Gakkage
Gakked from tesserae_ the "My Childhood" meme. Very long, but it was fun to write.
1. What was the first car your family had?
Most of my life I was forced to hear the story of the car my parents gave up for me - they'd been trying to have a child for years and couldn't, so instead they bought a brand-new shiny white convertible. My family was what could generously be called "lower middle class" at the time - Dad was a VERY junior exec at Atlantic Richfield (later Arco), Mom worked in a record store in Hollywood and nights as a clerk in the local bowling alley, and they supported my father's mother and 5 yr-old brother as well as helping my mother's brother. So, of course, after they had the car for about 6 months, my mother discovered she was pregnant. They sold that car, which she loved, and bought a 5-6 year old Plymouth Studebaker, which she (and later I) HATED. It was "saddle shoe" black and white, with a very coarse moss-green figured fabric on the seats.
2. What was the name of your first pet and why?
I know I had tropical fish as a very young child. I'd always been both a night person and an escape artist, so my mother turned the crib upside down to trap me and put a lighted fish tank on the floor so I could watch it. I know we had a parakeet but I can’t remember it's name ... wait! Pete! Pete the Parakeet! Guess I must have named it. We briefly had an apricot toy poodle (whose named I CAN'T remember) but he didn’t like my father and bit him once too many times. Dunno what happened to him, but I do remember being a little afraid of him.
3. What did you want to be when you grew up?
A space explorer. Inna rocketship. With ray guns.
4. What was the name of your elementary school?
Well, we moved around a bit, but the one from kindergarten to third grade was El Centro in South Pasadena. After that, one in Shafter that I can’t remember the name of, one in Marysville, one of the PS schools in NYC and a school in Hillsdale, NJ that I also can’t remember.
But I remember a lot from El Centro. It was a big, old, Spanish-style building, and all the classrooms faced out into the play yard and had these big garage-style overhead doors that could be rolled up a couple inches to let the breeze in on hot days.
Hark on the breezes lifting,
sounding now far now near
Memories of happy childhood
Thoughts of a by-gone day
When we gathered at old El Centro
to study and work and play
Every morning they rounded us up, took us outside, where we did a group Pledge of Allegiance and sang the school song. I also remember the monthly safety drills, when the siren would sound and we'd all get under our desks, where we would CLEARLY be safe from an atomic bomb attack, which was what they feared.
The school is still there, but it's now admin offices for the school district.
5. Who was your first best friend?
The bad boy next door, John Rafferty.
6. Are you still friends today, and if not, what happened?
Nope. Moved too often and too young.
7. What was your favorite board game?
Trouble with the pop-o-matic dice thing in the center. Really a form of Sorry but updated for the Swinging 60s. What I probably liked about it is that my Dad hated it. But he had a white naugahyde recliner and footstool, and he'd sit in the recliner and I'd sit on the floor on the other side of the footstool and it was our game table.
8. Did you play house or other make believe games?
House? Me? Ummm, no. We did play make-believe games, usually with space ships and aliens.
9. Were you a Dungeons and Dragons geek?
No.
10. Did you sleep with stuffed animals as a kid?
No, but someone bought me this ENORMOUS stuff lion. The house we lived in was a Greene and Greene styled cottage (and tiny) but it had a huge porch with these big flat balustrades beside the steps. The balustrade made the perfect place to drag the huge lion out to and sit on him and let my feet dangle over the edge and pretend to be rising a horse off into the stars. (So I was not consistent in my role-playing. I liked horses AND space ships. Shoot me.)
11. Do you still sleep with stuffed animals?
Lol, I have a spouse and a dog who thinks she should sleep on the bed with her head on a pillow AND under the covers. What the hell would I do with a stuffed animal? This double bed is getting awfully crowded.
12. Who was the first person you looked up to when you were younger?
My mother and I clashed a lot, my father was gone much of the time (he worked as an account auditor for the many large oil drilling platforms in California's Central Valley). So when Dad was home, it was often a big deal and we did all the fun stuff then. So of course Dad was a Wonderful Person and my mother was a Witch.
13. Who was your favorite relative?
My Uncle Bill (who was married to Aunt Mary, who was my mother's mother's brother-in-law's daughter - so, not really an actual relative), who ran a half-section (320 acres) ranch out in Corcoran-Tulare. I spent months in the summer there, and every years there were puppies and kittens and sheep and goats and the big, scary bullfrogs up in the reservoir pond. Uncle Bill loved kids, so one year he borrowed a bulldozer and turned the reservoir into the greatest playland ever. It had islands (one with a palm tree) and a platform you could jump off of with a swing attached.
