describe your childhood/teen years
 

what label would you give to yourself during those years? how did you act, etc?

i've been the overachieving kid that somehow, teachers love me because i'm usually done first. i'm really loud outside of class.

i was a bitch in elementary school. i was also obsessed with russian history and only had a few people that were nice to me (and now we're all really close). now it's just "the funny weird girl, jade".

I would give myself the title of "Party Animal". That's all my teen years were, just one big. long party. I did every drug I could get my hands on, but since then, I have wisend up to the stupidity that that leads to. Thank Jah

everyone thought i was a punk in middle school

now, well i dont know.

never had too many friends, always hang out with the same four more or less. I was a morbid kid, we were morbid cos it looked like there was nothing interesting in our town but us.
just like other millions of teenagers, I suffered a lot of the small reality of my town, since there were no stimulating activities.
fortunately, thanks to my parents, I travelled a lot every summer, growing a lot inside, and then the come-back was more and more drastic every time cos nothing in my indigen habitat changed.
lot of boredom then, and some depression too.
I bloomed at 15: thanks to my best friend's brother, we started to go a lot of concerts, and at that age I started to live more indipendently my summers.
I went to london and stayed there one month and a half at 16, and that really chaged my life.
although the flat life of country towns was still the same, I managed to take it easy, exploiting every occasion to go somewhere, travelling a lot by train without tickets.
then with driving license things changed a lot :)
now I live in a bigger town.

in junior school i was the tall scary one, then in secondary school i was the tall funny one, i got voted funniest girl in the yearbook. im at art school now studying photography. i guess now im the tall funny intimidating one.
i spent the ost of my pre-teen years worring about my parents getting divorced, then after they did, i became very angry and moody and pretty much a bitch. i think around 14 is when i started to emerge from that and grow up. i still am a teenager (17) and i still love acting like one, satying out really late, taking as many drugs as i want, not really having many responsibilities. im trying to make the most of it as im 18 in october, and as far as my mums concerned, thats when things have to change.
my only regret is speding far too much time watching tv.

I think every youth of our generation regrets the abuse of television... :)

if i have kids then i think i will get rid of all tv's in the house. they will thank me for it one day.

I elapsed my childhood mainly with my sister Valery 1 year more young then me. we were 2 kinky pests, nobody of our family wanted keep us. then the school change us a little bit specially cause the new friends.I love her!



screamingskull I approve about get rid!

well, my father still sometimes intetionally hides the remote control (do you say like that?) and that really pisses me off...

my Mam died when i was 8 which left my Dad to bring me and my older brother up. i was a very angry kid and this grew into a very rebellious teenager which brought a lot of trouble (not to mention Coppers to the door!) on my poor old Dad.. All is not lost though, i'm 28 now and i've grown into a lovely respectful and peaceful young chap..
Hats off the my Dad, he's my hero and has done a great job bringing me up on his own.

not having a tv kind of puts you off it for life. I've only had tv about half of my life and i honestly never miss it.

elementary school: never got to really play with lots of kids other than my sister because my parents moved so often that i went to 5 different schools between the ages of 6 and 10. got myself kicked out of the one private school i went to. i'll never forget my mom telling them off though.

junior high: same as everyone i imagine. general moping and awkwardness. had to spend much of 8th grade in a wheelchair from a knee injury. that was pretty enlightening in retrospect.

high school: living in a hippieish city at that point and my high school was over-crowded = we had an open campus (aka we could leave during a free period and they wouldn't chase you down the street), so i got perhaps a bit more freedom than some people in small towns. went to class about 80 % of the time, participated in my share of idealist activism/righteous change the world shit (conveniently a lot of protests were during school hours), had my fair share of drugs + rock n' roll, lost my virginity, snuck out and got caught--a lot. started working for people not my family at age 15. but i graduated.

started college at 17, i guess that was still my teen years but a totally different world. no amount of jobs, apartment leases and loans has made me feel like an adult though...still waiting for that

Yea, I feel bad for my lil brother, he's 2 and watches a lot of tv. He's going to have add, like me!!!

