Autobiography

History

I don't talk a lot about myself. Not really. Generally when I'm faced with someone new I tend to ask a lot of questions about them. I really like to find out what makes other people tick. However, this leads to severely one-sided relationships where I know a lot about my friends, but they know comparatively little about myself. In an effort to rectify this I began writing stories about myself, starting with my earliest memories. This has turned into an e-mail autobiography project; I hope to e-mail the finished portions to interested family members and friends. Eventually, I will collect them into a single manuscript.

Synopsis

Memories from the earliest days of my life until whenever I finish the autobiography. Hopefully that won't be until the day I die.

Progress

I have currently completed through age seven. Unfortunately, because I was doing this in e-mail and wasn't paying attention I promptly deleted ages birth-5. Really, I don't have much done. Given I will remember less of my earlier life than my later life I can't base my percentage of completion on years covered. Also, I have no good way of tracking word or page count as long as I keep it in e-mail format. Hmm...maybe I should rethink my strategy on this.

2013 Goals

1. Reconstruct the California portion of the autobiography by the end of 2013.

2. Reconstruct the missing England portions of the autobiography by the end of 2013.

Excerpt

Inside we would have classes. I remember reading where we would recite sentences from the board including the punctuation marks, calling a period a full stop. During one class period I remember reading something that had a double word in it (like "that that") and believed I had caught an error. I hadn't, but it made me feel momentarily brilliant. My one area of brilliance was math. The classes were loosely divided based off of age, but occasionally they would move someone to a higher or lower grade based on ability. One day in my 2nd year they came to me and asked me to move up to the higher math class with my older brother. That day they were learning about clocks.
For sports we would often go outside to play Rounders, a pre-version of Baseball that used paddles instead of bats, soccer, or basketball. One of my biggest regrets is not taking the advantage of learning "football" when I had the chance. I would often complain about the cold until the teacher let me go back inside. Far behind the school across a field were a cement basketball court and a tennis court. One day while playing with the basketballs I accidentally stepped on one, lost my balance, and went skidding across the ground. I got up crying and the teacher told me to stop, because I wasn't hurt. But blood dripped down my face and off my knee. All most the entire side of my face had road rash. Needless to say, I still wonder how a teacher could be that harsh when a child is bleeding. Of course, given my previous behaviors I might have appropriately earned his hesitance to believe I was as hurt as I actually was.
Once a year we would have a field day. This was a day of activities and races. Eggs and spoon, sack races, obstacle courses, sprints. All sorts of activities. I can't say that I won any of these, but I enjoyed playing.
There isn't much I remember about the education. I guess early education all tends to bleed away. However, one time we made curds and whey, hanging the sack clothe from the monkey bars to allow the whey to drip free into the bowl below and then afterwards we ate it.
The biggest memory I had was of the assemblies we would have in the second building of the school. This is where we also put on the school play, which was Robin Hood. I played a forest spirit that danced during an intermission, my entire grade did. Only the older grades got to act. My family still has the performance on video somewhere and I watch it fondly, listening to little me with my British accent. Anyway, at one of the assemblies the older grades were reporting on their trip to London. One of the boys mentioned going to the Bloody Tower which brought gasps from all the youngsters because "bloody" was considered to be a bad word.
Other times we learned British history, about the Blitz and World War II. We reenacted being children sent off into the country away from London. I little understood the meaning then,