14. Were you short or tall in elementary school?
Tall. In sixth grade we moved to a house in upstate NJ (Hillsdale, NJ) where I was taller than most of the teachers, much less almost all the students.
15. Were you teased in school?
Oh, yes. I was unhappy being in the east coast, I missed California and warm weather, I was taller than all the boys, I had breasts when most of the other girls didn't, I routinely got sent home from school for wearing pants in the winter because I was COLD, dammit.
16. What was the name of your favorite teacher?
Well, Miss Bean was my kindergarten teacher. She wore her hair piled up on her head in this massive bun, anchored in place with at least a gallon of hairspray. She was incredibly cool because she had all kinds of animals in the room (including a snapping turtle who nearly took one of my fingers off because I stuck my finger in its tank). She was also cool because she was an accomplished horsewoman, with a picture of her on a steeplechaser, winning a medal, on the wall behind her. But before we get nostalgic for the perfection of yesteryear, one day Miss Bean came to school wearing big, dark glasses, which she didn't take off even in the class. It was a couple days before she either took them off or they fell off, and she had a huge black eye, which she claimed she got when her horse bumped her. But then one day we were all playing outside in recess, when Miss Bean suddenly herded us all back inside and called the police. Years later I heard from my mother that Miss Bean's boyfriend, the one who had given her the black eye, had showed up at the school and was threatening her and the kids
17. What was the name of your least favorite teacher?
The one I remember in particular was in 7th grade - Mrs. Meese (probably related to Edwin), who had pink hair that she wore in a fishnet. It was an English class, and we were supposed to be learning how to diagram sentences (which I didn't). Mrs. Meese had this horrible high voice, and she was allergic to chalk, so that when she drew on the board, she wore these long Rubbermaid gloves that went past her elbow. She didn’t have the greatest grip on the chalk, and it would often squeak, and the combination of chalk squeaking, the rubber rustle of the gloves and her voice still makes me shudder...
18. What was your best subject in school?
History, literature.
19. What was your worst subject in school?
Math. Though, dammit, I discovered, my second pass through college, that I'm actually good at it, and the aversion I had was entirely because of last teacher, Colonel Mustard. I can’t remember his real name, but he was retired military, made us call him Colonel. We had one of the versions of "new math" teaching inflicted on us, which was where we sat in individual carrels, with a math book and a tape recorder, and LISTENED while the voice on the tape read us what was on the paper in front of us. And Colonel Mustard sat at his desk, reading magazines. I can’t IMAGINE what they thought they were doing.
20. Did you do well in Physical Education?
Beginning in about junior high, I routinely got Fs in PE, which would incense my parents. "How can you FAIL PE?" they would shout. "All you have to do is show UP." Well, yes, exactly. At my school, PE consisted of giving very aggressive girls large sticks with which to whack other girls. It was called field hockey, but that would have meant playing by the rules. I saw no reason to be forced into a gladiatorial role at a tender age, so I just didn’t participate. But in elementary school, I was the Four Square Queen.
21. Were you clumsy when you were younger?
Big time. I have always thought of myself as clumsy and inept - and surprised the hell out of myself when I took up tennis at 35 and proved to be rather good at it. Right up until I destroyed my shoulder and had to stop playing. I think the real problem has always been that I've always believed in mind over matter, and I tend to just throw myself into physical things and am surprised when my body fails me. I should be able to THINK my way through anything, dammit.
22. Who was your favorite band as a kid?
My mother worked in a folk record store in Hollywood when I was a kid and I listened to a ton of folk music. Kingston Trio, Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, yada yada. I think the first album I bought was David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, sinc it was NOT the kind of music Mom would buy if I asked.
23. What was your favorite movie as a kid?
When I was 6 or 7, "Batman: The Movie" came out, and I was allowed to go to see it by MYSELF. Well, actually, with a couple of other kids in the neighborhood. It was at the Rialto Theater, which at the time had loveseats in the first row, so about 5 or 6 of us kids piled into a loveseat in a pack and watched Batman and Robin camp their way through the movie.
24. Did your parents read to you?
Nope
25. Did you have a favorite book?
Tons of them, varying by age.
