What were you like when you were a kid?

I was a nerd too. Wasn't smart or cool or sport. Thankfully I had a load of nerd friends so we could be nerdy together.

I can relate to stranger things on so many levels.

OMG, me too!

I lived in the country so I spent a lot of time outside.Loved walking in the woods.I have always loved nature and animals..Still do.

I was a Fat little puke,family nickname was
the "garbage disposal".In 7th grade I weighed
in at 200lbs,in 8th,I started the school year
at 170.Digging ditches and chopping wood all
summer seemed to help my disposition.That and
I put on 6 inches in four months.

I've seen that a lot. Thankfully, I stumbled upon my PhD so I've no inflated expectations for my children.

Moved around a lot but was a pretty well adjusted kid. I read a lot and played a lot of Nintendo. Lots of loud political opinions per most of my family.

Fat, but athletic. Intelligent, but I had ADHD and sucked at school. Social, but I had terrible self-esteem due to being fat and poor, so I spent most of my time alone in the woods, drawing or reading. I had a couple of very close friends, but we moved around a lot, so I would only see them a weekend a month or so.

By middle school I realized making people laugh was a good way to distract them from picking on me. Later I discovered rock music and suddenly my ripped up jeans from Goodwill, plain black tshirts, and grandpa's old jungle boots could be cool rather than thrifty necessity. Life got better after that. Bought a guitar, lost some weight, and started a band. Soon girls were blushing when I talked to them rather than the other way around. hahaha

My younger years I spent most of the time outdoors playing either roller hockey or football, some baseball. I was great with the glove but an average hitter. I was a Cub Scout & Boy Scout for a number of years, taught me how to respect people as well as the wildlife when we went to summer camp. To this day I’m “ one “ with nature, quiet time sitting in the woods and listening to Mother Nature and her creations 👍

From the age of 8 on I started practicing the Art of knife throwing, which I still do when I’m having a good day!! Guess that’s what started me with making my first throwing knife at age 15.

In my later teen years I was into camping and fishing......often! I was always an outdoor person, throughout  my life. I miss the many years of hunting with a few of my friends.
My high school and college years I always achieved good grades but “ boy “ was I always “ finding “ trouble. If someone got into my face in a bad way I made sure I threw the first punch. I never went looking for trouble but it seemed trouble found me, it was the years I played the drums with two different bands and most were heavy drinkers....I was not.

I’m a people person, get along with most, still try to help a neighbor when asked. I was a Volunteer Fireman for many years, I believed in giving back to the community where I lived. Made me a much better person, I have no regrets from my past.

With my career I had the opportunity to visit 77 countries, an experience that I will never forget nor regret 👍👍 More then that can’t be explained, it was extremely interesting to say the least.

Always enjoyed working with my hands, working on some type of project, working with wood especially. As I got older is when I picked up the hobby of knife making. Working with my hands to this day helps relieve stress, my dexterity, both physically and mentally 👍

Now with some serious health issues I take one day at a time!!! Always believing tomorrow will be a better day, keep a positive attitude works best for me!

     Your living a great life in Ireland. I’m sure you could write a book. I kept my story short and sweet....as they say


PS
You hardly wrote much....tell us more about you....your family and what your proud of in life. 

I'll remind myself to do this tomorrow. I'm still out.

I was an odd kid compared to most. I liked to play football and baseball and thr usual stuff, but I was mad about airplanes, sportscars and jazz rather than hotrods and rock & roll, and i liked to read. All that caused a goodly amount of harassment so i also learned to fight. went to college, had no idea what I wanted to do, so I joined the Marine Corps to fly airplanes. Failed my third eyetest atfer training started so they said " take this rifle boy." I learned three important things in the Corps: patience, "if ain't life threatening, it ain't really a problem," and that I wanted to become an electronics engineer. That last happened because I was the only guy in my outfit that knew anything about electronics (which wasn't much) because I had a part time job in high school repairing TVs. So, I wound up maintaining our rocket launchers and anything electrical.

Went back to college, became an engineer, had a good career, traveled a good bit of the world. Also from the Corps discovered i liked to scare the snot out of myself, so I raced cars and restored an airplane I could fly upside down. I still do the latter, but stopped racing cars when I semi-retired because i couldn't afford thst expensive hobby anymore (not to mention my reaction times slowed a bit). Now, I work on other people's airplanes occasionally and maintain my own.

I was an oddball, alienated, quiet kid but also precocious, observant, and very critical of the world around me. During recess I'd wander as far away from the others kids as possible, or I'd escape to the library and read science fiction or listen to old time radio cassettes - a totally random hobby for a kid my age at that time. In many ways I was the same as I am now, only as a kid I was less confident and less able to roll with the punches. I had to move to a suburb for a couple of years, and in Southern California in the 70s, life there was basically like this movie:


Kids were feral, and adults didn't really notice or care, and . Moving back to the city coincided with puberty, punk rock, and all forms of misbehavior! I think it hadn't been for the whole sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll thing I would have been a D&D nerd.

Yeah, I think playing the guitar in rock bands saved me from complete and utter geekdom.

Surely there must be a "guitar-geek paradox" that states that the more you geek-out playing the guitar, the cooler people think you are.

It certainly helped my self-esteem, anyway, and for that, I am thankful.