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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

childhood survey

Lifted from KiwiRia, bien sûr!

1. What was the first car your family had?
The first one I remember was a light-green Maverick. We owned a series of old rattle-trap sorts of cars until I was ten or so, when they started getting better.

2. What was the name of your first pet and why?
Again, the first one I remember was Belle, an old black mutt of a dog, who was very sweet-tempered.

3. What did you want to be when you grew up?
A teacher, most of the time. A mom, all of the time.

4. What was the name of your elementary school?
It was just [name of our town] Elementary School. I'm sure if you're interested in stalking me (because I totally am stalking material, no? with my vivacious personality and ravishing good looks?) you could put stuff together and figure it out. But I'm not going to just hand it to you.

5. Who was your first best friend?
In fourth grade there was a girl named Lawana Hayes. She and her sister April were my best friends for a year or two.

6. Are you still friends today, and if not, what happened?
No. They moved away. This was like a disease with me in elementary school. It was hard enough for me to make friends, and when I did, right away they'd move away. This happened like four times in a row. April and Lawana started the trend. Maybe they knew something I didn't.

7. What was your favorite board game?
Hmm. Payday, I think.

8. Did you play house or other make believe games?
Yes. Plenty of 'house', and also army, and fort, and school, and lots of horses with April Hayes and our friend Amber R. (who also moved away, and then back, and then away, and then back, and then away). We would gallop around the school field, neighing. Sometimes on our hands and knees. In case you ever wondered why I was so popular with my schoolmates as a child, that was probably a small part of the reason.

9. Were you a Dungeons and Dragons geek?
No. I was lots of various other kinds of geek, though.

10. Did you sleep with stuffed animals as a kid?
Mostly I slept with books. Not so comfortable but a lot more useful.

11. Do you still sleep with stuffed animals?
I still sleep with books. :D

12. Who was the first person you looked up to when you were younger?
Aside from family members, I had a sort of friend-crush on my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. A____. I wanted to be JUST LIKE HER.

13. Who was your favorite relative?
My mom and dad. We had a huge extended family and I really liked some of those, but you said 'favorite'.

14. Were you short or tall in elementary school?
Tall. I was 4'10" in 4th grade, 5'0" in fifth grade, 5'3" in sixth grade, and then I reached my adult height of 5'8 1/2" in eighth grade. I was elephantine.

15. Were you teased in school?
Oh dear me yes. That was among the major defining facts of my life, especially in elementary school and junior high.

16. What was the name of your favorite teacher?
After Mrs. A____ in fourth grade, my favorites in high school were probably my AP English teacher, my French teacher, her husband who taught physics, chemistry, and geometry, and my music teacher.

17. What was the name of your least favorite teacher?
you know, I had several whom I disliked at the time, but living in the same small town my whole life, I like or respect pretty much all of them as adults. I did not get along at all well with my second- and third-grade teacher, but I've lived in her neighborhood my entire adult life and I like her just fine now.

18. What was your best subject in school?
In early school, when there was such a subject, reading and spelling. Later on, I was pretty good at most subjects, but just about the only ones to which I really gave a real effort were music, physics, English, and French. So those were the only ones where I got consistently good grades.

19. What was your worst subject in school?
Analytic geometry, eleventh grade. It was the class where my awful study habits finally caught up with me, and I couldn't do well enough on the tests and quizzes to make up for my utter failure to do homework. I FAILED IT. As in, WITH AN F. Plus there were all these rose curves, and I was SO BAD at them, because they involved drawing these pretty, perfect shapes, and I can't even write my name the same way each time.

20. Did you do well in Physical Education?
Most parts of it. I wasn't a star, by any means, but I could do well enough to get good grades in the classes.

21. Were you clumsy when you were younger?
Yes. I was the cousin who spilled her Kool-Aid at every meal at Grandma's house. (I am still clumsy, but not AS much.)

