approx 9-12
important events:
- started middle school
not much happened in these years. we lived in the same place, and dad worked for kmart still. we were still attending the baptist church in my previous post.
there was this thing called puberty that started happening. this was a different experience for me, as many different changes were taking place. deodorant was a required item before leaving the house, tightie whities were not socially acceptable, and frequent showering was a necessity.
the autistic in me struggled with these things, as routines are hard to break and for some reason i absolutely hated doing all 3 of those things. autistic people tend to struggle with routine changes, and i am no exception. new surroundings, changes in environment, and routine changes are hard for me to get used to.
around the age of 10, things started to click in my head. the boys my age were getting all giddy around girls, and i wasn’t. but i wasn’t sure what that meant for me. i figured i wasn’t to that point yet.
the age of 12 was when this thing reared its head again. my mom caught me again, and this time told my dad to deal with it. my dad took me to barnes and noble to get whatever book i wanted, and i opted to get a book about mysql and another about php, as computers and coding were my newest hobby. during this adventure, my dad told me about an uncle i have who occasionally dressed up in that way. he advised me that i was not to do that, and he left it at that.
also at the age of 12, i decided to dedicate my life and get baptised in the church we went to. this was more to please my parents, as i still had legitimate questions on the bible and didn’t fully understand what i was doing, but they had mentioned it time and time again, so i was ready for them to stop asking me about it. the brothers followed shortly after i did. by this time, the church youth has grown a fair amount, although there are now more toddlers than people our age.
as a typical kid with 2 brothers, we were much more into kayaking on the lake and being rambunctious outside, and our computer time had always been limited, mainly due to the fact that we had dialup and one computer for the 5 of us.
i would like to point out that up to this point, i have not done any internet searching on the typical gay topics, because it was a word that was definitely not in my vocabulary, and i would not have known how to describe it with the fairly sheltered media outlets we were allowed to watch.
overall, these years were great for me. they were where i forged my long term friendships, of which i still have several who are still friends.