What were you like as a teenager.

[fushingfeef]

I had my group of best friends, great guys who I am still in regular contact with, and spent a lot of time reading and listening to music. Spent my summers working hard and making money for college. Avoided getting into any trouble although we loved pulling harmless pranks, mostly on our teachers and neighbors.

I liked girls but I was too comfortable with just being friends with them and not wanting to take many chances with them, and my strict Catholic upbringing was a convenient excuse to not try much. Besides, the ones I liked best seemed to not like me, and the ones that liked me I wasn't very interested in.

Overall it wasn't a bad teen life, I never had much by way of teen angst. My 20's were much more of a period of emotional roller coasters and crisis.

 

[Joanie Kay]

If my adolescence had been a newspaper, it would have been called "The Daily Beamquake."

 

[Jojo87]

I had one good friend that I spent most of my teenage with. I was bullied in junior high school by my classmates. I loved
watching horror movies. I was 14 years old when I already had seen most of the horror films. I took care of 3 horses, my
parents helped me always when they got time. My teenage time wasn't the best but I survived it.

 

[Dana Jean]

I'll tell you when I'm not one anymore.

 

[Spideyman]

Teenage years: 3 HS in 4 years. Moved from a city to a small town in another state. Unless you were related to the founders you were an outsider and always would be considered that way. New regional HS built, so was able to switch away from the Catholic HS. Hung with a nicer crowd than those found within the town. Studious, did tutoring, well liked by the teachers. Senior year was the best-- saw a way out of the town-- College!!

 

[Joanie Kay]

Okay, a more serious reply than my last one: I wouldn't do high school again for anything. (Well, much of anything. I suppose a billion trillion qua-zillion bucks might make me consider it...but even then, I'm not too keen on the idea.) I was a bored, angry risk-taker, seeking (and finding) the company of other bored, angry risk-takers. When I wasn't taking stupid risks, I found solace in reading, writing, and riding my 3-speed Schwinn for miles and miles and miles. When I discovered photography (thank God for a secondhand Nikon and a really cool high school art teacher), I started biking out to abandoned barns and houses and taking weird shots of rotting beams stretching toward empty skies. It's a wonder I never got snake-bit or wasp-stung.

How on earth did I end up surviving, much less growing into a mostly decent, contented adult? Dunno. I'm grateful, though.

 

[Anduan Pirate Princess]

I was really shy and quiet, and tried to just get through it by flying under the radar. I was an honors student, and gave myself terrible anxiety over getting good grades. I did have my niche interests, and in senior year I finally, finally started to blossom in the areas of music and art. No social life to speak of outside of school, though, and no guys ever spoke to me or asked me to proms.

 

[carrie's younger brother]

I was bullied throughout high school (ages 14-18), a loner and overweight. I had one good friend in high school who was basically invisible to everyone but we got along well. We are still friends 40 years later. I always felt i could have gone from 8th grade to college and fit in. I always liked "older people." In fact, my first job at a fast food place was at 16. Most everyone else there was in college and I would hang out with them after work and party. They thought I was cool!

but.. I was intelligent and knew it and that helped me survive high school. No matter how bad it got I knew I was smarter than the jerks who bullied me. I had my love of music and art for after school. Also, high school theater was a safe haven for me and all the others like me.

 

[DiO'Bolic]

The only time I was bullied in high school was when I stood up to guys bullying someone else. And my bullying usually was just a beat down. I hated bullying, probably because of my hippie tendencies. Whenever I saw continue to happen relentlessly I would think to myself... Well here I go again, another bloody nose. I would ask them along the lines of 'if they took too many a$$hole pills this morning. Does your picking on someone make you feel important? Well, for your information it only makes you look pathetic.' It usually redirected their attention from the person they were bullying to me. And it didn’t help much when my ‘friends’ took off in all directions when I confronted them and left me to face the music alone.

To this day there was one leader of a nasty pack of guys that went for me after one of my tirades. Four against one and I really paid the price for my mouth that day. I remember wishing the guy would die. And within a year he was dead. To this day I still fee bad about that.

 

[Scratch]

"Hey, these things happen." Yeah, I did a bit of that too, DiO'Bolic. The damn paddling afterward was the worst part. Never felt the punches but Jesus could the principle swing. Not a lot of it went on at my school though. Lucky again.

No social life to speak of outside of school, though, and no guys ever spoke to me or asked me to proms.

I would have. I would have made you do cartwheels with me in the hall. I would have signed your yearbook with a plea for you to marry me and help support our three children. I would have had you keep lookout so I could stack empty coke cans in the teachers closet set to fall when she opened it. I would have bugged you with the most insane postulations I could think of before home room to get a laugh. I would have asked you out. I might have even warned you that you shouldn't accept.

 

[Doc Creed]

I started biking out to abandoned barns and houses and taking weird shots of rotting beams stretching toward empty skies. It's a wonder I never got snake-bit or wasp-stung.

Nice details.