T w e n t y S i d e d

I am now done with elementary school. Time for Junior High.

Because a great many readers may not be familiar with the American school system, allow me to sum up: Children begin school at age five, in Kindergarten. After that are grades one through six. This stage is referred to as “elementary school”. After that are grades seven and eight, which are “junior high”, followed by grades nine through twelve, which is “high school”. There are usually many small elementary schools that all lead into a common high school.

When Mom takes me shopping for the new school year, I get “normal” clothes. No more polyester pants, no more green socks. It’s at this point that I finally realize why I insisted on wearing those things. I suddenly see that I didn’t want to acquiesce to the bullies and dress like everyone else. Now I’m going to be going to larger school with an all-new group of kids, so… I guess I’ve made my point? Sure, it was stupid and stubborn and nobody understood or cared, but it still feels like some sort of victory for me. Somehow.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 15: NERDS!”

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.

“Shamus, you’d be a good student if you just did your work.”

Teachers have been saying this to me for ages, but this is coming from a fellow student. A student who never usually talks to me. I nod. I don’t know what to say in return, and I don’t want to screw up this moment of non-abuse. The really curious thing is that this is the third person to say this to me today. Kids who have always ignored me are now suddenly admonishing me to do my work, and suggesting that I could be a good student. The problem is that the title of “good student” has no value to me. It wouldn’t get me any closer to a computer, which is the only thing I care about at this point.

I’m not very socially aware or sophisticated, but I’m together enough to see a pattern here. Someone put these kids up to this. It had to be a teacher, since the encouragement is coming from more than one clique of students. It could have been either of our sixth-grade teachers. (The two classrooms swap students for certain subjects.) Certainly the talk would have taken place when I was in my Special Ed class, away from my peers. Maybe Mr. Markle arranged it? He seems to understand me better than anyone else in this place.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 14: First!”

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.

“Shamus, you have straight D’s this year,” the teacher says sternly. Unlike when I was little, my sixth grade teacher has the courtesy to meet with me alone during recess, rather than humiliate me in front of the other students when he needs to chastise me. I really appreciate this.

I nod. We’re just about halfway through the year. I knew this conversation was coming. I’m in sixth grade now, and my last two teachers had this same talk with me at the same point.

He looks down at the ledger he uses to to track grades and homework. The grid is speckled with little penciled X’s where kids have missed assignments. At the bottom of the page, next to the name “Young, Shamus”, is a long row of unbroken X’s, marching across through the weeks and months of schooling. It looks like the scorecard of a man who just bowled 50 strikes in a row. I know better than to show it, but I get a bit of perverse pleasure when I see this. I think about all the vast hours of homework I didn’t do, and am relieved.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 13: The Secret of Atlantis”

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 1982, and my life is in the process of being rebooted. Mom’s troublemaker friends are gone, the substance abuse has stopped, and the number of medications rolling around in my bloodstream is reduced to a very reasonable two. The world has come back into focus.

Mom remarries, filling in that persistent gap in my life where a father should have been. I don’t like Dave at first. He’s… Well, he’s not my dad. I’ve never had a dad before, but I still resent this stranger entering my life and taking the spot on the pedestal I’ve reserved for my idealized biological father. Like all grown men, Dave is big and scary and his voice is like a terrifying storm when he raises it. He’s never been a father before. A lifelong bachelor, he’s suddenly got an eleven-year-old and a nine-year-old on his hands. He’s playing catch-up.

This was taken in 1984. There are actually very, very few pictures of anyone during the Dark Year and the Reboot Year, 1981-1983. At first there was nothing anyone wanted to remember, and then we were too busy forming a new family to take pictures.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Autoblography Part 12: The Reboot”

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.