Sunday, August 16, 2015

When I grow up I'm going to be:


I'm in the process of redoing my apartment and I have to throw away massive amounts of old stuff I no longer need. Up in one of the closets is a box with my baby book that my parents used to document my early childhood from birth to about 7. I hadn't seen it in years and was fascinated to see what was in it.

The book comes with questions to ask and things to document. I weighed 7 pounds and 8 ounces at birth and was 20 inches tall. I apparently had an ear infection when I was about 8 months old which required some prescription drugs. I started "cooing" at three weeks and my first word was "agu". Got my first tooth at 6 months, crawled at 5-6 months, and was walking by 12 months.

One section begins with "A word about me from Mom ..."

And my mother writes:

Michael was very alert and could see good from the start. He has a pleasant nature but wakes up too often at night....Michael is very smart and fun loving...Mikey is talking now and is super perceptive of peoples feelings. He actually comforts me when I feel bad - and tells me "don't worry" while hugging me and patting my back.....He says please, thank you and no thanks - he just heard them and picked them up.

At 4 I was sent to Evangel Christian School, which a Google search led me to find out still exists in its location in Astoria Queens. My mother writes:

He liked school but still complained about having to wake up and get ready....His
principle Mrs Deland said he was such a sweet, well behaved boy.

Still to this day I'm not a morning person. I'm actually naturally nocturnal. I'd be up all night if I had my way. Looks like it is genetic or innate to a certain degree. Later on in the book comes a section called "My favorite prayers." (I wonder if back in the 80s all baby books had such sections under the assumption almost all people believe in god.) And there was the prayer I was basically forced to repeat at Evangel Christian Academy before we ate lunch everyday:



That's right. God is good, God is great, Let us thank Him for our food. Amen. We had to repeat this every day. Looking back at it, it was definitely a form of early childhood indoctrination. But then again, I also had to recite the pledge of allegiance to the United States of America when I eventually went to public school. Well, technically I could've opted out. I don't think I could have done that in Christian school, but at 4 years old I was probably too young to even question what I was even being forced to recite. That's of course how religions get you. (As an aside, I'm thinking of writing a post about whether all teaching to children is indoctrination.)

Then came the question of "When I grow up I'm going to be:" and it looks like I wrote it in my own handwriting. I wrote:




I remember being obsessed with being a truck driver for some reason when I was a kid. And I did go through an "artist" phase for a while. But of course, what's interesting is that I wanted to be a scientist. I had an interest in science ever since I was a young kid, and still is one of my biggest passions to this day. I did not actually become one, though. Today I work in the tech sector and I have a comfortable job. I read and watch about science and philosophy frequently, and if I had a hundred million dollars, I'd go back to school to study the philosophy of science, among other things. My interest in science has been one of the most consistent things in my life, although when I was in my "party phase" in my late teens and early 20s, it did kind of take a back seat to other things.

Overall, it seems like I was a pretty good kid, at least at first. Later on my mother writes:

At five, he's preoccupied with sex. His saying is "I'm gonna sex you up." Rachel is so embarrassed because he curses & grab the girls.

Looks like my apparent good nature turned a little bit sour. 

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