What were you like as a kid?

Lol. That's golden. Just picturing that in my mind.

Are you related to the e-trade baby?

 

I was a pain in the ass. I was always the victim. In sixth grade, I called a teacher racist simply because it sounded good, and he was black. (I've grown up a tad.) I often thought I was the smartest person in the room and acted like it. I was totally socially inept, and remain that way today. My parents had squat, so I relied on these defense mechanisms to make my way through school, which I hated. It was not a happy time in my life.

 

No, and IMO the e-trade baby is the world's greatest poster boy for retroactive abortion.

 

Yeah, I've always tested well. It lowers my opinion of academia. I think I would have been a lot more interested in school if I had to struggle with it on any level. I think that's why I liked sports so much. I'd start it, suck at it, work at it and get better, or in the case of basketball, never get better.

 

Only child. Also a loner who was bullied fairly extensively until high school, when I made the basketball team - largely to avoid the daily beatings on the after school bus. Let's just say I was extremely motivated to get out of that transportation hell.

When I look back now with the supposed wisdom of being a parent, I pinpoint one thing that made the difference. No father around. Where much of my awkwardness came from was not having an adult male in my daily life to guide me through the phases of puberty, social situations, etc.

It was all strictly trial and error for me and I didn't get any of that "right" until college. Also probably explains why I desired a gigantic university where I could get lost in the numbers. I loved it.

As a strictly young kid, I, like many here, was a news geek. Sports, financial markets (when the Dow hit 2,000 in 1987, I still remember the news of that), geopolitical stories. I enjoyed watching the news and reading newspapers/magazines because that was my escape.

Of course, the innocence departed by the time I was 12 and creating computer programs (in BASIC) that would handicap college football point-spreads. My mother was extremely worried when I would spend hours inputting weather information into my Mac in 1987 to see if the overrated Clemson Tigers would cover 11.5 over North Carolina.

Mom asked what I wanted for Christmas that year and I told her "an account with Mike Warren Sports - 1-800-MIKE-WINS".

 

I was a nerdling. My mom claims I slept 23 hours a day as an infant, and when I finally woke up I could speak normally. I was reading our summer small-town's paper as a 3-year-old. I went to a child-study nursery school at a local college where the key was not to "stifle our creativity" by making us clean paintbrushes or put on coats to play in the snow.

Unfortunately, I probably could've been an extra in "Revenge of the Nerds." I had a Jewfro which would've made Art Garfunkel proud, Coke-bottle glasses starting at age 4, and beaver teeth.

I am eternally grateful for the public-school gifted program, without which I probably would've been utterly miserable. We were <i>all</i> super smart, and, perhaps more importantly, most of us were really motivated too.

My best friend and I did a report on the planet Venus (her favorite planet) when we were in a combined K-1 class. She couldn't read yet, so I read all the books to her -- and by that point, my parents had bought these fabulous illustrated coffee-table atlases on kid-friendly topics like the solar system, dinosaurs, etc. (That was the last time I was smarter than my friend, who went to a special middle and high school and now has a PhD!) We worked together on a lot of dioramas in second and third grade. At one point, the teacher banned us from pairing up... with disastrous results.

Our program was pretty much self-contained until middle school, when we got introduced to the real world... and it hit really hard, particularly in gym class. :-\ There was also some tracking, so a few got shifted to a less-good math class, and some people took Spanish and others French. I learned the joy of writing poems for history instead of doing papers, and when the teacher finally caught on I turned in a gigantic monstrosity with every other sentence footnoted. (I remain convinced he never read it. I wouldn't have... It was gawdawful.)

Most of our class stayed together through high school, where almost everybody was nerdy like us. That might be the only downside to our program. We were able to stick in our bubble for much of our childhood, so letting people in and making new friends is rough for me to this day.

I got braces in middle school and contacts starting before high school, but the bad hair remained through college, as did my crummy self-esteem. Thankfully, so did the intellectual curiosity... and accompanying perfectionism. I learned early I won't be the smartest person in the room -- because I hang out in really freakin' smart rooms.

 

You know how those of you with daughters worry about what they will be like and what they'll do when they become teenagers? I was that teenage girl you don't want to have.

I always tested well, though!

 

Well said, Tart.

Like Mizzou, I was perceived as intense and freely admit I still am. Also had a girl in high school tell me I was intimidating. I laugh now because I lacked confidence when it came to the ladies.

I think it might have been 3OF who stated earlier something along the lines of "Wish I could have gone back gotten some of the tail I didn't realize was interested."

 

Looking inside trunk of my mother's car, under the spare tire, as she had cash and credit cards stashed throughout.

 

I am astonished you were a problem child.
I, on the other hand, was a teacher's pet and the apple of my mother's eye.

 

Growing up through HS, I was always the shortest kid in class, the guy holding up the class name board in the photo. Rather than make me self-conscious, that drove me to be the best athlete I could be. I was also always the smartest guy in my school (although town was not an academic hotbed)

My parents divorced when I was young and it was just mom, sister and me for a while. That helped me develop a respect for women at a very young age.

Up until 6th grade, I was kinda bored in class so I'd be the guy in the back of the class leaning back in my chair then falling. I also had a pretty sharp wit, making fun of those around me. But learned to get out of those bad habits in junior high (7-9th grade).

Hated high school, too much posing by kids who thought HS was the greatest time in the world; I had cousins and a sister in college and somehow I knew college would be way more fun so I couldn't wait to leave. Thankfully, college at a big university was a blast.

 

Totally agree. Great to see some good things happening for Harley.