26. What was your favorite restaurant as a kid?
There was someplace we used to go in Solvang that I loved, but I can’t remember the name. Griswold's, out in Claremont (which was longer than an hour's drive from home, allll the way down Foothill Blvd), because it meant we'd go see Unca John and Aunt Olene and their obnoxious but amusing Chihuahuas, Trixe and Dixie.
27. What TV or movie star did you have a crush on?
Michael Nesmith from the Monkees.
28. Do you now wonder what you were thinking?
Thinking? I was what, 8? Do you think I was thinking?
29. Who was your first crush in school?
6th grade, Evan something-or-other. Junior high school, Jeff something, who I was in a play with. My leading man.
30. As a child, what kind of car did you want when you grew up?
I didn’t care about cars as a kid. Not until I was a teenager and it meant being freeeee.
31. Did your parents spank you?
As a very small child, I think so. As a grade-schooler and older, no. But I do remember being a teen and getting on my mother's nerves and she slapped me as hard as she could. I forget what I had done or what I had said, but it horrified both of us and my mother fell to the floor, weeping. Poor mom.
32. Did your parents fight a lot when you were a kid?
Mostly they were distantly cordial, but I do remember some big screaming things that scared the heck out of me.
33. Did your parents get divorced or stay married?
Stayed married (see below).
34. If they got divorced, how old were you when it happened?
My parents didn’t have a great relationship when I was little, but they had a huge circle of friends and spent a lot of time with them. So they were together, but not. The move to the east coast (which my mother was against) pretty much destroyed what was left of their relationship, as they didn’t have that buffer anymore. My mother moved into the other bedroom and she and my father rarely spoke. Divorce wasn't an option, because they were both supporting their families (by that time mother's father had died and her mother was in a nursing home). When we moved back to the west coast things got a little better, but not much. It wasn’t until my mother was dying of cancer that she and my father even came close to reconciling. Would a divorce have been better? Not financially, but I think it would have helped my mother's mental heath quite a bit - though it would have hurt my father's.
35. Did you ever run away from home?
Yes. At around 7. Can't remember WHY, of course, but I packed my bag and ran away to the library, where I climbed up a tree to the second-floor balcony, prepared to live in the library for the rest of my life. My Dad tried to climb the tree to get me but fell. They ended up calling the police to open the library and get me that way. It sounds dramatic, but it was pretty low-key.
36. How old were you when/if you first got glasses?
Fourth grade, alas. Contacts when I was 15 or so. Had to stop wearing them at about 30 because of progressive eye problems which are, joy, getting much worse.
37. Did you need braces or a retainer?
I did, but the year I was told that was not a high point in my socialization and my miother decided to skip it because I didn't need the extra teasing. So my mother, in her wisdon, decided that what I REALLY needed was to go to Charm School. We were living on the east coast at the time, so that brings up images of the Waldorf Astoria and high tea, right? Wrong. She sent me to a Sears (Best!) Charm school in a mall in Hackensack, NJ. It, ummm, didn’t take, as most of you know.
38. If you're male, how old were you when you had your first wet dream?
39. Both sexes when did you start shaving?
Legs, around 16 or so. This is SUCH a stupid and time consuming habit, why the HELL do we do this to ourselves?
40. Girls when did you start wearing a bra?
Fifth grade, I think. Glasses AND a bra, pretty close in time.
41. What was your first kiss like?
I'd like to say it was a fun experience, but it wasn't. The less said about that, the better.
42. What did you do on your first date?
Well, define "date." Most activities tended to be in small groups. I guess they count as dates, so I'd say about 8th grade, or around 14.
43. How old were you when you first drank?
Once I hit high school, I discovered rock music and musicians and tended to hang with a "much" older crowd (well, for the time, anyway). A lot of this crowd did alcohol and various popular drugs, and it often left me the only straight/sober person in the bunch. There is nothing like being the ONLY sober person at a party to see how alcohol makes total fools of people. Plus, what's the point of drinking something that tastes so bad you have to hide the taste of it? I probably didn’t seriously start to learn to drink (ie: get drunk) until I was 20 or 21.
44. Where was your first house?
My family's first house was the Greene and Greene bungalow in South Pasadena. We didn’t own it, though. On a relatively quiet street with a lot of families, half a block from the local library and a block from my school. An older neighborhood, with lots of huge trees and palm trees.
