I feel left out, moved away from NY recently and everyone I now know are total…yuppies, I mean I feel like I'm living in Mr. Roger's land, so I'm asking, anyone else had a total fucked up childhood only to end up living among those people you see on PBS?
My childhood:
Smart enough- 89 average, and took some AP courses, had a bulimic girlfriend that turned me into a coke head, stopped when she left for juvie, cause I didn't know anyone else that sold and ended up in the military, West Point and then a Lt., became a private contractor in Iraq and now here I am looking for greener pastures, what's your story?

I think everyone thinks their childhood is awful, but idk

me:
Was fag that loved pokemon-became pokemon master at school- continued to like pokemon after it wasn't popular- collected all the pokemon burger king toys- got a big group of friends in middle school- grew out of pokemon- discovered anime-

Freshman-sophomore year;
discovered gaiaonline- got boyfriend- dump boyfriend- played gaiaonline-discovered 4chan-got boyfriend- dump boyfriend-

Junior year;
many intercourse with menz-so ronery hole in my heart-heart pounding crush on christian sophomore girl- so goddamn ronery

Senior year;
Started a webcomic.


Very exciting.

Was anyone else messed up as a kid?

(*raises hand*)

But right now all I can say is… that the bad experiences I had only made my eyes open.

What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.

I don't agree with that saying. It should be more like…what doesn't kill you may still injure you permanently.

Early childhood: Was very quiet, intelligent and artistic(I'm not bragging here: I don't remember much from then so this is what I've been told). Had a few close friends. Was quite normal.
Middle school: Begin to become unhappy with surrounding: the city, the winter, etc. Become even more unhappy with death/parting of many family members. Mom gets issues because of this, relationship is strained.
High school: Life is pretty tedious, stuff from middle school continues, hopefully going to live in England next year if we can figure out a way to make the school systems fit together and whatnot.

Actually, my childhood was pretty bland. It's only recently that my life has taken a sharp turn for the worse, what with being generally unhappy with my university experience, disliking pretty much everyone I'm forced to be in contact with, and family members dropping dead or going insane.

there were a couple of years that were the worst kind of hell you could ever imagine putting a kid through about 5 or 6 years back, but that's behind me and I guess life's good now, pretty normal, but I don't take death or illness as seriously as I should anymore, and I guess I don't cry and I find it hard to get close to people. like I said, normal.

kyupol
What doesnt kill you makes you stronger.

Don't know about that. When I started out first grade at an elementary school at an air force base, one of their policies was to severely punish anyone who spoke their ethnic language while at the school. And all it took for me was a few words of Tagalog and the naivety (stupidity) to do it too many times… By the time the rule was lifted a year later it was already too late for me, yet my siblings can speak it very well.

After being spanked hard with a 2 or 3 inch thick paddle with holes in front of the class with my pants down, I developed a fear of speaking my ethnic language. This has severely hampered my attempts to communicate with my relatives in the old country; while I can no longer speak their language I speak extremely fluent English, which scared them (I think)…

Well, yeah. But I think it's relative. It wasn't until I went to university with those PBS kids you're talkin' about that I realised not everybody grows up that way. Most of my college peers came from suburbia and had 100K+ households.

I was from a poor, rural small Southern town, with a meth epidemic, high dropout and teen pregnancy rate, etc. A lot of my friends from back then are either dead or in prison- I mean, that's about all the opportunity that place offers. I was one of those a “behavioral problem” kids. I would break stuff, throw desks, verbally abuse teachers, yell and stomp out of class, assault other students if they said something I didn't like… I don't know why, looking back on it, no one took me to see a child psychologist or put me in one of those“ bad kid schools”, you know? I mean, seriously- I put a kid in the hospital in 5th grade. That ain't normal.

But like I said, it's relative- I've had a picture-perfect childhood compared to a lot of kids. I feel lucky to have always had both parents' love and support, a roof over my head, enough to eat, to not have been sexually or physically abused, to have had the opportunity to get out of the negative things that I grew up with and go to university… and about a hundred other things. :)

The only interesting part of my childhood was that I'm pretty sure I had ADHD, but my parents are super against putting kids on drugs, so every time a teacher suggested a shrink I was transferred.

I was transferred twice in the states and then moved to Japan where ridlin etc doesn't exist, happy ending.

all the kids all ran away from me case my hands have funny have funny markings they said smelt and so i made my own friends and little island good times allso i played a lot of ps1 games

also i got chicken pox then Slapped face disease so missed out on a lot of school and when i whent back i think i still had the rash so i dint make a lot human friends jumetle bastards

so i was an out cast all though school ghosts like me

Nope. Just really, hyper, like almost every kid.
And pretty damn creative too, I must say.

