Memoirs

Whatever you practice, you get good at... Even if it's just complaining. ----- Just one of the gazillion quotes about practice ------------------------------------------ Today I'm reminding myself to practice, remembering the joy. And there was a lot of joy for me among the rebel chaos, that was my experience of the brand new and modern John [...]

“It is not the the bruises on the body that hurt. It is the wounds of the heart and the scars on the mind.”  ― Aisha Mirza -------------------------------------------------------- As I said before, it wasn't so much that it was a new kind of violence, just that it was new to me. The psychological violence I saw [...]

I always listened to my Mother I was afraid of my Dad I respected all my teachers I sat in front of the class --------------------------------------- No... my parents were far from perfect, and despite my "above average intelligence" I was far from a top student. But I have no doubt, the reasons I did reasonably [...]

… what teenagers do when bored and unsupervised.  ------------------------------------------------------- My adult mind just can't help itself. I can't help but think about how logical it all seems now. That the chaos, the perpetual instability of our brand new and modern John Adams Jr. High School. It was inevitable. It makes perfect sense. It even makes sense [...]

For three years, me and my classmates were beta testers for the brand new and modern ideas of a bunch of academics fresh out of school themselves. They were excited young adults with stable educational experiences behind them and exciting new careers ahead. We were scared and confused teenagers with whatever our childhood was behind [...]

“America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.”  ― Sigmond Freud ----------------------------------------------- Yup... I was the unwitting subject of many experiments. My parents started me early with their modern, by the book parenting (early 1960's modern books, that is...) and later [...]

I had already been overwhelmed by the best weapons adults have over such things as childish wars. -------------------------------------------------------- I'm going to finish this story with a few thoughts from my "adult" self but first... Every day I read about, hear of and see so many, SO MANY! examples of children (of all ages and from [...]

Well into my so-called "adulthood" (sometime in the early 90's so I was in my early 30's) I remember watching (and yes joining) my younger friends from my second college experience in River Falls, Wisconsin (they were of course still in their 20's) as they/we put together, played with and eventually terrorized the town with... [...]

The armchair psychologist that is my adult self can not help but make note here, how the social dynamics of our little midwestern, middle-class, cul-de-sac world must have fit so nicely into several stereo-typical family scenarios. And how these must have been a factor in the experience my child self would have, of went on [...]

Well... at least no one died... (That I know of) Oh, but one could easily argue that the midwestern, middle class, cul-de-sac existence that made up the bulk of my pre-teen world, was a kind of death. A death of spirit that a child barely feels but rather simply incorporates into the ego. Like any [...]