Yes, in another edition of "whose childhood is it anyway", we have unearthed a few timely exhibits which prove beyond doubt that early intervention would have made an entirely different person out of me - after all - who could look at this and view it as anything other than a cry for help?
Exhibit A: According to this - I had no favourite possessions... nothing at all, the space on the worksheet is left blank. More disturbingly still - in the box marked "What I would love to do sometime" I had written "Become famous and happy" - then for some reason... my 11 year old self decided to give up on happiness there and then, take my little red biro and scribble it right out of existence. I wonder what prompted such a move - did I feel I was being unrealistic in wanting both? did the teacher force me to choose? and most of all - would the child I was back then be impressed with the progress I've made on both fronts??
Exhibit B (from the back of the same page): "Write something happy that happened to you" I wracked my little eleven year old brain and all I could come up with was an accident involving me falling from a trailer... really? was that the happiest moment I could come up with?
perhaps I just had difficulty with understanding the word "happy" itself, this is most likely - if I associated happy with falling out of trailers it would be most sensible of me to want to avoid such things... or maybe I really did like making up things.... like stories.... (as I claimed on the first sheet)
Anyway - this really doesn't work without the pictures, so apologies and thanks for your patience if you have read it. :-)
7 comments:
Just back from 10 days in Wales...
Your title gripped me as I was a social worker in a previous life, though not one who worked with children.
Good article in the Guardian by Jeanette Winterson about her upbringing. I can only assume that social workers HANDED OVER Jeanette to her adoptive mother.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/oct/28/jeanette-winterson-all-about-my-mother
LOL - that's funny about falling out of the trailer. I fell out of the back of a VW bus when I was a child - we were going up hill & the lift gate wasn't securely latched. Fortunately we were going VERY slowly. And for some reason the image of me rolling out of the back of the van is making me laugh - so maybe it DID make you happy to think about your fall!
P.S. I got my picture! It's gorgeous! Thanks!
I too got my picture. I'm so happy I could fall out of a trailer...
x
So in Exhibit A, you display a saint-like disdain for worldly possessions, and then recognize your conflation of fame with happiness. Pretty young to be seeing things with such clarity.
In Exhibit B, you are in a situation being taken somewhere, a destination which presumably, at age 11, was not of your choosing. You leapt from the trailer, throwing off the yoke of conformity and subservience, choosing instead to be the determiner of your own path.
Seems pretty straightforward to me.
What Acorn said.
Thanks Dominic - glad the title was exciting - sorry if the rest let it down :-)
Tks Bug, glad bláthanna arrived safe... and yes - at least we can laugh now.
Yay Rachel - glad you like - the paper's a bit unsubstantial that it was done on, but hope that didn't take away too much.
Acorn - again a new word - tks for the conflation, I'm famous about that.
Titus - I know - I wish I could just get acorn to write the thing, twould be funnier and easier. feasier if you will.
Falling out of trailers sounds like a legitimate version of happiness. You were obviously a Keith Richards kinda child!
I love the naked ambition of crossing out happiness and choosing fame instead!
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