Sometimes I can remember every stupid detail about a time in my childhood. In other moments, any useful recall dissipates into the air like spores bursting out of a mushroom after you knock it over.
One thing is for sure though: I will never forget World War 2.
I was taken out of my small school in first grade and bussed into another, bigger public school down the road that offered gifted education. This seems to be a trend among a lot of friends I know who grew up in the 90s. As the years go by, I become more suspect of that screening process. What did 6 year old me wow them with that 36 year old me can barely manage? Must’ve been special. And forever lost to time.
Anyway, at my new school they were obsessed with modules and lessons and books and films about the second world war. Why was I reading Night and Anne Frank as an 8 year old? Why were we discussing it during every class? We gathered on beanbags inside the trailer classroom in the woods behind the real school. I remember thinking it was so magical at the time — like a tree house. The subject matter was extremely sus though.
We even switched teachers and still… the only work we did revolved around these dark stories about children living during genocide. Summer of My German Soldier? Why am I caught up in the lustful intrigue between an underage American girl and a German POW held captive in her town?
Our first teacher wasn’t even a stereotypical detached Boomer dad that parks it in his recliner to watch endless History channel documentaries about Rommel. She was younger than I am now. She was an eager young teacher in her twenties.
I don’t know who wrote her curriculum but I need them to know their morbid scholastic programming paved the way for my developing brain to become debilitated with equally unhinged hyperfixations for life.
I’ve been inside for 2 years. A lot of people have. Maybe you have too? Maybe you’ve also reverted to doing hours of research on anything your brain can grab to avoid the entropy. Thanks for coming.
I work from home. I’m an introvert. Well, I’m an introvert in the way that Gilbert Grape’s mom was. I come by it naturally.
My dad’s mother was agoraphobic. We never used that word but after years of dealing with my own intense compulsion to isolate, real recognizes real.
My grandma never had a job. She was a hoarder. She barely left the house. And when she did, it was at the mercy of one of her many children since she never learned to drive. Rumor is that whenever even the suggestion that she develop a life outside came up, she became pregnant again. I was never close to her. I was her only grandchild for a while, too. She took no interest.
To compensate for that, I take on too many interests.
I hoard things myself — books, pens, maps, old objects, seemingly useless information.
I am also fighting my own agoraphobic tendencies. And I talk about it openly. I plan on sharing personal essays and stories from my past that have been labeled “Southern gothic” by some and “girl are you okay?” by most others.
So, here I will commit to writing once a week about what cultural research & Wikipedia data mining has up until now existed only in my mind. I’m a journalist by training and story collector by trade, so it gets heavy up there.
I’ll make an argument every week attempting to convince y’all of why you should care about something you’ve never given a shit about before. It would honestly be a privilege.
Sorry about this.