In elementary school I was a hyper lil ball of hell for the school, but I had curiously good art capabilities... the only class I've successfully gotten A's in all my life, except maybe gym. Thiss trend continued into middle school, but when I stopped taking ritalin I lost my hyperness and found myself to be a, how would you say, outcast. I listened to a lot of punk music backt then and kinda considered myself one, except not politically... just in the i don't care kinda way. But fuck it, middle school just sucked, at least i never owned a limp bizkit cd.
High school got better, especially the last two years. I kept up in art and started doing ok in school. Had a few girlfriends, started smoking pot, went to a few shows, saw sonic youth... ending weezer's reign over me as my favorite band. Still quiet, but contempt taking in my early punk ideas and deciding that I'm not atheist, I just don't care about anything like that, I'll be a psuedo-buhddo. Played a cover of the velvet underground's "who loves the sun" at a school variety show. This revealed that we kinda sucked, but it was fun.
Now I'm a temporary college dropout hoping to art school and a self-described suburban punk... that still doesn't realyl care about politics... now more so on the grounds, i can't play guitar, but i am anyway.

ok, why not.

i've been bizarre all my life . . . not even bizarre in the typical childlike or teenage sense of the word, just bizarre. i pretty much only had one friend during elementary school, but we were more or less inseparable at the time -- we would do everything from play video games to swim in the pool during the summer to doing "things" (imaginatively called) in which we would pretend we were in certain situations (on a monorail, in a factory, even in a hotel that comprised the entire world). most of my teachers (erroneously) thought i had some sort of mental or emotional issues because i was such a loner -- to the point where i ended up going to counseling because my mom thought my parents' separation and later divorce may have had some effect (it didn't -- i was 5 for god's sake).

as a teenager i was (if possible) even stranger . . . i would do things like wear two different shoes, wear six or seven necklaces simultaneously, refuse to wash my hair for large swaths of time, write self-deprecating nonsense in the back of my notebook, etc. didn't quite know who i was.

now i'm just an argumentative prick. you say it's black? looks brown to me. you say 1 + 1 = 2? i say that might be roundoff error. you say the sky is blue? come on, prove it, you wuss.

I was a little boy who was raised to believe in the Shitstem and the flag salute and all that nonsense, and then day when I was 15, like the Buddha I left the palace and saw the real world.

i suppose my childhood was fairly typical and mundane. things didn't start sucking until middle school. i'm 17 and they haven't stopped (but now i have better music).

i've never been able to classify myself as one thing or another. i don't like the concept of cliques (but secretly love it when i feel like i've been accepted into one) and i can't fully identify with any one of them. i'm not into drawing enough, my taste in music is just a little too odd, i don't like gossiping, or something along those lines. i did find one group of friends that i felt totally comfortable around at my last school (because we all had next to nothing in common with each other) but then my family moved.

throughout my life, i've noticed a social habit that i have. i latch onto 2 or 3 people or groups of people and just hang out with them for months (in some cases, years) at a time before moving on to an entirely different group. i was best friends with a kid named Chris from 2nd to 5th grade, but as soon as we got to middle school, we hardly talked to each other (which is especially odd, because we had alot of the same friends).

i've never been able to fully commit to a single group of friends (i feel like i should be able to) and that kinda bugs me. i'll have two or three seperate crews that i'll hang with at one period of time, but i can't stand it if these groups ever intermingle.

i'm rambling. END.

I was an extra on the set of existance. I was the blank looking guy at the table in the corner.

LONER -

I had a great childhood/teen years. I used to be a mega-extrovert, thinking just about party, music collections and creating, and getting as much of life as possible. However, in a way not to hurt anyone in my surroundings.

Nevertheless, things have changed slightly since university graduation.

my mom died a month ago. it's the same....it made us with dad and brother stick together. now i call dad every evening just to check if he's okay and what he's been doing.

shit, there's nothing more important than family.

