rionaleonhart | I'd Also Written A Thank-You Letter To Myself From The Zoombinis.

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I'd Also Written A Thank-You Letter To Myself From The Zoombinis.

Things are a bit stressful at the moment (you know the Mitchell and Webb theory that housemates fall into the categories of 'people who are annoying' and 'people who become annoyed'? I am an annoying housemate; the friend with whom I live is an annoyed housemate, and she is at the moment actively annoyed, and when people are annoyed with me I tend to get very upset and run around trying to cook them meals and buy them chocolates (please do not exploit this knowledge for chocolates)), and so, seeking a distraction, I invite you to share extracts from silly things you wrote in your childhood. (EDIT: Silly things you drew are also very welcome!)

For my part: recently, looking through some of the things I drew and wrote when I was a child, I stumbled across the following poem I'd written about my name:

H is for all of the harvest fruit
A for all the apples on the tree
R is for the redcurrants on the bush
R is rabbits for you and me
I for ice cream
E for eaves
T for Tutancarmoon* the egiptians believed

* lol

I clearly sort of gave up halfway through. Eaves, Little Riona? Eaves? Really? You genuinely couldn't think of another word beginning with 'E'? Tutankhamun was really something you associated strongly with yourself?

There's also a card I've written to my dad. It says, 'Dear Daddy. Happy Birthday! I hope you like your Presents. Love From Reepicheep.'

I had completely forgotten that I used to pretend to be Reepicheep when I was younger. I'd walk up and down the house, pretending that I was on the Dawn Treader and had to keep my balance. (He's a swordfighting mouse; who wouldn't want to be him?) The idea of my dad fathering Reepicheep is a tiny bit alarming, frankly.

Also: 'Daddy has his article that he is reading titled "Becketts Bass ruling proves the fallibility of convential wisdom". It does not seem to make sense at all. Why dosen't he just read the Beano?' I concur, younger self; who needs newspapers when you could be reading comics? Honestly. (Ooh, a search turns up the article in question and therefore allows me to date this particular pearl of wisdom! I would have been just about to turn nine. Bit appalled by the fact that I couldn't spell 'doesn't' at that age, although I'll let 'convential' slide.)

And there are the beginnings of a made-up language! To my amusement, 'fic' meant 'shut up' and, although the language had only thirty-four words, one of them meant 'pretend to be a mouse'. I knew where my linguistic priorities lay.

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I had completely forgotten that I used to pretend to be Reepicheep when I was younger. I'd walk up and down the house, pretending that I was on the Dawn Treader and had to keep my balance. (He's a swordfighting mouse; who wouldn't want to be him?) The idea of my dad fathering Reepicheep is a tiny bit alarming, frankly.
I find your younger self quite adorable. It reminds me of my younger self except I was not imagining myself being Reepicheep because I didn't know what Narnia was at the time so it would be a time paradox....but you know what I mean right ? (I hope so, I really do)

*hugs little!Riona*

It's not exactly written, but most of the birthday cards I made for my parents consisted of drawings of ducks, chickens, geese and the occasional chocobo. Yes, this one (http://i.imgur.com/cJHju.jpg) is holding a cupcake, handbag and a smoking a cigarette, apparently.

Awww! I am simultaneously charmed and perplexed. (Also quite curious about the hovering crown.)

Bit appalled by the fact that I couldn't spell 'doesn't' at that age, although I'll let 'convential' slide.

You could spell 'fallibility', though! Don't be so down on yourself.

(Oh no, what's happening with your housemate? Is everything alright?)

That is ADORABLE

tiny!me would write letters when I got sick of my parents not letting me get a word in edgewise, and I would slip them under the door. Am at work so can't ransom one and see what I said exactly, but it would be this sort of thing:

'dear mom and dad,
i don't think you are very good at not being grumpy. when i want to talk to you in the morning you are always grumpy. you should try not to be grumpy or i might never talk to you again'

SO MELODRAMATIC

I actually have a letter from my childhood specifically from a Christmas or two ago when my parents made a box for me with pictures and things from my childhood that depresses me horribly because I don't feel like I've lived up to tiny!me; it was tiny me writing to Santa asking if he could tell her if she would be a great author when she grew up.

