meineneuestimme

[meineneuestimme]

Burnin‘ Up

Fifth grade is a time for change for everyone. It’s the last year before children enter the battle royale that is middle school, but I can’t help feeling that my battle royale mode started just a year earlier. I was always the quiet, bookish kid. I was popular in the early years of schooling one of the queens of kindergarten when everyone wanted to be friends with everyone, but as our limbs stretched and we started looking forward to being adults, that changed. Of course it did.

The kids who I was friends with shed their My Littlest Pet Shops for makeup and traded the mystical middle grade series we would read together for the behemoth that Twilight seemed to be at the time. I was a computer nerd, even then, always spending time on the web, either making trouble on Neopets or trying to earn coins on Club Penguin. I was allowed to make a facebook account at a young age, so long as I had a fake name on it, and through that I played Farmville with my dad. Playing games and reading books seemed to be my life then.

 One day there was a knock at our door, heavy in a way I hadn’t heard a knock before. Though I was usually inclined to ignore them, both my parents were home - too engrossed in their own tasks to have noticed and it was beginning to be the politics season and I so wanted to talk to one of those people with the fliers and find out what exactly they were on about. So I was the one to race to the door and answer it. And I was the one who came face to face with what seemed like a legion of police, or, not police, ICE agents. They asked for my parents and I got them, of course, and then was ordered to sit on the couch, even though I asked very nicely if I could go back on the computer since it clearly had absolutely nothing to do with me. At the time, my biggest concern was how it was the Games Master Challenge on Neopets and I had to submit a high score that I had never come close to reaching before and this was taking so long. I had been listening to my playlists, as loud as I could, and I could faintly hear the sounds of the Jonas Brothers from my earbuds.

My parents… didn’t explain anything to me when they had left, though I could gather that my dad had done something very bad online because the people had taken his laptop, which meant I couldn’t play on it anymore. As soon as I was able to, I hopped back onto the computer and made my own escape. Technically, I took advantage of the heightened state of emotions in the room, because I asked my mom if I could try this new game called Roblox and she didn’t say no. The first game I wound up playing was Cops and Robbers. I didn’t enjoy it very much. But the next game, Students Vs. Teachers, that was funner, even though it had the same exact gameplay. It reminded me less of what had just happened. I never did talk about it. next ->

[meineneuestimme]

Lose Yourself and The Time

St. Casimir’s was a K-8 Catholic school that would serve as the bane of my existence for the next two years of my life and I hated every single second of it. My mom wanted me to get away from the public school system “for my protection”, despite that being the rock I was sharpened on and thought this ugly little building in downtown Manchester would be able to hold the keys to my future. I protested, as hard as I could. I was at the time aware I was spiritual but certainly aware that nothing I believe in came even close to what Catholics did. Didn’t they eat the corpse of their fallen leader every Sunday? How could you expose me to cannibals? My mom explained what communion was. It didn’t shake in my mind that I would be the wrong fit.

They required uniforms. It was a light sky blue for the shirts mixed with an ugly navy blue pants. Not only were they ugly looking on their own, but from the little I knew of fashion, those were so not my colors. I railed against the limitations imposed here. My mom pointed out that no one would be able to bully me for my clothes because everyone looked the same. I pointed out that I would not have cared if they did. I didn’t point out that no, not everyone looks the same in uniforms some people wear skirts and so they look cute in them but my mom knew if she even attempted a skirt I would raise all hell upon the old nun who served as a principal.

They required morning prayer. I didn’t even know how to pray and when everyone started reciting them the first day I mouthed it so I didn’t stick out further than I already did. Every religious event that was celebrated marked just more confusion for me. They took field trips to church. In fact, save for one trip to the art museum, we only took field trips to churches.

They also required prayer during lunch time. Not only that, but they didn’t allow us to talk at all during lunch. It was completely silent except for the crunching and wet mouthy sounds of a room full of children eating.That, if nothing else, has had such a long lasting effect on me that eating in a room of people is near enough a disaster and I lose my appetite anytime I hear someone else chew. The cafeteria was in the basement, so the furthest place from where the sixth, seventh, and eighth graders had class as kings and kings-to-be of the roost.

 The only bright side was that they had recess, except that wasn’t even a bright side because we were located in downtown Manchester and at the time, the opioid epidemic was just getting started, so there would always be needles and other trash in the parking lot that served as our playground.