I can identify with fishmonkey; my dad died when I was 9, and my sister and I sort of raised hell a bit after that.

I did not have the torturous high school experience that most 'young adults' seem to whine about these days. This sounds conceited, but I was among the academic elite (Note: NOT the same as 'intelligent'), so I had a pretty easy ride. I had a core group of friends of about 5 people that I met my first year of high school, and it's been that way for the most part ever since. Again, this sounds conceited, but we never really clique issues in high school; a lot of people envied us because we could fuck around and not suffer for it, and we weren't "geeks" (you know the geeks i'm talking about - not the ones that were simply outsiders, and who you later recognize were probably way cooler than you will ever be, but the ones who were just plain irritating, didn't wash their hair, made awkward and slightly lecherous passes at you, etc.).

I have one female friend, and the rest are male. I don't get along well with chicks for the most part. I think this has made me a bit crude and lacking in femininity, but oh well.

The thing that helped the most while I was growing up: my mom never restricted me from anything. She let me drink, experiment with drugs, stay out late, etc., because she knew that despite what she said, I'd do it anyhow, and she'd rather I did it with her knowing about it. Because of her approach, I was able to make more informed, intelligent decisions. I learned that my behavior was only in my own self-interest, so I was never moronic and rebellious, getting irresponsibly fucked up/into trouble. My mom knew I smoked pot and experimented with other things (tales for another day), and allowed it, so I never did that subconscious rebellion thing. So for those out there who want to ban their kids from TV, DON'T - they'll plant their asses in front of a television the first chance they get, and become zombies, out of pure denial and rebellion.

I don't smoke much anymore, but a few months back I got my mom to try her first joint ever, and she is now a believer in my contention of the superiority of pot over alcohol. Bless her.

i was a loner, and was only interested in reading..
grew up to be who i am..

not too bad, but i could've had more fun..

A lot better than my twenties (so far)! I had a blast in high school.

Sorry to hear about that :(. My dad passed away when I was 3, so I'm glad it didn't happen after that or some point because I wouldn't have taken it as well as I did if I knew him more.

As for the rest of my childhood, I was always imaginative and into the arts. I found it difficult to have a stepdad that's left brain dominant; I couldn't really relate to him as much as I could with my dad. I was never the most popular person, but loved attention. I hung out with tonnes of straightedge kids in my early teens, so I was never into drugs/alcohol at the time. There's not really much to say; I live for music. Now at a major turning point in my life (finish college in 2 years, discovered weed, discovered alcohol), I'm slowly realizing a lot of bad choices I made in the past. I always end up doing something and looking back at it and being embarrased by the choice. Anyway, that's my ramble.

That is so sweet *sobs*

basically when I was really little, I was hard to handle (I was diagnosed with autism really early on and was very close to being labelled as mentally retarded cause apparently I failed a psychological test). I had to attend various therapys during elementary (had to go to speech therapy every tuesday before school). I was viewed as the wierdo kid, and due to anti social behaviour, I never made a lot of friends (Inhuman being the big exception) and very easily became the victim of verbal abuse (this continued until last year of high school).

I can't say that my life was tragic, nothing bad happened. I became very interested in art very early on...I think it was because of one of my babysitters (I can't remember) and got my interest in music from that same babysitter (after becoming obsessed with the video for Bullet with Butterfly Wings).

Well, anyway....I've passed high school (thank GOD) and am studying fine arts (hoping for acceptance into an animation program somewhere) and reasonably happy right now

I'm still in my teenhood.
I suck in school
do drugs
smoke
drink alchohol
parents divorce (doesn't sound like a big deal but the way how they are divorcing is painfull)
can't seem to get a hold on a girlfriend
...
That's it.