.
1. What was the first car your family had?
Most of my life I was forced to hear the story of the car my parents gave up for me - they'd been trying to have a child for years and couldn't, so instead they bought a brand-new shiny white convertible. My family was what could generously be called "lower middle class" at the time - Dad was a VERY junior exec at Atlantic Richfield (later Arco), Mom worked in a record store in Hollywood and nights as a clerk in the local bowling alley, and they supported my father's mother and 5 yr-old brother as well as helping my mother's brother. So, of course, after they had the car for about 6 months, my mother discovered she was pregnant. They sold that car, which she loved, and bought a 5-6 year old Plymouth Studebaker, which she (and later I) HATED. It was "saddle shoe" black and white, with a very coarse moss-green figured fabric on the seats.
2. What was the name of your first pet and why?
I know I had tropical fish as a very young child. I'd always been both a night person and an escape artist, so my mother turned the crib upside down to trap me and put a lighted fish tank on the floor so I could watch it. I know we had a parakeet but I can’t remember it's name ... wait! Pete! Pete the Parakeet! Guess I must have named it. We briefly had an apricot toy poodle (whose named I CAN'T remember) but he didn’t like my father and bit him once too many times. Dunno what happened to him, but I do remember being a little afraid of him.
3. What did you want to be when you grew up?
A space explorer. Inna rocketship. With ray guns.
4. What was the name of your elementary school?
Well, we moved around a bit, but the one from kindergarten to third grade was El Centro in South Pasadena. After that, one in Shafter that I can’t remember the name of, one in Marysville, one of the PS schools in NYC and a school in Hillsdale, NJ that I also can’t remember.
But I remember a lot from El Centro. It was a big, old, Spanish-style building, and all the classrooms faced out into the play yard and had these big garage-style overhead doors that could be rolled up a couple inches to let the breeze in on hot days.
Hark on the breezes lifting,
sounding now far now near
Memories of happy childhood
Thoughts of a by-gone day
When we gathered at old El Centro
to study and work and play
Every morning they rounded us up, took us outside, where we did a group Pledge of Allegiance and sang the school song. I also remember the monthly safety drills, when the siren would sound and we'd all get under our desks, where we would CLEARLY be safe from an atomic bomb attack, which was what they feared.
The school is still there, but it's now admin offices for the school district.
5. Who was your first best friend?
The bad boy next door, John Rafferty.
6. Are you still friends today, and if not, what happened?
Nope. Moved too often and too young.
7. What was your favorite board game?
Trouble with the pop-o-matic dice thing in the center. Really a form of Sorry but updated for the Swinging 60s. What I probably liked about it is that my Dad hated it. But he had a white naugahyde recliner and footstool, and he'd sit in the recliner and I'd sit on the floor on the other side of the footstool and it was our game table.
8. Did you play house or other make believe games?
House? Me? Ummm, no. We did play make-believe games, usually with space ships and aliens.
9. Were you a Dungeons and Dragons geek?
No.
10. Did you sleep with stuffed animals as a kid?
No, but someone bought me this ENORMOUS stuff lion. The house we lived in was a Greene and Greene styled cottage (and tiny) but it had a huge porch with these big flat balustrades beside the steps. The balustrade made the perfect place to drag the huge lion out to and sit on him and let my feet dangle over the edge and pretend to be rising a horse off into the stars. (So I was not consistent in my role-playing. I liked horses AND space ships. Shoot me.)
11. Do you still sleep with stuffed animals?
Lol, I have a spouse and a dog who thinks she should sleep on the bed with her head on a pillow AND under the covers. What the hell would I do with a stuffed animal? This double bed is getting awfully crowded.
12. Who was the first person you looked up to when you were younger?
My mother and I clashed a lot, my father was gone much of the time (he worked as an account auditor for the many large oil drilling platforms in California's Central Valley). So when Dad was home, it was often a big deal and we did all the fun stuff then. So of course Dad was a Wonderful Person and my mother was a Witch.
13. Who was your favorite relative?
My Uncle Bill (who was married to Aunt Mary, who was my mother's mother's brother-in-law's daughter - so, not really an actual relative), who ran a half-section (320 acres) ranch out in Corcoran-Tulare. I spent months in the summer there, and every years there were puppies and kittens and sheep and goats and the big, scary bullfrogs up in the reservoir pond. Uncle Bill loved kids, so one year he borrowed a bulldozer and turned the reservoir into the greatest playland ever. It had islands (one with a palm tree) and a platform you could jump off of with a swing attached.
