Clues?

[the_fantastic_ms_fox]

As far as I can tell, my parents had the right idea and I condone them for it. I was raised like a character from a progressive Bruce Sterling novel: as an androgyne and a member of the creative class.

Toys: I had lego and brio to learn how to use my hands. I had a baby-doll to learn how to hold and care for a young child. I had pens and paper with mental health inventory charts on one side, and beautiful blank green and orange and white colours on the back. I still draw, and I use scrap paper wisely. I messed around in the kitchen, and played soccer with my father. I dug holes in sand.

My cousins had a similar upbringing and, after school and during the Summer, I spent my time a friends house - my Mum paid them for the daycare. My daycare runner (host mother?) was cool. I had a good friend from age three to nine or so. He was my best friend. I was his second-best friend.

The other kids though. I don't know what kind of troglodytes brung them up but I suppose it was Kelowna and one should anticipate these sorts of things. Fuckers. It was around them that I learned to keep my mouth shut about what I thought or did when they weren't around.

When there was physically active group-play I did it with the boys. Other play I did with the handful of other bright kids I met growing up. I had one friend. I initiated few friendships, generally kept things superficial, and disliked most kids. I reciprocated with friendships initated by the kids who had no-one else to turn to.

We had two collies and lived in a house that was too large to take care of, a short hike from the lake. My parents separated when I was five; my father killed himself when I was six. Both the dogs were dead by then. That was an awfully big house. My mom was a nures and drove me to school. We got a cavalier when I was eight. He was bred for show, but had an undescended testicle, so we got him. The Kenneler named him "Silver" as he was born during the Calgary Olympics, I named him Rags because he chewed on everything with a supercanine vice-mouth, and we gave him knotted rags to go through.

I was in beavers, which was a blast; then cubs, which was fun; then scouts, which became increasingly divergent from my interests over time. I was in T-ball, which was boring; and socceer, which was fun and then turned all serious. Gymnastics was cool, but the boys' instructor seemed to want to run things like a friendly drill sergeant, and I didn't have the upper-body strength for the men's gym - which shouldn't be surprsing for a ten-year-old.

There was a growing isolation over the years. Latter grade five and grade six were rough: class pariah; no friends. I was really anti-social as a kid. I got picked on incessantly and to the point of considering killing myself, but I also did fucked-up things to the other kids more or less at random. In kindergarten, I remember throwing sand in their eyes to watch what they'd do. In grade seven, or I'd hit them with a ruler. It was like cruelty was the only means of relation.

Grade seven there were some rough types I hung out with, and one kid who thought highly of me for some reason I don't understand. I got sick a lot. I realized I could skip school if I was sick and didn't so much fake it as convince myself that I was sick. I discovered RPG's when I was eleven. I had some gamer buddies but we had very little actual connection. In high school, I was part of an (at first) primarily female group that hung around in the hallway and we stayed together into college and expanded to include some two dozen people. That was sweet and I've never been able to find that at school since.

Feh - enough! Ther's more, but I was looking at my childhood to understand gender, what I see is extended and unintentionally self-imposed isolation followed by a slow thaw at late adolescence. I was a really malajusted kid, and brought a lot of it on myself. Holy shit.