I have a few friends 2, 3, maybe. I read, my friends don't. My friends don't really know what kind of music I listen to. I never force it upon them because I know they'll call shit. My friends are 'hippies', or something, whose best experince was going to Bonarroo. They only listen to jam bands.
My dad also died when I was young..11. I just know began to feel I never gave him a chance, like I never knew him. I don't know what he was all about.....I really wish I do, though.
This experince made me look for friends. That's how I ended up with the ones I did. I really wish I could find new friends, but I won't try.
I began to read as a way to forget. Then I began smoking pot. Now I read and smoke pot.

As a child I was super smart but very introverted....However, I would have frequent outbursts of insanity such as wearing mashed potatoes on my glasses at school, or pretending to be retarded so that I could be with the nice teachers in special ed. I'm not kidding. I really did that and it worked, until one day my older brother came by and saw me in there and I had to take this special test that proved I was smart. I didn't like my teacher that year because she was a sadist, who sent me to the office even when I did nothing wrong basically every day, and stood there to watch me get the whipping. She also made me skip lunch and sit in the dark with this other kid.

The town I lived in, Cleburne, Texas, was pretty insane then. These supposed satanists burned this church down, and my parents woke me up to go watch it burn to the ground--I was 5. There was also this guy who dug up a corpse in the graveyard and had sex with it. Then there were cattle mutilations. People in the town still believe the satanists exist--if you ask anyone they will say they have a cult out in Goat Neck. There were also these insane charismatic Christians in our church (not everyone in the church was that way) who convinced me that Satan lived in my curtains. In that town, every year, there was what we calleed "tarantula season." They would come out in droves and we would have to fend them off in the evenings when we took a walk. Sometimes they would fight the kittens. One time one jumped on my neighbor, Mr. Smith, while we were having ice cream on the porch. One bit me once...It had gotten in my bed.

I have a lot more crazy stories but that's all for now!

Love,
Daycare Nation

i was born in 1987
my family has always been very close
i was born into a mormon family
the earliest memory i have is being at my 2nd birthday party
it was a themed party (which is why i think im obsessed with theme parties)
i was a lion (of course.)
when i was three, i got my first cassette from my uncle...
Skid Rows "I REMEMBER YOU" single (hahaha which i still bust out when im drunk and sing along)
my uncle used to babysit me, he was in college and was a huge metal head
so, i became obssesed with music at a very early age

in elementary school, i had a lot of friends, ive always been a social person
went to a lot of birthday parties at the local skating ring
i was in a fine arts program 3rd grade through 5th grade
mondays and wednesday were dedicated to ART
tuesdays and thursdays were dedicated to Music
and we had dance class every day (yeah, i had to wear gay ass spandex shorts. i hated them.)
We had 4 plays a year
went on a lot of field trips
i dont know, i loved it.
I went to my first concert with my uncle when i was in 3rd grade.
Ozzy!!! and then i saw marilyn manson a couple of months later on his sweet dreams tour.
My parents still dont know about this.
At home, all the kids in the neighborhood went out from 7-9 and we played tag or hide and seek. Sometimes we told scary stories.
I traveled a lot every summer with my family.
Did the whole orlando thing for a couple of years
went to hawaii, spain, france, peru, and some other places.
There was this family that invited us every summer out to their home in the bahamas, that was pretty fun. Their daughter and i ended up dating in middle school.
Got my first guitar when i was 3 and then i got a bass guitar in 5th grade.

Middle school was great, all the same friends from elementary school and then some more from other schools
I played a lot of street football during these 3 years.
I was listening to a lot of music and i was playing a lot of bass guitar too.
I quit football in 7th grade and joined a band...
yeah... that didnt work out too well.
Dated a girl all through 7th and 8th grade.

She was my best friend through out my whole life(well up until that point of my life).
Our moms were best friends since high school so we grew up together.

