My Childhood Story

I grew up in Torrington, Connecticut and had a pretty average New England childhood.

I was a very imaginative child. When I wasn’t living in books or glued to the TV, I was always on an adventure. My memories of Connecticut were nighttime bicycle rides with the bats, climbing over fences with Jessica into the neighbor’s yards, and rolling around in the daisy-filled grass, yellow-stained-jeans. I remember seeing balloons of people flying high into the sky over the concrete hill, and hearing alligators in the sewer. To this day, I’m still not convinced those things weren’t real. When I wasn’t climbing trees with Lindsey, watching a movie with Frankie, or watching Jessica’s mom eat Cool Whip with a spoon, I was listening to the Titanic soundtrack on cassette or the new Robyn CD.

I lived in a white house with my mom, dad, brother and dog, Lobo. We lived across the street from a family who went to bed at 7pm. The dad wasn’t very nice, so I threw rocks at his car. When he wasn’t home, I would try to cross over his backyard fence to see the bears. I would usually get caught because “it’s dangerous, those are real bears out there”. It was true, but I was a bit of a fearless kid.

I Really Liked School

I pretty much liked school my whole life. I enjoyed learning, and I obsessively read as a child. I had friends and socialized, but at school I was always more of a reader and an observer. My teachers got us involved in books and science, and I excelled in everything except math (could not compute). I’m pretty sure this is where my obsession with reading and literature started. At school, I always preferred to stick my nose in a book rather than hang out with kids or learn other subjects. There were always exceptions though, like when my teacher brought tadpoles into the classroom for us to observe and watch grow over time.

I had a great teacher, Suzy Kline, who also happened to be an author of children’s books. I would read all of her books and other ones, too. She would get inspiration for her stories based on what happened in her classroom, and it’s always fun thinking I was a part of that before I fully understood what that meant. She would always give us copies of her books and put little notes, pictures, and draw her iconic smiley face into our books to keep as memories.

One time, randomly later in life, my step-cousin’s mom told me I was in the forward for one of my teacher’s books– I didn’t believe her until she showed me! I forgot my teacher would always list the names of her students from different classrooms and years in the front of her novels. Pretty cool stuff.

Show Me Love, 90’s

All good things must come to an end, and the days of playing with the goldfish at the lake and running around at the wooden park in Litchfield were behind me. No more fear of the banana man who’s house burned down. No more running around in the dark playing hide-and-seek in the neighbor’s basement or stepping on my polly pocket on the staircase. No more Guess Who at Francesca’s house.

Sometime in 1999 or so, Jessica’s dad died, my dog was put to sleep, and my parents divorced as the American Dream came tumbling down. My mom, brother and I ended up moving to New Jersey and my dad moved to Florida with my step-mom. Thus became the wild adventures of me growing up as a Jersey girl with trips to Florida.

Middle School in SOJO

My middle school experience can be accurately summarized by Hulu’s Pen15 script, down to the Q101 reference (seriously, why did so many radio stations across the U.S. have a Q101 station?!)

I don’t remember much of middle school, or these wavy bangs, but I do remember finding out in 4th grade that I couldn’t see anything. When my teacher asked me to read the chalkboard I literally made something up because I didn’t know I literally couldn’t see. Needless to say, I got some glasses and improved my math grades. Around 6th grade I started socializing and quickly became friends with the popular girl, since we lived near each other. So I was cool for a year. That was the same year we had a 6th grade summer camp trip, where you could not go anywhere without hearing Lady Marmalade. It was around that summer when I became obsessed with the Disney Channel show Bug Juice about teens going to summer camp.