What were you like as a kid?

I was the class clown and obsessed with sports. I would get into trouble for talking too much in class, but nothing serious because I always did the work and got good grades.

My kid is the same way.

 

Top student, athletic, socially awkward, prone to emotional outbursts.

 

I was happy, funny, curious, energetic, imaginative, a little spoiled, a very good tennis player (but not as good as my older brothers), an enthusiastic reader but otherwise bored with school (that continued through much of college), and I attended my first KISS concert with I was in 6th grade (Animalize tour).

I'd hope others would mostly say the same about me, but our perception of ourselves is seldom spot on. To them I might have been an annoying dick.

 

I was an all-city wrestler who refused to talk to the newspaper after losses.

 

My dad was the No. 2 administrator at my high school. My parents and older brother didn't get along (circa 1967-69, typical generation gap stuff, now they are besties) and fought all the time. I wanted nothing to do with that so I was a good kid who got average grades, generally stayed out of trouble, tried to keep a low profile, was average at sports, wasn't in the "jet set" at my high school but got along with the "cool" kids and had a good group of friends myself. People couldn't believe my older brother and I were related.

Middle child of two middle children. Born to compromise and fly under the radar and to this day I don't like being singled out for attention.

 

I hope you still have all the hair.

 

I do, but longer. Been growing it for 3 years with the intent to donate it.

Took this 4 days ago.

 

This was the case for me as well. It came very easy to me and, as such, I didn't work very hard at it. I often left assignments until the last minute and did enough to get a high B or a low A. I definitely coasted and, in hindsight, wish I had faced a little more academic adversity.

I actually think that if it had been a little more difficult, I would have done better. I've always been the type to respond well to challenges, I just was rarely challenged when I was younger.

I think I could have scored in the high 1400s or low 1500s on the SAT if I had prepared for it at all. Scored a 1300 and got into all but one of the colleges I applied to (Notre Dame), but I could have done better.

 

Same here... When I was in 8th grade, they had my honors english class take the SAT as some kind of experiment. I got an 1190 and there was part of me that kind of felt like, "Well, I don't really need to worry about high school too much..." I got a 1420 in high school and got into every school I applied to except UCLA. That included Northwestern, Cornell and Penn. To be fair, I don't think I would have gotten into Cornell and Penn if they didn't want me to play football there...

What bothered me the most was that in chemistry, physics and biology classes I had in high school, I often had no idea what the teacher was talking about, but I would still do well on the tests because I could use common sense to figure out what the answer was if it was multiple choice, or if it was an essay test, I could just bullshit my way through it. This worked in college too...

 

That shouldn't bother you at all. That's what we do in life - use logic and bullshit to get through it. You just realized it sooner than most people do.

 

This may sound like a smartass answer, but it isn't really. I was and still am tremendously nearsighted, but it wasn't discovered until I was about nine. This led to me being kind of introverted as a small kid because I couldn't see what was going on, but I could read if I held a book, newspaper or magazine up to my nose. I'm damn near Medicare age and I'm still self-conscious around strangers, so it had a lasting impact.

 

I was strapped like a horse.thought there was something wrong with me and it left me
withdrawn. Overtime I learned to live with my affliction.