Summer of 8th-9th grade my family moved to houston
I was actually very excited, even though i would miss my friends
i knew only good things could come from change
So we moved,
i made a lot of friends the first week of school
None i could honestly call good friends
i started going to Raves 9th grade
(my parents waited for me outside, lol. 9pm-11:30pm)
they thought they were concerts... with kids wearing funky shit
but theyve always been very open minded and cool about a lot of things
I made a lot of older friends and by December i was hanging out with 20 year olds
They treated me like i was their little brother
So i experimented with Ecstasy towards the very end of my freshman year
and my older friends were very pissed when they found out
So they stopped takling to me because they thought i was too young to be doing that kinda shit and what not
I started hanging out with kids from my school
by 10th grade my parents were letting me hitch rides to raves and my curfew was now 2am
I had also met a girl at these raves, she was kind of my girlfriend but we decided to call it quits when she started doing a bunch of coke
So i started experimenting with acid
and i realized i hated ecstasy
My older friends were like whatever so we started talking again
I made a lot of connections through them
and with the help of a promoter friend put together my first rave
i was 15
it went well, we made some money
put about 6 other raves and then we saved up enough money to do a big show
in 11th grade with the money we had saved up (and the help of an investor) we put together a concert with a pretty big headliner
I stopped going to raves and started smoking a lot of pot
I did the whole "high school scene" thing 11th grade
cause i felt like i needed to experience that
and i loved it
I always knew a lot of people in school but i was too caught up experimenting and going to raves to actually get to know them well
So i made a bunch of really good good friends
I took it easy 11th grade
partied on weekends
12th grade was just mind blowing
it was out of control
lotsa parties
drinking 4 nights out of the week
smoking pot every day
i put together a bunch of parties for the kids
well, they were more like events
im talking like $5,000-15,000 parties
i would charge anywhere from 30 to 200 bucks a ticket
Had a big winter bash and an end of the year bash
i graduated in 05
decided id take a year off college to put together some concerts and events

and now im here.
going to school in austin next semester.
looking forward to it.
yep!

Well this is a pathetic thread. I'll do it.

Up through 3rd grade my life was pretty normal. I had plenty of friends, I was one of those obnoxious hyper kids that always got into fights and trouble, but was not angry or rebellious at all. Just annoying.

Then from 4th to 8th grade I was homeschooled, so I basically became restricted to a few close friends that lived in my neighborhood. Played video games with them all day long, pretty much. Really sucked when one would move away or something cause there wasn't a whole lot of ways to meet other people.

So I got to highschool and went to a small private school with about 200 kids. Pretty much all my friends had moved away except for one, and I was no good at making friends at school, so for the first two years I was diagnosed with "chemical depression," but I just sucked at making friends and got really depressed about it. Also couldn't get a girlfriend and that got me really bad. But my family has a history of substance abuse so I refused to take anything drug or medication related out of fear (and I still do), except for migraines, and I never even took the anti-depressants.

Sophmore year I moved, so that left my only friend and forced me to make new ones. I did, and fell into a clique. Got one best friend and by junior year I was pretty settled. Then that summer I got a girlfriend, my best friend loved her, ruined our friendship, I secluded myself from all my friends to be with her, and we were together for a year and a half practically spending every second of our time together.

And then we broke up right before this summer, and I'm trying to re-establish the social life that I lost. She's got her friends back but I can't really find any of mine, so I'm trying to figure that out now.

you going to college??
you'll meet lots of people there
all sorts of people

Ya I am. This'll be my second year, but the first year I wasn't interested in meeting people. I'm not worried about it, just kind of helpless over the summer. I've been talking to someone from my high school about joining their band though, so that'll be good.

totaly dude
pedro thinks that you'll be fine!
just dont stress about it and be cool like... a cat.

That explains a lot.Ha!Just kidding.......

I've been painfully quiet and shy my whole life around people who aren't my close friends or family. In elementary school, I was one of the most advanced students, if not the most advanced student. I've always read a lot. In the past, things like basketball and art were very serious hobbies for me, when now they are just things I do for fun. My two best friends in gradeschool were twins.