My story:

I was born and raised in former Yugoslavia. I ended up fighting in a Serbian war. I made many friends within my platoon, and one day, we were ambushed by enemy fire. Only I and two other people in my platoon survived.

Later, I discovered that one of the surviving members of my platoon was responsible for the ambush. I spent many years trying to track him down, and eventually I found that one of the surviving platoon members was in New York City. Coincidentally, my cousin was also living there at the time and invited me to join him in wealth an luxury.

Unfortunately, when I arrived at the Big Apple, I realized my cousin had been lying to me about his wealth. It turns out he was neck deep in debt to loan sharks and the like. I decided to help my cousin out with his debts, but killed one of his loan sharks in the process. Eventually, I was involved with the local mafia and doing many things I would eventually regret.

However, I was able to track down my saboteur with some help from the U.S. government. Although I could finally be rid of him, I ultimately decided to let him go, seeing how killing him wouldn't fix any of the bad things in my past. I decided to turn over a new leaf, and get out of the mafia for good…

…but they wanted me to do one more favor for them. They wanted me to complete a deal with a person I met that betrayed me before in the city. Although I could have gotten rid of him, I decided to go through with the deal, seeing how my cousin needed the money. However, the man betrayed me once again, leaving me to die once the deal went through. I survived that ordeal, but the man then sent an assassin to finish me once and for all. His shot missed me, but fatally injured my cousin. I knew this man wouldn't stop, so with the help of some people I met in the city, I killed him.

Even though he's dead, it made me realize that all the killing I did really didn't solve anything. My cousin and my friends from the platoon were still dead, and I had nothing left.

I don't think it's the events that took place that can qualify one to have a ‘messed up’ expereince, but only how that person precives it. Sometimes it's as easy as being optimistic, but it can be dificult to be that diciplined, especially for a teenager with hormones who does not yet know the term ‘who gives a f**k’.

Humorman: This is a childhood thread, so that post doesn't belong.

Hippie Van
Humorman: This is a childhood thread, so that post doesn't belong.

We are all children of the world.

humorman
We are all children of the world.

One that is entirely fictitious in your case.

BTW, I saw that ambush as I was flying past in my fighter plane. It was YOU who set it up! Traitor… How does it feel to live a lie all these years?

——————–

My childhood was a magical time.
I remember searching for tadpoles in quiet hidden streams, making tree houses in the lush greenery near the river, making forts out of the mountains of seaweed that piled on on the beach during he winter and having mock battles with my friends there after school… Building wooden go-carts, making crossbows, my sister and I building elaborate play mazes for my cats and kittens, playing with my hermit crabs, mice, rabbits, and guinea pigs. Swimming at the beach every day of summer, paddling along the river in a little boat and exploring the side streams and banks with my sister and friends…

And much much more. :)
Didn't everyone do stuff like that?

My childhood was great!

Grew up in rural (but not, like, “back in a holler” rural – just a little town with one stoplight) West Virginia.

I got called weird/ugly/fat and was picked on by rednecks for being the daughter of teachers. I decided I didn't care and stopped attempting to hang out with people my own age. Instead, I ate lunch with my teachers, and my best friend was (still is) my little brother.

I had a good friend in grade school. She moved away and we wrote letters and visited for years, but I guess we drifted apart and one day she called and said we were too different (to put it nicely) and she didn't want to talk to me anymore. (Well, actually, I called her when she told me that. I called because I had had a terrible day, nearly cut my finger off, and was sick from a tetanus shot.) I spent most of my teenage years reading Agatha Christie and writing mystery/adventures. I had a fan, one guy that read everything I wrote. No boyfriend or anything. I had an enormous crush on one friend, but I didn't tell him. He usually was going out with popular girls, and I couldn't risk losing the friendship. I didn't have any female friends aside from the pen pal who ditched me.

I got straight A's won science and writing contests, and was (strangely) voted as princess of a school dance in high school as well as most likely to succeed in my graduating class.

From grade school up, my parents took me and my siblings on a lot of vacations to Canada, Atlanta, and wherever else. They'd save all year for it. We learned way more from museums, zoos, plays, and other things than we did in school anyway. I was also in a program for honors students that went on trips all the time, and I went on all of those. When I was 16, I got to go to NYC on spring break in an adult tour group (no teenagers/kids and no one I knew), where we just shopped and went to Broadway shows (rather than the tourist crap).

