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When I was a child, I was:
Quiet and shy. I still am!
Well-behaved. My friend Mei-Ling’s mother once asked her why she couldn’t be more like me. This embarrassed me as I didn’t think people should be compared like that.
Studious. I made the honour roll every semester, although I did get C grades in Spanish, Math, or Science sometimes. History the arts, and English were easier subjects for me.
Bookish. I read constantly and insatiably on every subject matter I could find.
Anxious. When I was about 8, I took a break from reading only to realize I couldn’t find my parents or siblings anywhere. We lived in a cozy trailer home at the time, and so I should have been able to find someone within a minute or two. Given that I was a preacher’s kid, my first assumption was that everyone else had been raptured but that I wasn’t devout enough to be chosen, too. I panicked and ran crying to a neighbour for help, but I was crying too hard for her to understand me. Eventually, my mother returned from running an errand, possibly paying the rent, and I realized that God hadn’t actually come back yet after all.
Imaginative. I was always imagining something in my mind no matter what else I was doing. Sometimes I talked to myself quietly about the beautiful stories that were going on in my mind.
Inclusive. Classmates who were left out of other groups could always hang out with me. Sometimes I was bullied for spending time with the kids that others thought were too weird or awkward to associate with. I say this not to toot my own horn or anything, just to give you a picture of what i was like on the playground.
Messy. My tidy parents somehow created a child who was not. I never left food or anything like that in my bedroom, but there were books everywhere and it could get dusty as well.
I was an imaginative kid, too and I forever had my nose in a book. I’ve always preferred pretend worlds to the real one.
I thought you might say that!
I was also a reader (or scribbler of stories). I have a feeling that this will be a prevailing theme today.
Also..being messy…I so identify with that!!!
Heh, for sure.
Ugh, man — I remember those rapture panics! Did you have nightmares, too?
Yes, I sure did. How about you?
Yep, though only a couple I remember — in one, we were on a youth group visit to Walmart and I came out from an aisle to find the other teens’ clothes on the floor. Another time my dad was driving a freight truck somewhere and I was in the sleeping compartment when he disappeared. I used to have a list of people I would call, ranked in both order of (1) their likelihood of being saved and (2) my plausability for calling them in case the Rapture hadn’t happened. XD One time we were at a big conference for our sect, but I’d been left in the hotel room. After six hours I was looking through the phone book for the conference center’s office so I could ask if anything had happened. I don’t know what if I would’ve said if they’d asked for specifics. XD
Wow, you planned ahead! I’m sorry it was scary for you.
These rapture stories break my heart. I didn’t hear much about it until I was an adult. It was scary even then. Apologies to all children who went through that shit.
And I love this post. 😊
Lydia’s mom
Aww, thank you. 💜
I wonder if many of us who enjoyed books and excelled in school ended up blogging or creating in some fashion. Sounds like a traumatic experience to not know where your family is or to think you had been left behind. So sorry that happened to you. Thanks for sharing.
I suspect that theory is true!
And thank you.
Your Rapture story – that would have been devastating!
At age 8, I had not yet heard of the Rapture. Thank goodness.
Yeah, it was a hard day for sure.
I’m glad you were unaware of the rapture at that age.
I wonder whether being inclusive and thinking people shouldn’t be compared were things you’d learned from books? I remember absorbing ideas like that from books before I was old enough to understand them on an emotional level.
Yes, that is very possible, Priscilla. I read a lot of books with those sorts of themes growing up (and still do today).