14. Were you short or tall in elementary school?
Tall. In sixth grade we moved to a house in upstate NJ (Hillsdale, NJ) where I was taller than most of the teachers, much less almost all the students.
15. Were you teased in school?
Oh, yes. I was unhappy being in the east coast, I missed California and warm weather, I was taller than all the boys, I had breasts when most of the other girls didn't, I routinely got sent home from school for wearing pants in the winter because I was COLD, dammit.
16. What was the name of your favorite teacher?
Well, Miss Bean was my kindergarten teacher. She wore her hair piled up on her head in this massive bun, anchored in place with at least a gallon of hairspray. She was incredibly cool because she had all kinds of animals in the room (including a snapping turtle who nearly took one of my fingers off because I stuck my finger in its tank). She was also cool because she was an accomplished horsewoman, with a picture of her on a steeplechaser, winning a medal, on the wall behind her. But before we get nostalgic for the perfection of yesteryear, one day Miss Bean came to school wearing big, dark glasses, which she didn't take off even in the class. It was a couple days before she either took them off or they fell off, and she had a huge black eye, which she claimed she got when her horse bumped her. But then one day we were all playing outside in recess, when Miss Bean suddenly herded us all back inside and called the police. Years later I heard from my mother that Miss Bean's boyfriend, the one who had given her the black eye, had showed up at the school and was threatening her and the kids
17. What was the name of your least favorite teacher?
The one I remember in particular was in 7th grade - Mrs. Meese (probably related to Edwin), who had pink hair that she wore in a fishnet. It was an English class, and we were supposed to be learning how to diagram sentences (which I didn't). Mrs. Meese had this horrible high voice, and she was allergic to chalk, so that when she drew on the board, she wore these long Rubbermaid gloves that went past her elbow. She didn’t have the greatest grip on the chalk, and it would often squeak, and the combination of chalk squeaking, the rubber rustle of the gloves and her voice still makes me shudder...
18. What was your best subject in school?
History, literature.
19. What was your worst subject in school?
Math. Though, dammit, I discovered, my second pass through college, that I'm actually good at it, and the aversion I had was entirely because of last teacher, Colonel Mustard. I can’t remember his real name, but he was retired military, made us call him Colonel. We had one of the versions of "new math" teaching inflicted on us, which was where we sat in individual carrels, with a math book and a tape recorder, and LISTENED while the voice on the tape read us what was on the paper in front of us. And Colonel Mustard sat at his desk, reading magazines. I can’t IMAGINE what they thought they were doing.
20. Did you do well in Physical Education?
Beginning in about junior high, I routinely got Fs in PE, which would incense my parents. "How can you FAIL PE?" they would shout. "All you have to do is show UP." Well, yes, exactly. At my school, PE consisted of giving very aggressive girls large sticks with which to whack other girls. It was called field hockey, but that would have meant playing by the rules. I saw no reason to be forced into a gladiatorial role at a tender age, so I just didn’t participate. But in elementary school, I was the Four Square Queen.
21. Were you clumsy when you were younger?
Big time. I have always thought of myself as clumsy and inept - and surprised the hell out of myself when I took up tennis at 35 and proved to be rather good at it. Right up until I destroyed my shoulder and had to stop playing. I think the real problem has always been that I've always believed in mind over matter, and I tend to just throw myself into physical things and am surprised when my body fails me. I should be able to THINK my way through anything, dammit.
22. Who was your favorite band as a kid?
My mother worked in a folk record store in Hollywood when I was a kid and I listened to a ton of folk music. Kingston Trio, Tom Paxton, Peter, Paul and Mary, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, yada yada. I think the first album I bought was David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust, sinc it was NOT the kind of music Mom would buy if I asked.
23. What was your favorite movie as a kid?
When I was 6 or 7, "Batman: The Movie" came out, and I was allowed to go to see it by MYSELF. Well, actually, with a couple of other kids in the neighborhood. It was at the Rialto Theater, which at the time had loveseats in the first row, so about 5 or 6 of us kids piled into a loveseat in a pack and watched Batman and Robin camp their way through the movie.
24. Did your parents read to you?
Nope
25. Did you have a favorite book?
Tons of them, varying by age.