22. Who was your favorite band as a kid?
Oh, I was such a nerd. I liked Roger Whittaker. I liked classical music. I liked choral music. I liked 70's easy listening. You can again perceive how it was that I attained such dizzying heights of popularity.

23. What was your favorite movie as a kid?
You know, I don't remember. There was a series on HBO called "Dot and the Kangaroo"; I got really obsessed with that for a while when I was really young. When I was in sixth grade, "Top Gun" came out, and I was quite fixated on that.

24. Did your parents read to you?
Yes, lots.

25. Did you have a favorite book?
I had tons. The Little House books, the Narnia books, Beverly Cleary, Trixie Belden, the Hardy Boys, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Anne of Green Gables etc. And many many more.

26. What was your favorite restaurant as a kid?
The Sugar Pine. It was a little diner in town. I still miss it. It was my favorite from the days of brunch between Sunday School and church with my grandparents where I would order a "Fish Wish" because I liked the name, up through high school, when it was the restaurant I was in the first (and only) time I ever wrote my phone number on a napkin for a guy. You could get a big, sharing-size order of fries and two delicious chocolate milkshakes in tall glasses (with the remainder in their frosty metal canisters) for $6.31 including tax but not tip. Let's have a moment of silence for The Sugar Pine, shall we?

27. What TV or movie star did you have a crush on?
I don't remember having real crushes on any. I kind of made myself have a few -- on Johnny's cousin Billy in Dirty Dancing, on Goose in Top Gun (did I not consider myself good enough to fabricate crushes on the actual stars?) because it seemed like The Thing To Do and because my cousin Becky always had a crush on one celebrity or another. Whereas I just had crushes on book characters.

28. Do you now wonder what you were thinking?
No, as you can see above, I now know what I was thinking. :)

29. Who was your first crush in school?
Jenn is going to keel over if she remembers who this is. Likewise Debi. It was Chad Benson. In first grade (he was in second).

30. As a child, what kind of car did you want when you grew up?
I have no idea.

31. Did your parents spank you?
Yes, but not much. They were more into talking-to. And I was easily disciplined without spankings because I wanted so badly to please everyone.

32. Did your parents fight a lot when you were a kid?
They went through a couple of stages where there was a lot of arguing, but overall, no.

33. Did your parents get divorced or stay married?
Still married after 34 years, and I think they're more in love than ever.

34. If they got divorced, how old were you when it happened?
n/a

35. Did you ever run away from home?
Not exactly. I packed my things several times when I was a little girl and made a big show out of preparing to Run Away. And when I was a teenager I got so mad at my mom that I walked (barefoot) five miles to my best friend's house and spent the night there.

36. How old were you when/if you first got glasses?
I was fourteen.

37. Did you need braces or a retainer?
No.

38. If you're male, how old were you when you had your first wet dream?
um, n/a. Gross.

39. Both sexes when did you start shaving?
Eighth grade, I think.

40. Girls when did you start wearing a bra?
Ditto with the eighth grade.

41. What was your first kiss like?
My first real kiss (because there were guys who kissed me before this but I didn't know what I was doing really, and didn't like it) was when I was fourteen and my then-boyfriend and I went on a little date to the movies. If I remember correctly, Jenn was there as well, and she pretended to time the kiss on her watch.

42. What did you do on your first date?
I just described it.

43. How old were you when you first drank?
well, before I was born I drank a little amniotic fluid... (seriously, alcohol-wise, aside from occasional sips of Kahlua or beer when Dad was having some, I drank a couple of beers on a couple of different occasions the summer I was sixteen and that's pretty much it. Ever. Cause I am so virtuous and all. [Really, I disliked the taste and after that, just never saw the point.])

44. Where was your first house?
When I was born, my parents lived in a little trailer park. It's about two miles down the road from where my husband works now, although our particular house is gone, I think.

Comments

Posted by: debi at November 1, 2005 03:45 PM

Posted by: jenn at November 1, 2005 06:58 PM

Posted by: Maria at November 2, 2005 06:24 AM

Posted by: Shea at November 2, 2005 06:48 PM

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