It was the 90's... Summertime meant staying outside until the streetlights came on, and the most advanced technology to fill those hours was a Gameboy.
We rode our bikes, made mudpies, and climbed trees. When it was too hot to want to move much, my friends and I would sit in the shade of a tree and do madlips or make fortune tellers. We'd ask those folded contraptions questions like "Does Fred in math class have a crush on Samantha?" and the girl in question would squirm and protest as we pulled the tabs side to side.
When the answer came up as something snarky such as "Not a chance", there would be a mix of relief and disappointment. Then we'd go back to the madlips, filling noun slots with words like toilet, insane asylum, and President of the United States.
I don't have any photos of myself from my childhood, sans one I've shared here months back. I do have a few of toddler me, which I hope suffice for a photo of myself as a young kid.
Here I am roughly 2, and enjoying what I'd consider the cornerstone of 90's childhood: imagination!
When looking back, I'm so grateful that I grew up before smartphones or social media were a thing. My memories center on creating backstories for barbies, wild plot arcs that they would have to overcome. The joy one of those plastic tubed ice pops would bring on a summer day. The thrill of finding a friend in a park after looking for them all morning.
I love how organic the 90's and early 2000's were; it was not until high school for me that things like Myspace began to have a profound effect on our social lives. There were no youtubers to show us how to beat the level on a video game, if we were lucky someone had a tip, or better yet a copy of a relevant Nintendo Magazine. Ah magazines, those were cool too.
Calling a friend's house phone was so embarrassing if their parents were to pick up, that we tended to skip it all together. We had our talks face-to-face, avoiding the risk of having to say "Good afternoon Mrs. Smith...", or worse someone picking up the receiver in another room.
I love all of these things about my childhood; a period in time when it feels the world was such a simple place. The second part of this prompt is harder to answer; what did I dislike about my childhood? Probably the fact that we moved a lot and I had an absent mother.
My dad had full custody of me, with my mother showing up maybe a few times a year to call and make sure I was still... there? I didn't tend to get sad about that too often, my dad really did his best to enrich my life with adventure and lots of love. Unfortunately, some of the basis of this was two pronged. He had a job that required relocation every few years.
I got to see national parks from all over the country, visit museums and walk down busy big city streets. I didn't get the chance to form friendships in the way other kids do though, sort of leaving me as the perpetual new kid. This likely has to do with why I am slow to bond as an adult.
It probably relates to the answer for the second prompt I'd like to write for as well: I disappointed my dad A LOT as a teen. I searched out negative attention thinking all attention was equal. Although, good luck pointing that out to teenage me!
One year I skipped roughly 100 days of school before being caught. I had a grand scheme to get away with this; I pretended to be my own stepmother or adult sister. Imagine my father's surprise when the school contacted him to say that a wife he didn't have kept calling his daughter off school!
It's also worth noting that my sister, who is 9 years older than me, did not live with us.
Even when I attended school, I was a menace. I had this anime dork friend who was constantly teased for being overweight or weird, and I was known to establish contact with the bullies faces via my fist. One time my dad faced a lawsuit over this, which thankfully fizzled out.
I disrupted classes when I disagreed with the curriculum. Usually this happened in history class, where my teenage hormones lashed out against the inconsistencies I heard. "The Native Americans were friends with the settlers? Are you thick in the head??", stuff like that.
16 or 17-year-old me, holding my niece.
I was suspended, expelled, and given in school suspension so many times that I couldn't possibly enumerate them. As a single parent, my dad did what he could to discipline me and try to get me back on a path that would make him proud. Instead, he was met with a myriad of grief.
I found the measures the school took funny though— how are you going to punish someone for skipping school by suspending them from school?
I was quite a shit, with even something like being grounded having little effect on me. I was told to stay in my room with no electronics, but I liked reading better anyhow. I'd sit and consume novels, hardly noticing the days passing by. Being left with the absurd choice of grounding me from books or throwing his hands in the air, my dad picked the latter.
In many areas my dad simply gave up and waited for my lessons to come to me in their own way. And they sure did. I squandered opportunities and cut ties with things that would've benefited me in young adulthood, and had a much harder time because of it. I had to go forward with my tendency to do things only in my own way, and that took some adjusting.
Ultimately though, I wouldn't change those repercussions for the world. They made me who I am, and I'm proud of that. I would, however, change some of the behaviors that led to them. Given my poor father less grief and stress.
Now that I have children of my own, I must hope that karma does not inspire them to do the sorts of things I did. For now, at least, I can say that my kids have never disappointed me.
All photos are my own. Divider made for me by Yaziris.