26. What was your favorite restaurant as a kid?
There was someplace we used to go in Solvang that I loved, but I can’t remember the name. Griswold's, out in Claremont (which was longer than an hour's drive from home, allll the way down Foothill Blvd), because it meant we'd go see Unca John and Aunt Olene and their obnoxious but amusing Chihuahuas, Trixe and Dixie.
27. What TV or movie star did you have a crush on?
Michael Nesmith from the Monkees.
28. Do you now wonder what you were thinking?
Thinking? I was what, 8? Do you think I was thinking?
29. Who was your first crush in school?
6th grade, Evan something-or-other. Junior high school, Jeff something, who I was in a play with. My leading man.
30. As a child, what kind of car did you want when you grew up?
I didn’t care about cars as a kid. Not until I was a teenager and it meant being freeeee.
31. Did your parents spank you?
As a very small child, I think so. As a grade-schooler and older, no. But I do remember being a teen and getting on my mother's nerves and she slapped me as hard as she could. I forget what I had done or what I had said, but it horrified both of us and my mother fell to the floor, weeping. Poor mom.
32. Did your parents fight a lot when you were a kid?
Mostly they were distantly cordial, but I do remember some big screaming things that scared the heck out of me.
33. Did your parents get divorced or stay married?
Stayed married (see below).
34. If they got divorced, how old were you when it happened?
My parents didn’t have a great relationship when I was little, but they had a huge circle of friends and spent a lot of time with them. So they were together, but not. The move to the east coast (which my mother was against) pretty much destroyed what was left of their relationship, as they didn’t have that buffer anymore. My mother moved into the other bedroom and she and my father rarely spoke. Divorce wasn't an option, because they were both supporting their families (by that time mother's father had died and her mother was in a nursing home). When we moved back to the west coast things got a little better, but not much. It wasn’t until my mother was dying of cancer that she and my father even came close to reconciling. Would a divorce have been better? Not financially, but I think it would have helped my mother's mental heath quite a bit - though it would have hurt my father's.
35. Did you ever run away from home?
Yes. At around 7. Can't remember WHY, of course, but I packed my bag and ran away to the library, where I climbed up a tree to the second-floor balcony, prepared to live in the library for the rest of my life. My Dad tried to climb the tree to get me but fell. They ended up calling the police to open the library and get me that way. It sounds dramatic, but it was pretty low-key.
36. How old were you when/if you first got glasses?
Fourth grade, alas. Contacts when I was 15 or so. Had to stop wearing them at about 30 because of progressive eye problems which are, joy, getting much worse.
37. Did you need braces or a retainer?
I did, but the year I was told that was not a high point in my socialization and my miother decided to skip it because I didn't need the extra teasing. So my mother, in her wisdon, decided that what I REALLY needed was to go to Charm School. We were living on the east coast at the time, so that brings up images of the Waldorf Astoria and high tea, right? Wrong. She sent me to a Sears (Best!) Charm school in a mall in Hackensack, NJ. It, ummm, didn’t take, as most of you know.
38. If you're male, how old were you when you had your first wet dream?
39. Both sexes when did you start shaving?
Legs, around 16 or so. This is SUCH a stupid and time consuming habit, why the HELL do we do this to ourselves?
40. Girls when did you start wearing a bra?
Fifth grade, I think. Glasses AND a bra, pretty close in time.
41. What was your first kiss like?
I'd like to say it was a fun experience, but it wasn't. The less said about that, the better.
42. What did you do on your first date?
Well, define "date." Most activities tended to be in small groups. I guess they count as dates, so I'd say about 8th grade, or around 14.
43. How old were you when you first drank?
Once I hit high school, I discovered rock music and musicians and tended to hang with a "much" older crowd (well, for the time, anyway). A lot of this crowd did alcohol and various popular drugs, and it often left me the only straight/sober person in the bunch. There is nothing like being the ONLY sober person at a party to see how alcohol makes total fools of people. Plus, what's the point of drinking something that tastes so bad you have to hide the taste of it? I probably didn’t seriously start to learn to drink (ie: get drunk) until I was 20 or 21.
44. Where was your first house?
My family's first house was the Greene and Greene bungalow in South Pasadena. We didn’t own it, though. On a relatively quiet street with a lot of families, half a block from the local library and a block from my school. An older neighborhood, with lots of huge trees and palm trees.
.