Post #193618 by tikivixen on Wed, Oct 19, 2005 1:17 PM

I was my own kind of aloof eccentric, I guess.

I liked the Ramones, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Kennedys and the Clash. But I also liked Joan Baez, Neil Young, The Beatles and Elvis. My deepest musical passions were New Orleans/traditional SF-New Orleans jazz and opera. I collected antique opera records and old records generally. I was a vintage clothing fanatic but never had money to buy any, so t-shirts with (generally odd/nerdy/sci-fi) logos and jeans were my usual costume. I was an incipient Goth, (visually speaking only though, the accompanying lifestyle has never appealed to me) for years, but only blossomed as such in college.

I studied opera and sang in local shows and revues, and performed solos for various church choirs. I was in both the school choir and elite vocal ensemble, but I had a mutual loathing thing going on with the extremely slimy choir teacher and after my freshman year regretfully avoided school musical productions. (And yep, I later found out he was doing grisly things with Select Girls, who usually got the leads in his productions. He's a minister now.) There was no drama to speak of, and it pisses me off to this day that only my favorite English teacher and I really gave a crap about Shakespeare at my rather lame high school.

I threw myself instead into creative writing and was on the school paper all four years, generally as either chief copy editor and/or chief feature editor. I was also the only girl in Print Shop--I still love linotype machines!--and took photography for most of high school. I especially enjoyed cooking up weird photo projects utilizing my father's antique Brownie and 50's-era East German Commie Camera. I did a lot of collage work, often involving selected usage of disturbing sepia imagery from Victorian photos. In college, I saw the same sort of stuff pop up in NIN videos, oddly enough. I was kind of a creepy girl.

I was an antique book lover and spent most of my spare time in used bookstores. I was lucky because Berkeley and the Bay Area in general was chock full of such shops back then. I often made elaborate collaged covers for more fragile Victorian books. I loved vintage sci-fi and Victorian fantasy (think Jules Verne and HG Wells, but much more obscure) and had a large collection, though I could never afford old Arkham books or most vintage SF magazines, sadly. Even then those were more difficult and pricey to come by.

I was a Francophone and loved the occasional field trips to snooty French restaurants, but I was never comfortable joining groups generally and mostly hung out with an eclectic combo of a few 'popular' girls who were at least interesting, some shy, bookish types, and the sci-fi/Medieval Club geeks who were definitely the nicest folks of all. Not to mention the most fun! And although I never took the slightest interest in D&D or mock battles with cardboard weapons in the park, I thought that most of the guys who did were extremely cute :wink:.

For some reason I have never managed to fathom, I was a Doctor Who freak for a while. But I preferred 50's science fiction and still do to this day. H.P. Lovecraft and T.E. Lawrence were lasting passions. Likewise Monty Python--they've warped my brain to this very day.

I am always hanging back and hiding under my huge mop of hair in group pictures. I was very slender, very pale, and had HUUUGE wire rim glasses. I had, sadly, few close friends--although I did want them. I tended to 'miss the boat' socially. People rather forgot to invite me to things because I was so quiet, but in recent years I've found that they all liked me very much and still do, which makes me happy. I've also found that several girls I always wanted to be close to (but never managed it) have HUGE amounts of interests and tastes in common with me, and I feel regretful about the fun times we missed. I suppose I was rather lonely sometimes, but I was a classic introvert and since my boyfriend Howard was the same, we got along very well indeed.

I can't say I was unhappy in high school. Quite the opposite. Generally I was very much my own person and didn't care in the slightest what others thought of me. I had ZERO ambition to be "popular" or "in" though I didn't resent or disdain those who did. I hugely preferred high school to junior high--the worst, most painfully awkward and depressed years of adolescence for me were 11-14 or so. Everything after that was a picnic, comparatively speaking.

This lack of ambition extended to activities. I never ran for anything or was elected to anything. I enjoyed the intellectual challenges and was finally really interested in many subjects. I was an extremely good student and aced my advanced placement tests as well, but I hated the SAT and had to make a huge effort to even take it. I still am very much against standardized testing.

My one great regret is that I avoided art classes because, basically, I can't draw for s**t. I still should've taken them. But I am my own worst critic, especially in creative matters. I know where I have talent and where I don't, and I unfortunately let that rigidity keep me out of a very cool group of people. Similarly, I am sorry that I let my obnoxious Berkeley feminist attitude turn me off to home-ec classes, because the shameful truth of it all is that I turned out to enjoy domesticity. Who knew. I might have made someone a nifty wife if I'd opened my mind enough to the idea...and had not been essentially brainwashed to look down on such lifestyle choices. Since I've never been career-minded, it would've been smart back then to have explored ALL my options as a woman with a bit more flexibility. sigh

I was also a Luddite technologically, which is damned funny as nowadays you can scarcely separate me from my cellphone and my laptop. But it's significant that I am still very choosy about my technology--for instance, I still listen to LPs and CDs and see no reason for anything else at this point, although I do agree that audio tapes are pretty much just annoying and have happily discarded them.

I generally had a 3.8 or 3.9 GPA, marred only by my execrable PE grades. I hated jocks and sports and still do. This was my one great area of intolerance, in fact. I wasn't even as bad at most sports as many girls, but I LOATHED all that SO much it still makes me grind my teeth just thinking of it! To this day, I feel resentful in shorts and consequently never wear them.

Well, not unless they are attached to a gorgeous vintage Hawaiian sunsuit, anyway. :D

Jen, that is TOO freaky about your erstwhile classmates. Do you think you went to school with a serial killer?!? Yeek. I believe I did, and I dated him years later. THAT was interesting, but it's also a story for another day.

Yeah, this IS a marvelous thread idea, isn't it? Hope I haven't bored anyone to death!

--tikivixen