my life. Childhood sucked fucking ass. Maybe this is why I hate kids so much now.

I had a pretty good childhood. Parents never struggled with bills or anything, my mom has been a stay at home mom forever and I thank her for that every time I see her. The only time I can think of them having financial issues was when dad was layed off in the 80's (engineer for the oil patch), but I was just a wee baby then.

Dad only hit me once and I deserved it, and I am glad that he did it, although it took me about 5 years to figure that out. I had been picking on my little brother and hurt him really bad, so my dad asked me how I would like it if someone who I had absolutely no chance of fighting off picked on me, I said something smart assed and he just lost it, wound up and punched me in the chest so hard I went flying (I was probably 13). He felt really bad after he did it, in fact I should tell him now that I am glad he did it, because I stopped picking on my brother.

Growing up I was tiny, I was always the smallest kid I knew. In fact I never started really growing until I was about 16 or so. I hit puberty the same time as everyone, but just never grew really fast. Today I am 6'0 tall but never hit that until I was probably 19. My bloody feet even grew a few years back and I had to buy all new shoes!

I also did not have cable or any video game consoles growing up, we eventually got NES when SNES came out though... but thats it. And no tropical vacations, the first time I have been anywhere tropical or far away was last christmas I went to Cuba with some friends.

School - I am not talking about learning new stuff - I was very curious. I am talking about the formal school, sitting 6 hours a day in a chair from where you are not allowed to move. Bored to death - this is not just an expression. Boredom and formal education really kill people. Transform them. Some manage to escape trough the net. "Civilization".

What did I learn in 12 years ? Nothing. How to read and write. That's all that school taught me. The rest - I read myself out of curiosity. 12 years for that. School only creates machines with human form, bored to death people too broken to question anything. Made to believe they are stupid, taught to listen to authority. See the last quote - the yellow one.


The rest (meaning 50% they did not manage to steal from my life) was perfect.

The Machine in our Heads--Glenn Parton
Confederacy of Dunces
http://www.scribd.com/doc/16286882/A...ican-Education

Parents were divorced when I was young. Lived between them for years, generally several months or years at a time, without speaking to the other parent at all. Dad was an abusive coke addict who made a living on (i don't know what) and Mom stayed with an abusive alcoholic for 13 years. With Dad, we usually lived in a tent or with one of his friends. Mom lived in a small trailer throughout my entire childhood, which now looks nothing like it used to due to the punishment is sustained from my stepfather. Life wasn't all bad, but it definitely wasn't worth remembering.

What sucked? My mom always wanted me to have long-ish hair, and refused for me to get a buzzcut like that cool kid in 1st grade.
The girl I had a crush on (Candace? I think) was always giggling and feeling the spiky-ness of that kid's head.
One day I decided to cut it myself, with (obviously) disastrous results. The rectifying cut after that was about 3x as bad as the regular haircut.

I had a great childhood, 1 of four kids to middle class parents, grew up in the country. Spend our summers and weekends roaming around the county on our bikes to which I attribute my life-long love of nature. Being tall I wasn't bullied and my parents got along, mostly.

What sucked? The usual small stuff that seems so huge when you are a kid. The time my aunt and uncle came to visit and brought everyone but me a present (I still am puzzled about that). Other than that, I think I forgot most of anything else.

I would say school days, Because that time, i was doing almost that everything what others had wanted.

Being small and no money.

Oh wait, that still happens.

Church, 3 hours every Sunday.

You also have a very good chance of becoming president of USA you ungrateful little brat!

Know what really sucked?

Growing up in a gambling town in Nevada I was too young to do anything. Now that I'm older and have moved elsewhere, there's nothing to do. Catch 22...

My Dad died when I was two. We moved a lot. I was picked on at school for being tall, skinny, and ridiculously shy. And my mother would NEVER let me grow my hair long.

My grandfather died the year before I was born with no pension, so my father had to take over supporting his mother, sister, & 2 brothers. My mother died when I was 4 so we moved in with my grandmother and my father's siblings. He became an alcoholic and died when I was 29. There were 8 of us living in a 2 bedroom house. We never had a car, or money, or new clothes. We shared a bike between me and my 2 brothers (good luck with that). In high school, I actually had a girl say "You're from there??" and step back 2 steps in disgust.

