T w e n t y S i d e d

It’s the 1980-1981 school year. Mount St. Helens erupts. The Rubik’s Cube craze spreads to my corner of the world and I discover the pleasure of puzzling over one. Adults won’t shut up about “Who shot J.R.” Pac-Man fever is sweeping the country. I’m in fourth grade.

Things are not going well for me.

I feel like I have very little control over my life. I don’t decide where I go, what I do, what I eat, or who I associate with. This is normal for kids, but it doesn’t feel normal to me.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 8: The Dark Year”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Two doors up from us lives an eccentric fellow named John. He’s married, and his children are grown. He’s a large, wild-looking fellow. Big black beard. Thick black curly hair. Thick glasses. He’s also amazingly gentle and soft-spoken, as well as enormously humble and polite. In all my years knowing him, I would never once hear him speak ill of anyone.

My brother Pat – two years younger and about a thousand times more outgoing – talks to Neighbor John now and again. Eventually John discovers that Pat doesn’t know his states and capitals. He quizzes me, and finds I am similarly deficient. He insists that This Won’t Do, and asks our mother if he can help us learn them.

I am skeptical. This sounds like school, and I do not like school. School is the place with bullies (the teachers) and jerks (the other kids) who disapprove of me and let me know how much they don’t appreciate me or my scholastic efforts. It’s a constant assault on my sense of worth and my sense of agency. I spend all day watching the clock and waiting to escape, hoping I can make it home without experiencing any major humiliations. I spend my non-school hours avoiding thinking about school, and trying to ignore the dread that tomorrow, or Monday, or next fall, I’ll have to go back again. There is no end to this punishment, and the best I can do is put it out of my mind for a few hours.

So I do not like this idea of a neighbor showing up and giving me MORE school during non-school time. However, he’s very different from my teachers and his approach is very different from their fetish for bureaucratic paperwork. I humor him.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 7: Neighbor John”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Third grade. The teacher is explaining adjectives. She offers an example sentence and invites us to add one or more adjectives to it: “The corn is cooking on the grill.”

I zone back in from whatever daydream world I’ve been exploring. This actually sounds a bit interesting. There is a lot of room for adjectives in there. I uncharacteristically raise my hand, “The delicious golden corn is cooked quickly on the scorching hot iron grill?”

She looks at me in stunned silence. I guess she was expecting, “The yummy corn is cooking,” or somesuch. “That’s better than the example they give in the book.” she tells me, referring to the teacher’s guide in her hand. She is genuinely shocked.

When it’s clear she’s not going to give me any more sentences to decorate, I go back to daydreaming. She hands out worksheets later. These have more of the same sort of work, but completing it would mean half an hour of cramp-inducing writing, and who needs that? If she wants more adjectives she can just ask me and I’ll give her all she wants, but I’m not wasting time filling out paperwork.

Some of the kids make fun of the way I’m dressed. I’m wearing brown slacks and green dress socks. This subject comes up again and again in their teasing.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 6: Happy Halloween”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

It’s 1979, and I’m in second grade. School is much the same as last year, so let’s talk about home life instead.

My family: Patrick, Mom, THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN, and me. We still talk about her haircut to this day. Oh, seventies, you dismal crime against aesthetics.

Mom has to get up early, take us to the babysitter, then drive an hour to work. After work she drives an hour to get home, picks us up, and cooks dinner while we watch Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street, or The Electric Company on our 14″ Black-and-White television. She might save time if we had a microwave, but who can afford exotic cutting-edge things like that? Microwaves are for rich people. Besides, some people say they might accidentally bombard your face with radiation and melt your skin or give you cancer or something.

Never heard of The Electric Company? I’m talking about this show:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 5: Flower Child”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.