I loved animals and spent a bit of time rescuing and releasing injured wildlife and finding new homes for stray kittens. My mom taught biology, and her students brought her interesting animals, which later ended up in our home. We had lizards, frogs, baby snakes, turtles, a hedgehog, rats, a vole (which was an orphan we released after weaning), a preying mantis, giant cockroaches, a rabbit (my sis won it at a fair – which my parents didn't approve of but got it a hutch and took care of it anyway), and probably a few other things I'm forgetting about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, no, my childhood wasn't messed up. I probably lacked a lot of the usual social stuff and still have problems opening up to people, but I had a close family and plenty of creative and intellectual enrichment.

I, too, had an idyllic childhood. I had a dreadfully awkward adolescence, which has turned into a mildly awkward adulthood, but I can't complain.

Although I believe Ernest Hemingway said, “All good writers have terrible childhoods… or at least believe they did.” And so, for my writing's sake, yes my childhood was horrid. Mother beat me with a stick.

I actually have all these wonderful memories– playing pogs, watching Dinosaurs at my neighbors house (the show… not the extinct creatures), games of dress-up and days when we would invent clubs, just for the heck of it. The friends club, the best friends club, the key club (when my sister and I got the housekey, nothing to do with the charitable organization), KKJJXL (which stood for, Kathryn Kristen Johnna John Smith, No Laura. Laura was the next door neighbor/bff4l that we loved to hate on; Johnna was my friend from school; john smith was… well… a very mutilated action figure of John Smith from Pocahontas. When Laura found out about the KKJJXL club, she was like, “What's the XL for?” and we were like… “Uhh.. extra laura!” )
Laura would spy on us in the driveway (playing basketball with a literal basket, and using ninja turtles as balls) from her window, and when we shouted, “LAURA, stop SPYING on us!” her blinds would rattle and she'd say, “I'm not!” lol.

We also made movies, and I wrote prodigiously about the adventures of Ant and Ladybug, two insect friends who run away and live in an orphanage, befriending little orphan girls.

Good times.

My childhood was hell and as Jean-Paul Sarte said “Hell is other people” My peers were my hell. Children can be cruel, mean, evil, little monsters in how they treat each other. They victimize someone who isn't quite like them and there I was.

I was a loner because I couldn't reach out to others. I couldn't reach out to others because my hand had been bitten too many times and I didn't trust anyone.

But still childhood was a magical time and I still love the story of Peter Pan. :)

bravo1102
But still childhood was a magical time and I still love the story of Peter Pan. :)

I was thinking more of stuff like Swallows and Amazons and Enid Blighton stories. ^__^

My family moved to a coastal country town when I was little (although most places are on the coast here). I missed the big city but it really was quite lovely there. In the summer for sports class at school we'd walk to the beach and play beach cricket in the sand- fielding in the water was great. :)

The land there was really damp and there were drainage channels everywhere (some scheme from the 20's), so there were frogs all over the place. We ALWAYS had stinky buckets of tadpoles around. But the sad silhouettes of squished frogs on the roads on the walk too and from school was unfortunate.

In school I was a small, weedy, starry-eyed, naive little day dreamer. And until I made friends with some of the tougher kids sometimes bigger kids would try and pick on me… At which point I'd punch them in the mouth and then try to tear them apart. Which didn't always work, but at least they wouldn't try it again.

I was never exposed to drugs, was never molested and I grew up in a loving family. But I unintentionally messed myself up.

My problem came from a bout of pre-teen depression. Apparently it's something that happens to intelligent children, and I was one of the brightest. Anyway, at 11, I started feeling depressed for no reason. Smart enough to know there was a cause, but not know what it was, I developed a martyr complex, believing everyone was out to get me. This was re-inforced because there were a bunch of girls who had crushes on me and decided to express their feelings by pelting me with half-eaten fruit, spilling ink on my school work, really weird stuff. Strangely enough, I have no relationship issues though.

But yeah, I'm one of the lucky ones and I have to admit I don't have much to complain about. Everyone has something happen to them in their life that screws them up a little, but that's growing up. You get hurt, you get sick, you get heartbroken and you get disappointed. You have good times and bad. These experiences eventually make you into a good or bad person, depending on who you are.

I forgot to mention that when I was ten I discovered something that would warp my mind for decades. Monty Python. I went from Peter Pan to the Dead Parrot Sketch.
I was the acknowledged “best artist” in my Middle School and in High School got into the NJ state level of the Teen Arts Festival. And then because of that emotional scarring from my earlier years I couldn't accept any success (Being teased incessantly had warped how I saw myself) and never picked up a pencil for over fifteen years.