By the time 5th grade rolled around, and for the remainder of gradeschool, I was the weird kid in class. I don't remember much about that time because I was not especially self-aware. Even though I was "smarter" than a lot of kids in my grade, I had not yet begun to care about things like my appearance, and even though I liked having boys as friends, I couldn't honestly say that I ever had so much as a crush on any of them. Whenever I was asked about it among my girl friends, I would just make something up to appear normal. To this day, I have yet to feel that way toward anyone I know, with the exception of my 12th grade history teacher, and that is something that I have been trying to suppress by telling myself that he is off-limits, for reasons of age and marital status. So yes, this area of my life could be considered a "problem area".

My parents split up the summer before my 8th grade year. I spent all of my time listening to music in my basement. I started playing the guitar, which is something that did not go as planned. I still take lessons and play, although barely, but I am obviously missing out on whatever makes guitar players want to practice all the time and get better. In other words, I do not care.

My first two years of high school were terribly awkward. I had no close friends, though I tried harder than I normally would to make some. One friend that I have now (my best friend) would later tell me that I intimidated people, and still do. Another friend, who I don't consider to be a friend anymore, told me that everyone at school thought I was "cool," which doesn't make sense, because again, a significant lack of friends does not equal "cool."

During junior year of high school, I discovered I had a knack for writing. I owe all of that to Creative Writing class. The semester after that I took Film Appreciation, taught by the same person. Both classes together seemed tailored to my interests. They helped me discover talents that I always thought I lacked. Most of the classes I'll be taking my first semester of college are a direct result of taking those two classes in high school.

interesting
you sound pretty cool

hmm... that's a hard one, but here goes... basically I'm an internationalist, meaning that I didn't live in a country for long. By the the time I was 15 I lived in 3 countries. First, I was born in Ukraine, which was Soviet Union back then, and lived there till I was 7. It was probably the coolest time, ahhh the innocence and naivety of being 5 and defying nap time in kindergarden. When I was 7 my family moved to the U.S., so the first several years were just about learning the language so I wasn't social to many people. I couldn't really make close friend here either because we constanlty moved - we changed houses twice and lived in apartments three times and then moved to Massachussetts in the last years of the U.S. stay. I think by the time middle school it started to really suck and I didn't fit in much, although I wasn't particularly bullied by anyone, and even on occassions hung with so called-bullies. Grade-wise I was quite good - A's and whatever. But the last year in middle school sucked as badly - there was this one bitch in my German class that I could just kill, but that's another story for another time. I was hanging with a some outcasts - you know, the prozac, ADD, 'special school' types, which was pretty cool. Then I came to Enlgand at 15 and it blows shit badly, tried to friends but its even harder fitting in here than in U.S., - people are even more aware of their nationality here than in the U.S. But, shit, am I glad I missed the AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE, which would have been hell and I would have had to pull off a Columbine. So for now with the exception the guys I play in a band in I don't talk anyone else. I'm in my final year at Uni doing History and Politics.

I should probably do this, though I only have 15 years to write about.

I was born in 1991. Which seems really recent. I lived a kinda-ghetto area in an apartment with my mom, dad, and big sister. Grove Street, I remember, which is Downtownish. My uncle also lived in the same apartment complex thing with his girlfriend. She (his girlfriend) got held up at gunpoint by some gangstas who accused her of stealing a bicycle.

When I was three we moved out to south Liverpool which isn't really ghetto much. We lived across the street from my first school, which was really handy. We got an orange cat and named him Chester because of Cheshire cats. He got run over after a few days. When I was four or something I started school. Aaaand... we got another cat, Sophie Tucker. She hated people though because we got her from a shelter for abused animals. I got a tiny drum set for christmas that year. It was really small.

When I was... FIVE we moved out to a nicer area which is more suburban and swanky. Or just wanky. It's the house I current reside in. I got the biggest bedroom and my sister got the smallest. I fucking rule. We got a dog as well. And another cat. I never had much friends in school. I did pretty well academically though, I suppose. I retained my weirdness as I moved on to high school (at age 11, which is standard for england).