I learned to write before I learned to read. The spelling on my mother's day cards and such is phenomenal. I think most of my childhood writings have been lost to the mists of time, but I remember lovingly crafting a story that described a boulder falling off a cliff as 'like a meatball off a tongue'. Self, that is not how eating works.

When I was 10 or 11 I wrote an epic story about all of Take That living together in a house. Robbie was boyfriends with... either Mark or Gary, I forget. At some point an older version of one of them time travelled back from the future to Set Right What Once Went Wrong.

Thank God, thank God internet fandom didn't exist (at least for me) in 1994, so my embarrassing pre-teen bandslash is lost forever. Although I seem to remember my fics at least being (intended to be) comedic at that age, before I hit the shoals of angst at age 14.

I'm obliged to point you at

takethatslash now, I think :-)

It's general fanon that Jason and Howard fit nicely together, and Gary/Mark/Robbie is complicated ;-)

I went to school with Jason's sister.

My claims to fame are truly pathetic.

Seems like a perfectly sound claim to me, and I really need to choose a Jason icon :-)

Seventeen years later and this is still relevant to my interests... I have not matured very much, it seems. But then, I knew that. *joins*

Well, I'm still a LotR and Star Trek fan, so I can double your seventeen years, no problem. Growing up is over-rated ;-)

I wrote as little as I possibly could in my childhood, but I did draw up a multi-generational family tree for my teddy bears (this category includes stuffed rabbits, cats, mice, hedgehogs etc etc etc).

Reepicheep was my absolute favourite too - I don't remember pretending to be him, but it would fit ;-)

I automatically read 'Mitchell and Webb' as 'Mitchell and Brooker', and have decided that they would be the most adorable flatmates ever.

Like a mouse cornered in a palace, petrified
Like a snake slithering through the jungle slyly
Like a dog trudging through a field dully
It was my first day at school today
I want today to go
I want to make time tick so
I CAN GO HOME

(This actually got published in an anthology. XD How did the first bit even relate to the second bit?!) May be a tiny bit off but I wrote that from memory (my brain: storing the important things).

I must have been nine or ten when I wrote it - it was at primarily school, and it would have been year 5 or 6... those would be the corresponding ages.

And this is from the first story I actively decided to write for myself (not for school or something) - I was twelve when I wrote it. It's from a fantasy story (I never write fantasy now), and completely unedited.

“I’ve never heard a prophecy, but I know what one is! And yes, I am superstitious, but why do you ask?!? I don’t want to be sidetracked by a hundred questions, this is totally -” She stopped with one look at his face, then he began to speak again, calmly and clearly.

“It is relevant to the story. Plus I believe that is two questions, which, if I recall correctly, is ninety-eight away from one hundred? And, one more thing,” He leaned in close to her face, glaring angrily at her, his eyes showing his anger, though his voice remained calm. “And it is not totally pointless. If I ask a question, you answer it. When I do not ask a question you are to remain silent. Surely that is not too complicated. Well, is it complicated, girl?” He snapped at her, and she shrank back in fear.

“Not really, but, well, how did you know that I was going to say pointless?”

“It was obvious,” came Gorak’s reply. “You are obviously not as intelligent as you ought to be. Maybe you are not a danger yet, but I cannot be too sure. You could be deliberately acting stupid.” He studied the bedroom he was in for a moment. “You undoubtedly have the talent you are supposed to have, but the intelligence appears not to have developed yet…” He mused.

XD I think I wanted Gorak to sound intelligent, but he just comes across as kind of an ass.

The story only survived for like three chapters, but an awful lot of characters died in those chapters...