Then there were my other talents: acting, writing. Never took credit for them either. After all those years of being told I was worthless? nah, being the best actor, writer, and artist didn't sink in (plus most unique walk but then that's from the Ministry of Silly Walks. That Python influence again. But to make up for it in the end I was an arrogant know-it-all.

Fortunately between the army and therapy…there will now be a loud *pop* as I pull my head out of my ass. I just wish I had figured all this out sooner. Messed up? Hell yeah. lol!

FIDO.

I actually have trouble remembering long stretches of my childhood though I know I was incredibly awkward and embarrassing. Partially because I was one of those kids who was bit too advanced for his age and partially because of some of the drugs psychiatrists have tried to put me on. Most of the memories from before I was 10 are fine, after 10 they put me on anti-depressants ( though I was as I, and my parents, recall a fairly happy child. ) After that, the side effects included a lot of weight gain and I started having issues with poor memory and memory loss. Mostly it was a result of me sitting there being depressed from the drugs and making up stories to occupy myself since nobody wanted to hang out with the depressed fat kid. That ended up with me repeating a lot of those lies and stories to the point they kind of replaced parts of the truth in my memory that were hazy or not well-remembered.

After about the age of 14 or 15 when I switched to an art school I realized I didn't give a crap if I was poor or socially weird compared to other people and started trying to remember the events as they actually happened. Ever since I've been working at remembering the real boring childhood I had and a lot of the kind of weird and fun things I day-dreamed up have actually happened as a result of me just admitting that I'm different and going with it. As a result though, I'm especially good at taking the most mundane of things and telling them in a way that's interesting.

if everyone says they were “messed up” as a kid, then where are the non-messed up kids?


childhood is childhood. period.

Skullbie
I think everyone thinks their childhood is awful, but idk

me:
Was fag that loved pokemon-became pokemon master at school- continued to like pokemon after it wasn't popular- collected all the pokemon burger king toys- got a big group of friends in middle school- grew out of pokemon- discovered anime-

My life story right there… I guess I'm still considered a child since I'm four years away from 18, so I've still got plenty of time to be the screw-up that I am.

My childhood (my mother's poor choice in husbands aside) was relatively good. Lots of wonder, innocence, and love. I was moral, good natured, and believed in many things.

That part of me died in my 12th year. Had to grow up and become miserable very quick. If a person could have done more of a 180 degree turn of who they had been up to that point, I'd give him a trophy.

Perhaps it is ironic, but I would never want to experience that childhood state again. Egh.

My childhood was basically moving, making friends, moving again, making friends again, moving again, discovering the internet and giving up on making friends because what the hell is the point, moving again, not moving anymore but it's too late now anyway.

*sigh*

My childhood could have been better. My mom is a crazy bitch that I never talk too anymore. My Dad didn't even love me enough to molest me. And I have a 24 year old virgin brother. If I am the normal one then what does that say about them?

My life's been so messed up that I can't put it all in this post. I need a friggin' autobiographical comic to fit it all in!

To be honest, I might do that in the distant future. Save putting these things in ALL my posts like I have been doing.

I don't know if it was idyllic but I enjoyed my childhood. I know I spent a good chunk of it traveling. The North American Continent became part of my personal experience. 49 states, Canada, Mexico, etc. I saw it all. By sixteen I had learned American history by visiting all the places it had occurred. One summer was spent following the trail of tears, another Louis and Clark's expedition, a third trailing after the various general's of the civil war. Never left the continent though, I don't know why. Not much plane flying, we did it by van. It fits that I get wanderlust every so often, and I'm thinking of seeing Europe or finishing my US tour by going to Hawaii.

When I was home I had ten acres to play on and no towns closer than 20 miles. I would carve bits of sandstone, play with my pets, collect the fruits and berries that grew wild from the old farm that our property was built on, catch the small animals and insects, go lay out in the fields and watch the sky, read books and lose myself in their stories for endless hours, help my dad tinker with the various machines and electronics he brought home.

It was good, though I did have the dark spots too. I was always a scrawny kid, born with clinical depression due to chemical and hormonal imbalance. I missed two growth spurts, or they weren't very big. I stayed at 3 ft 32lbs, then 4ft 72 pounds until adolescence. I surprised everybody when I turned 13 and shot up to 6 feet. I didn't like other children and mostly played with siblings or by myself. I would often get angry and contemplated suicidal behavior at very young ages. Luckily it was only a childhood ailment. Careful diet, exercise, lots of discipline and then puberty scourged the imbalances. I turned out Okay, got good grades and went to college on an academic scholarship. Bounced around a couple jobs and settled into my career track. Pretty soon I hope to find a wife, buy a house, continue the cycle of life and perpetuate the American middle class.