Around age 11 I started to get into music more. I had always leaned to the 'alternative' side but most of the bands I found there were shit. One day I sought out the Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth from the advice of the Simpsons. I was obsessed with the Pumpkins for a while before turning into a hardcore Youth fan over the years after. My musical taste (and subsequent haircut) made me even less-liked in school. Academically I've slipped since those times too.

A few weeks before my 13th birthday my parents decided to tell the kids they were separating. My sister had already figured it out. I hadn't though, I thought they were going to say we could get another dog. It came as a shock, of course, and... well, you know the emotional stuff tagged on. I played on my computer all day and didn't talk to anyone.

My mom soon moved out to live with her new man, and my dad went strange as he thought how to rearrange his life- what had he done wrong to deserve such a shit deal? I don't know. My mom must be some sort of bitch. Anyhow, we were all pretty sad. Sadness, plus lack of friendship or real parental support made Danny pretty depressed. My parents got me a drum set that christmas to make for it. You can't buy love, but man I loved that thing. Though I remained in a rut all through my time as a 13-year-old.

At age 14 I slipped out of sadness as I took up guitar and started doing more things. I had become a recluse really, feeling sorry for myself, but what was the point? It was so typical- teenage drama queen. Yeah, queen. I had had a 'pen pal' of sorts since I was around thirteen or twelve who lived in Seattle. Writing to her kinda made me think more about life in general, myself, and other people. It made me who I am today- more relaxed, more thoughtful, and I'd like to think friendlier. I picked up guitar around my 14th birthday as well and I got a jazzmaster last christmas.

I was 15 this march. Not much has happened so far, but I am actually going to visit my 'pen pal' this year. Which should be pretty fun. Thats about my life.

Mine was fuckin brilliant. Sure we had our ups and downs but doesn't everybody?

I was the kind of person who was cool with everyone and hung out with whomever regardless of what crowd they were from.

Childhood years-

Grew up in Catholic school. Starting with my preschool. It wasn't because my parents were religious, it was because they felt it would give me a better education.

I went to the same school from 1st to 8th grade. Our class had thirty people in it, so we all knew each other really well. I never really understood how cool it was to have such a small group of classmates until I went to high school. During my jr high years, I played basketball on the school team.

I started getting into trouble kind of early. No one expected it from me, everyone knew me as kind of innocent. At 11 I was forging checks, and at 13 I had been arrested for shoplifting. The shoplifting arrest was the worst because it was on a day that I had pretended to be sick, so I got to stay home. Only to later get arrested. I had successfully shoplifted five times before, so I guess they were on to me. I had gotten so good at lifting that I even did it while my parents were shopping in the store. It's lame as fuck as to what I was stealing, but it was pc games.

Nothing too interesting happened, until the summer between 8th and 9th grade. The transition from middle to high school. I lost my virginity, shortly after turning 14. and it was to two girls, but not at the same time.

In sixth grade this girl that liked me, moved away to arizona. Her best friend still went to my school and in 8th grade she wanted to go out with me, but we never did until that summer because she was dating my best friend, and I didn't want to go behind my friend's back. We all know how those relationships end when school's out. So she was single, and the girl that moved away to arizona was back in town for a photo shoot. The girl from arizona was staying at the house of her old best friend, so they called me, and invited me over. Both girls were into me, I was into them, more so the best friend than the one from arizona, and no adult supervision, leads to losing my virginity. We honestly had really no clue what the fuck we were doing, but I still had enough sense then to know to use a condom.

During my high school years, I went to three different high schools.

My freshman year high school was some prestigious Catholic high school that you had to apply to get into, and have good grades. I was accepted and started attending. During this time, my parents started going through their divorce. I began experimenting with alcohol, and my grades had began to slip. My dad left the house, due to a restraining order, and being arrested for domestic violence and death threats.

My mom worked a lot, so I was left alone for much of the summer. Which lead to exploration of the internet, back then it was all about 56k modems and dial up. Internet Explored 4.0. That summer, visitation rights were set for my dad, and I switched schools. I would have been put on academic probation at my high school, and my mom could not afford the 7k a year to send me there, so it was off to public school.