I'm afraid most of my childhood works have disappeared over the years, but I was thinking the other day about how, as a youngster, when I was reading the Chronicles of Narnia, I would pack my lunch box, which was made of fabric and not metal and therefore perfect, with whatever book I was reading, whichever I planned to read next, several slices of bread and hunks of cheese put a bottle of water in the thermal water bottle case that had come with the lunchbox and then go sit in a very overgrown area directly behind my house and pretend I was out in the forest on an adventure. The bread and cheese and 'water skin' was because that was what they ate when out adventuring in the books.

I also remember once I was very cross with my brother so I wrote him an angry letter to leave under his door that said, if memory serves, "Hey meanie, you're a teeny, go eat a weenie". I'm not entirely sure how he was meant to be offended by that. He found it several months later when we were cleaning his room up, and I feigned a complete lack of knowledge of it's origins.

Reepicheep was awesome! I think your younger self had her priorities right.

Most of my early writing has disappeared, but I do remember one story from when I was eight, which was a blatant rip off of Enid Blyton's Magic Faraway Tree series except there were no icky boys in it. It was a grand total of half a page long, but it sticks in mind because it was the first story I ever wrote on my own, outside of school.

You have just reminded me that I wrote a short story in primary school that in retrospect seems to have been heavily inspired by Sherlock Holmes. (And now I have no real idea where it is. Bugger. I found it a few years ago and then promptly forgot about it again). I've been a Holmes fan most of my life and I didn't even know it.

Tiny!Me used to bring an encyclopedia to school everyday, in kindergarden. And would read from it about dinosaurs and stuff and draw them inside the back covers. Still got it somewhere...

I also remember writing/drawing very involved Christmas lists for Santa showing various things that I wanted, most of which don't exist, but I tried!

I know I wrote a lot of stories and my mom probably has them somewhere, but they are out in the garage in boxes I think. I want to find them!

A page from a book I wrote about my old cat that contained stories and 'facts' such as this.

Ahahaha, oh, my goodness, this is adorable! (Are those page numbers? ...are those page numbers 48 and 49? How long was this book?)

I would have been just about to turn nine. Bit appalled by the fact that I couldn't spell 'doesn't' at that age, although I'll let 'convential' slide

I have nine-year-old Brownies who have difficulty spelling their own names and will probably leave school in a few years still unable to spell "doesn't". Also, they just don't know things. It turns out tonight, for example, that one in three of my Rangers doesn't know what country Berlin is the capital of. They're fifteen/sixteen!

I also had a made-up language but we only ever used one sentence of it: "Nos os putt clashy" which meant basically that we didn't like one particular girl. I can't remember anymore why we didn't like her, especially as I vaguely remember her being a sort-of friend of mine at one point.

The Brownies in my pack are like that as well. I despair of them utterly.

We've got one nine-year-old who apparently genuinely doesn't know whether her birthday is August or January.

d'aw, I liked the Reepicheep - that was quite adorable. I used to draw presents and balloons in cards; I even went as far as to try and draw christmas trees in christmas cards as well(heck, I still do this now. Except, I still can't draw christmas trees so I don't do that anymore. I also now draw a little paw print so that I can include my dog in the message ~~which tends to consist of 'Sure my dog is a bit of a shouty bastard, but he likes you really. Deep, deeeeeep fdown inside. I hope~~.

I don't have anything that I wrote, or drew from back in the days of my youth (Dear Lord, I'm unintentionally making myself sound like such an old person), but I can remember some silly little things that I used to do, or that I have been told that I did by a reliable source ~~mother~~.

