Question Meme - Answer
What do you miss most about being a child, and about your childhood in
particular?
I feel incredibly lucky that I feel that I've managed to hold on to the most important things I loved about my childhood. My approach to the world is very child like and I easily experience wonder. With the people I am very intimate with, they will often see me being *extremely* childlike - I will sing nonsense songs and do silly little dances and will be quite snuggly and prone to asking "Why" and making up extremely silly stories about how things work or why things are the way they are.
The thing I miss most about being a child is that those behaviours didn't have to be something I kept only to my intimates. When I used to enact these parts of myself in the larger world, it became clear that a lot of people thought I wasn't that bright, or maybe a little touched in the head, or that I didn't have anything "serious" to contribute.
So, I keep a lot of that stuff to midnightstation in particular, and will let my friends see it sometimes, and sometimes it slips out at work - especially when we are working on the creative phase of a project. In fact, it's part of makes me good at what I do.
My childhood is very ... present. I LOVED being a kid.
That said, I miss the New York of 1973-1984. People who live here now, who came as adults, they don't know. New York was magical. I used to think the streets were paved in diamonds because the concrete they were sourcing at that time had a high mica count and the streets literally sparkled and glittered on a sunny day. My best friend had a cat named "Tramp" after "Lady & The Tramp" and a dog named "Gato". She had gotten Tramp from a guy in the park who had performing cats. The momma cat rode a tricycle and pulled along a wagon full of kittens. elissaann (I think it was her) doubts the veracity of this story - but it is TRUE. He worked in Central Park.
In the subways, every car was painted in rapid crazy abstract strokes that were letters but really were abstract paintings made by poor kids with pen who claimed the street as theirs. There was a guy who would draw on the black paper that covered ads in the subway and he drew in chalk, sometimes in my neighborhood and it was beautiful. On the streets were groups of boys who would play music on boomboxes and move their bodies in the most miraculous ways. There were doubledutch competitions in the street and I played stickball in Brooklyn with my cousin and his neighbors. My aunt grew tomatoes in the yard. One midnight I woke up and saw a parade of beautiful black people dressed in white drumming and dancing into the park. I had a pot-smoking Rastafarian angel who shushed loud folk outside my window.
When my father took me to the local bar, I had a special chair and my own (non-alchoholic drink) and everyone shouted my name like in "Cheers".
I was friends with a doberman.
I owned a red cloak, an orange floppy sunhat, cowboy boots, and a pair of jeans with patches - the left knee said "STOP" and the right said "GO", and my mother said I could be ANYTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD. I also had a blanket to keep me company, good friends, and lots of love and books.
I lived in New York, which meant I lived in the most magical place in the whole wide world.
I wish I could show everyone what it was like then.
N.
Icon is me at about 4 in my favorite tee shirt (Spiderman) looking at a carnation.
particular?
I feel incredibly lucky that I feel that I've managed to hold on to the most important things I loved about my childhood. My approach to the world is very child like and I easily experience wonder. With the people I am very intimate with, they will often see me being *extremely* childlike - I will sing nonsense songs and do silly little dances and will be quite snuggly and prone to asking "Why" and making up extremely silly stories about how things work or why things are the way they are.
The thing I miss most about being a child is that those behaviours didn't have to be something I kept only to my intimates. When I used to enact these parts of myself in the larger world, it became clear that a lot of people thought I wasn't that bright, or maybe a little touched in the head, or that I didn't have anything "serious" to contribute.
So, I keep a lot of that stuff to midnightstation in particular, and will let my friends see it sometimes, and sometimes it slips out at work - especially when we are working on the creative phase of a project. In fact, it's part of makes me good at what I do.
My childhood is very ... present. I LOVED being a kid.
That said, I miss the New York of 1973-1984. People who live here now, who came as adults, they don't know. New York was magical. I used to think the streets were paved in diamonds because the concrete they were sourcing at that time had a high mica count and the streets literally sparkled and glittered on a sunny day. My best friend had a cat named "Tramp" after "Lady & The Tramp" and a dog named "Gato". She had gotten Tramp from a guy in the park who had performing cats. The momma cat rode a tricycle and pulled along a wagon full of kittens. elissaann (I think it was her) doubts the veracity of this story - but it is TRUE. He worked in Central Park.
In the subways, every car was painted in rapid crazy abstract strokes that were letters but really were abstract paintings made by poor kids with pen who claimed the street as theirs. There was a guy who would draw on the black paper that covered ads in the subway and he drew in chalk, sometimes in my neighborhood and it was beautiful. On the streets were groups of boys who would play music on boomboxes and move their bodies in the most miraculous ways. There were doubledutch competitions in the street and I played stickball in Brooklyn with my cousin and his neighbors. My aunt grew tomatoes in the yard. One midnight I woke up and saw a parade of beautiful black people dressed in white drumming and dancing into the park. I had a pot-smoking Rastafarian angel who shushed loud folk outside my window.
When my father took me to the local bar, I had a special chair and my own (non-alchoholic drink) and everyone shouted my name like in "Cheers".
I was friends with a doberman.
I owned a red cloak, an orange floppy sunhat, cowboy boots, and a pair of jeans with patches - the left knee said "STOP" and the right said "GO", and my mother said I could be ANYTHING IN THE WHOLE WORLD. I also had a blanket to keep me company, good friends, and lots of love and books.
I lived in New York, which meant I lived in the most magical place in the whole wide world.
I wish I could show everyone what it was like then.
N.
Icon is me at about 4 in my favorite tee shirt (Spiderman) looking at a carnation.