It was my first year at public school, and having gone to catholic school there were all these horror stories about violence, gangs, and drugs, etc.

In retrospect, there was way more fights and drugs at the private high school I went to freshman year, than I had seen at any public high school. Also its kind of important to note that, the public schools I went to were in good neighborhoods, so I didn't get the gritty public school experience.

Sophomore year. This is really the year that set up my later years. I was at a new school, I didn't have my friends from middle school like I did at my private high school. What I did have was one of my longtime friends, that I met in preschool who went there. Through that route, I was able to make friends pretty quickly. So I wasn't a loner really ever, I started meeting people at orientation, before school even started.

My grades were horrible this year. 1.8 gpa first semester, 1.0 gpa second semester. I had major attendance problems, and this is where I first found drugs. I smoked weed for the first time, smoked cigs for the first time, found out the hard way about not taking too many prescription pills. Got drunk at school a lot. It was basically a party for me. Aside from that, nothing notable occured. Until the end of the year.

I found out I was moving once again and changing schools. I left as soon as my last final had been completed. I was now two hours away, in a town where I knew absolutely no one, and had to start over again. I took summer school, more to meet friends, than because I needed to.

The plan was successful, I met a few people that I could hang out with during the school year. One person whom would become an important part of my life at the time. My first semester, my grades were good, and I just met people. Nothing too crazy, aside from drinking alcohol during a halloween night with new found friends. Second semester was a lot more significant.

Prom was coming up and I was not expecting to go since I didn't really get to know any of the girls at my school. One of the guys I met during summer school and hung out with, had a sister. I kind of knew she liked me, but never really thought about getting with her. Her brothers hooks me up as her prom date.

I went over to his house to play him in basketball, not really for the basketball but for his sister. She'd kiss me and we'd make out during these days, and her brother asked us if we were going out, I said no, and for the next two weeks, she was stand offish. I figured out, that she wanted me to say yes. A couple weeks later, she started being affectionate again, and her brother asked the same question, I said nothing, waiting for her to answer. She said nothing, we looked at each other, and she said whatever you say. So I said that we were.

Things moved fast, we went to prom, a fight broke out in our limo, it upset my girlfriend, she started to cry, so when I dropped her off, I told her I loved her for the first time. She had said it to me before, but I could never say it back until that night.

My dad completely disappeared from my life and has not been back, its been almost seven years that I haven't spoke to him. Two months after our relationship, me and my girlfriend got engaged. This would be the person I refer to as my ex-fiance, and yes I know now how getting engaged at 16 was a fucking stupid idea. At that age, we thought we knew it all, and everyone else was wrong. Having said that, the negativity around us, from our friends and families was one of the biggest factors in breaking us up. So I would like to think, it was a relationship that would have lasted, if it had ocurred at a later point in our lives. After we were legal, and free to do what we wanted.

Senior year was a lot more unstable for me, due to the breakup and other things. To make things worse, I had to see my ex-fiance the whole year in my classes. At first we couldn't even talk to each other, she wanted to be friends, but I kind of told her to fuck off because I was upset that things didn't work out. I wrote her an apology note, and we kind of made up, but things could never be the same between us. It was more than awkward at all times.

I started my heavy drug use period. I also had major attendance problems. The only reason I would go to school would be to do drugs. The first time I did ecstasy wasn't at a rave, it was during my high school economics class. The second time I did e was also during school. My senior ball date stood me up, so I went alone, only to be spend that night with my ex fiance. I left with her after, and it was great, it felt like we were together again, only she had a boyfriend who was too old to come to senior ball, so after that it was awkward.

She showed me that she had kept the poems I wrote her and stuff, and I still have no idea why, unless she still cared about what we had, or it was to make me jealous. Nothing else really happened, I graduated in 2001 with a 1.8 gpa.

Since then I went to community college, transferred to a respected university, and got my BS degree in Business Administration in 2005.