I remember getting a Barbie house when i was younger, and it came with a little playable piano as well (I say 'playable', it made, like 3 notes). Now one night (I'm assuming it was about 9pm-ish cause I was in my jammies), I demanded that my mum cut up pieces of apple and cheese with some crackers and I rushed outside into the backyard with them, and started playing this little piano so that I could get some fairy friends (or, what i thought were fairies - turns out, they were actually stars, but I was focusing so much on them that i thought that they were actually moving). So, after 15 minutes, my mum comes out and asks me what happened to the food and I told her that fairies ate them. With food crumbs all down my jammies. And then, two weeks later, I went and sat in a tree in protest against it being cut down. I sat in the rain for hours (and I mean actual hours) and they were going home and the tree was saved. And then my mum called me in cause she was making Tom and Jerry cupcakes. I couldn't say no to pink icing. When I came back out, the tree was cut down, and I arranged a funeral for the tree with some of my friends.

Also, according to ~~my mother~~ this reliable source of mine, my mother walked in from work to find me hiding in an old white net curtain with the sofas joined together. My mum thought that I was making a fort, so she went to take the net curtain off my head and surprise me by helping me make a better fort when I start screaming and crying 'Stop it, you're spoiling the illusion, you're ruining the game!' and it turns out that I was pretending to be a unicorn. I can also remember kicking some kid's bike because they were picking on my nan, and when he told me I would have to pay for the bike, I said 'With what money? I'm 7'.

... I was honestly a nice kid. Just... better sat alone in trees. Or watching Crystal Maze/Fort Boyard/reading a book.

Young!you is awesome and hilarious. I can't decide which bit of this post I like best.

I have a copy of a poem somewhere at home which I wrote when I was fairly young (somewhere between five and ten, I think, but I can't date it too closely) railing against animal cruelty. It begins "Fur is for animals and not for us!/How would you feel if you were made into rugs?" and continues in that vein for some time. I adorned it with the smiling heads of various animals and assumed it would bring the world to its knees.

Throughout my childhood and early teens, I fondly believed that I wrote good poems. I have since realised that I was deeply mistaken.

A poem what I wrote when I was 7, by Donna

(It's called 'Snow', for reasons which should become fairly clear...)

Snow snow, soft and white,
Snow snow, so calm and bright.
Snow snow, gently falling to the ground,
Snow snow, slowly piling up into a mound.
Snow snow, snow is nice,
Snow snow, gradually turning to ice.

My teacher thought I'd copied it from a book...I think it's fairly obvious that I didn't.

Every once in a while I come across old workbooks and things from when I was at school... I wish I knew where I'd put this one science one so I could scan it up or something, it's pretty hilarious XD (apparently I had no idea how gravity worked...)

I remember writing a poem that the teacher liked enough to make me read it out at school assembly, but I don't remember much of it now? It was about colours, I think, and I know it started off like this:

Red is the colour of Redwall Abbey
Yellow makes me very happy!
The sea, the sky, and (something) are all blue
(something something something) too

And it went on like that, I guess. What I like is that I knew absolutely nobody else at school at the time who read the Redwall books SO I GUESS THAT FABULOUS REFERENCE WAS LOST ON THEM, HUH. HUH. Also, I am not particularly fond of yellow. WHY YOU MAKE ME LIE, VAGUE ATTEMPT AT RHYME

I used to love making up ~languages~ or, more specifically, ~secret codes~... I'm sure I've still got notebooks and things somewhere with painstakingly-repeated symbols trying to code out things like "today I tried to stay up until midnight but didn't" and that sort of thing. IT WAS DRAGON!LANGUAGE!1!11!!11!!1oneoneoneeleventy

I also had this fairly epic series of stories about my pets at the time, though I have a horrible feeling most of them got thrown out by the grandparent when I was on a school trip once in year 9 (I came back and she'd ~tidied~ my bedroom and I still haven't found said notebooks since, and it's been like, what, about a decade now...) but I had about seven or eight notebooks full of them having adventures and this sort of thing - it was very Watership Down/Farthing Wood "we must find somewhere peaceful to live", but still. I mean, it's perfectly reasonable for several rats, a rabbit and a labrador to settle down together. This ended up with me writing about five generations and coming up with way too many children for them all (well, the rats at least), and... ah, nostalgia XD

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I'd Also Written A Thank-You Letter To Myself From The Zoombinis.

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