I had a very good childhood. We never knew we were underprivileged; everyone in our neighbourhood was pretty much in the same economic situation. We had fun, played, did things I would NEVER let my kids do, and enjoyed our life as kids, with all the bumps, bruises and heartache.

What surprises me about this thread isn't the depth of emotional scarring that it reveals, but how many of the posters have managed to deal with it so successfully. It's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit that we can go through what some of you have gone through (mine really wasn't that bad), and still function as adults.

Television. 2 channels/black and white/mostly poor reception. The very worst day was Saturday. Laurence Welk day. I'm old enough now I should like it but feel the same way about the show I did as a child. Best childhood TV moment. The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show.

Algebra. And it still sucks.

I had two older brothers and they liked to torture me. I still have nightmares about the time I was tied to a tree and shot with a b b gun.

Other than sibling trauma, I had a pretty great childhood.

One time, I was talking to a cute girl, when I was around 9.
It was winter, and my nose was stuffy. She said something that caused me to laugh nervously, and snot came out from my nose, and hung there. It was very embarrassing.

what does hard knocks mean?
 

wet trousers.

being shy, yet extremely talkative.

being adopted. (this could have been good, and I'm sure it was for the betterment of my life in the long run, but I can't help but think I'd be happier as a poor ragamuffin in the Andes rather than a depressed urbanite who can never commit or attribute empathy onto family and friends.)

having a "jelly belly".

having the "profusely-sweaty" gland, tied to only having my hair cut every 6 months or so, meant I always looked frizzed.

looking back, being a truant. I missed alot of good days because I was always absent.

having the "smarts", yet never living up to my potential.

the past two probably instilled such a strong sense of procrastination and apathy within me that I now fight daily just to survive.

having asthma. I don't know if you ever recover from having it, but at the time, and having to use the clean air respirator/ventillator machine for 20 min. each day, along with the "puffer" was not at all appetizing to a small active boy.

moving from home to home. constantly.

lack of neighborhood friends as a consequence.

mother's death at age 10.

father's alcoholism from age 7 onward.

my intestinal problems of which caused many complications, embarassments, hospitalizations.

other numerous deaths that took its toll on my psyche early on.

my too-naive outlook on pets. I sorely mistreated a fair share of them, and it haunts me whenever I think about it. One instance, is when a puppy was finicky when I picked him up, and I dropped/slammed him back on the ground in a fit. Another, I took a fish out of its aquarium, and I forgot to put him back in, effectively icing him. One last one, in which I let my beloved widower cockatiel live in the same squalor I was, devoid of any light, and he couldn't bear it any longer.
I'm truly sorry, guys.

belts, and the whippings that they presented.

always having hands thrust upon your eyes when the film slut's top was about to come off. I probably wouldn't need to have so much visual splendor daily if I was at least able to glimpse a boobie or two before the age of 12.

having the "sweet blood" while living in Florida, which meant that if I were ever to venture outdoors, at the onset of my return home, I looked like a strawberry's multitudinal seeds with the extreme number of bug bites I was able to accumulate within the span of a few hours.

not taught to be a reader.

never stolen a kiss.

falling in love with my classmates on a too-often basis, and then getting heartbroken because I never had the courage to speak up, and then ten years later you can't help rewinding the tape.

broken and forgotten friendships.

generic cough syrups.

cockroaches and weevils in your cereal.

humidity. everywhere. even during December.

pictures of times I'd much rather have left unremembered.

crying for no particular reason, other to garner attention to something that probably could have resolved itself quicker had I not been such a wussy.

nearly always picked last on a kickball, football, soccer team.

having to walk to and from school for the better part of a decade, and it was never nearer than 1 mile from home. average time to get home: 36 min. from grades 4 to 11.

running to a bus stop, only to see it drive up, stop, and then pull off again, and I'm still huffing more than two blocks away.

laundry days.

shower nights.

being so cold as to wonder why this is happening to me.
as a result, I don't go into a grocery store, Hospital, Church without a sweater on anymore.

discovering Playboy at the age of 12, and actual bangin' pornography not too much later.
The Playboy pcitorials were not too bad; in fact, they may have instilled in me a healthy respect and adoration for the female form, but the mustachioed copulating? It made me sick up until a generation later, which I still don't like all that much, but I can now see the appeal.

the look of a bowl of New England Clam Chowder. (it's not so bad anymore)

being Batman for Halloween for four years, with one year in-between where I dressed a flowery sheet with two eye holes.

on the subject of Halloween; perhaps the worst holiday for me as a kid. I either never got enough candy, had the worst costume, an embarassing day at school, or was in the hospital with all the sickly kids. there was a few last efforts when I was still able to go out, but I either overslept or forgot about what day it was. parades suck, and so does this degenerated excuse for a celebratory day of importance.

at the thought of it, I was almost abducted as a kid at least three times, if not more, yet somehow, I managed to arrive home safely.

crap. having to learn about rape because it had actually occurred to an eighth-grader in the Catholic school I was attending. It had made the papers, and the details in which the teacher did not hold back in re-describing the events to a class of second and third-graders, it was not depressing. It was downright debilitating.

pokemon. (I wasn't a kid when it came out, but it still sucked)

roller skates. (this is more my generation, but I still could never master the brakes, or walking, or anything in them).

not learning how to ride a bike.

I somehow unlearned how to swim at the age of 6, and I never got back into the swing of moving in water at all. All I could ever do at the beach/pool was either flail or sink.

haggling for bedtime back then, when nowadays, kids don't go to bed until at least 10 or 11 pm. What? and they don't go to school until 9 am. What?

uniforms. and only having 4 sets of them.

black clogs.

lice inspections.

eye evaluations.

what's it called? word per minute typing drills. those were awful.

Presidential Fitness Tests.

the word 'computer', and the connotations it held way back when.

the worst moments of my life that I have all but blacked out by now.
perhaps the only good mention and utilization of my poor memory rentention.

remembering that after my mother's death, I could have had the opportunity to live with my rich "Godparents". (whom were actually the attorneys of my mother's estate, and whom I lived with for a summer prior to the one in which I lost her). Instead, I was reloacted far away to live with a man I thought I had escaped, and had to continue to endure the abusiveness.

being short.

being uncoordinated.

being late.

being poor.

being aloof, to the point of being out of touch, distant, and alien.

the feeling right after you vomit. (this may still suck for some as adults, but as soon as I became one, I haven't vomited since.)

yearbooks. (I could never afford them)

hobbies, of which I had none.

my efforts, toys, memories, clothing, possessions, and recounts; all of which had to be abandoned as soon as I came into being and the awareness of an adult.

Growing up with a mother who had Multiple Sclerosis, and was bitter about it.

Having to lift each leg for her when she went upstairs to go to bed.

Come home to occasionally with her sitting there crying.

Growing up in a household that did not show any kind of love or affection. (My ex-wife always complained that I didn't give her enough. I didn't/don't know how.)

Being a "bigger" kid. I am still really sensitive to any comment that could be perceived as a put down. Low self-esteem issues still present.

Growing up on a busy 4 lane road.

Watching my dog die of old age then going grocery shopping with my dad right after leaving the vet.

Shoveling snow off of large driveway.

No family vacations.

The Seahawks sucked EVERY year.

Girls (or lack thereof)

Had younger sister who died, a father who was somewhat violent (and who I came to hate), a lot of issues with my mother who very clearly favoured my other sister (for reasons I can understand now, didnt then) and who attempted suicide at least twice that I am aware of.

Got kicked out of the house at 14 on Christmas Day (really) - a part of me has always been kind of furious that I allowed myself to go back.

When I was younger I carried around a lot of anger and aggression - but these days I care less and less. I turned out to be the stronger one of all my family - not the forceful or powerful one, but the one who didnt get fucked up or break. Now I understand that the day I (and he) realised I was physically stronger than my dad wasnt really as important as over the years I stopped carrying round anger at myself for allowing myself to be a victim, stopped hating both my parents, etc

Sometimes I come across as depressive, and violent tempered - but I 100% know I will never be like either of my parents. 100%

_

But sometimes I do fear the amount of mental illness (and I men clinically diagnosed mental illness) in my family... but I still am sure that, despite my somewhat volatile moods, I am not like them.