I was given my first mp3 player that year, as a welcome to middle school present. I raced to iTunes and downloaded The Black Eyed Peas and Eminem songs. They were the only “adult” artists I followed, though me and my friend had spent the summer listening to parodies of songs on a YouTube channel called The Key of Awesome. I think, without it, I would’ve gone insane going through this school. It was easy for me to hide my earbuds and listen, because no one suspected I- the quiet bookworm - would get up to trouble.

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[meineneuestimme]

Beyond Her Garden and Still Alive and Want You Gone

Apparently my mom did not care for individuality as much as she had led me to believe, getting more and more concerned with how others viewed me as I got older. Nothing anyone could have said to me could have phased me, not after the trials of fire that one went through navigating the internet at an early age. My mom trusted my dad to set up parental locks but he couldn’t have done anything that I couldn’t find my own way around. 

I don’t remember when I was introduced to fandom, that is, the spaces on the internet that have grown since I was young to be places where nerds and fans of media congregate to draw art of the characters they love and ponder who is fucking who, or rather, owing to my then phobia of all things sexual, who is giving who clandestine kisses when the cameras are off them. They are chaotic forces that from the outside seem to be an entirely unhealthy obsession. To that I say, fair, as I entered fandom spaces, I wasn’t doing it just to read more about characters I liked. After pondering my own life in fandom, the reason was far simpler. It was to make and find friends where there weren’t any. Classes were small at school and everyone there had known each other for years. More, we simply didn’t share any interests.

As I went through St. Casimir’s, I wound up finding many fandom homes. I think the first was Club Penguin, though, that probably started long before I had a name for my interaction with the game. I was in love with spies and as a kid, I wanted to be one. The intrigue, the adventures, the danger, the romance between two rival spies, what wasn’t to love about the genre? No, I never watched James Bond or the like, my only spy movies were Spy Kids and my only spy game was the mini adventures found within Club Penguin. Still, I made a little world of out of them that spanned far beyond the island found within the game which wound up growing a life of its own in my own mind. Somewhere out there is four chapters of the only fanfiction I was brave enough to publish online, just as I started going to Saint C’s, of adventures between my penguin and the characters found on the island.

My dad got me to watch Doctor Who and for a while I played on those grounds, falling in love with the villainous Master and so wanting him to get a redemption arc. The weird aliens fascinated me but they made me think of something else.

Aliens… aliens… my brother used to watch a cartoon with me featuring an alien and the search to uncover that would lead me falling down a rabbit hole of nostalgia I had no right to. Invader Zim quickly became my new obsession, along with the internet movement to bring it back. There was a whole movement online to bring back shows from the 90′s, from Rocko’s Modern Life to Invader Zim, shows I could just barely remember. Still, I joined the wagon, deeming them far superior to the shows that I was expected to watch, Fanboy and Chumchum on Nickelodeon, another Ben 10 Remake on Cartoon Network.

But Invader Zim was the show I fought for. I begged and pleaded to get the DVD sets that I saw on eBay. The community I found there, under the guise of Operation Head Pigeons, a coordinated effort to spam the Nickelodeon and Viacom offices with letters until they brought back Invader Zim, wound up leading me elsewhere, creepypastas, youtubers, let’s players, it was a spiral. But at the least, every step of the way there was fan music, and other such creations. I don’t even remember why I was grounded, only that it was a great injustice and that I wound up so computer-starved that I sleep-walked out to my mom to ask if I could go online because I needed to check on my comments. 

And then there was Portal. My great love. The video game that once more made a gamer out of me. I found it through YouTube, when a video maker I followed posted a video of My Little Pony clips set to the credit theme song of Portal. I knew nothing about the story or the characters, I just knew I needed to play it. I searched and searched for it. I even called stores, stealing away to the bathroom with our landline to make them because I was embarrassed. I never used the phone then. But I was desperate because the one place I could find it, I wasn’t sure if I could trust. Eventually, a Gamestop employee explained to me what Steam was, the internet game store that I could buy it on.

So I played it. And I wound up falling in love with the mute protagonist and the sassy vindictive robot that held her captive. From there I explored all of Valve’s games, created characters for their zombie game, fell in love with the mercenaries in their team shooter. It was so easy, it was like finding a place to call home.

All these things held so much more interest to me than the schoolwork that I was doing. Most all of it was a repeat from fifth grade, so I ignored it all and focused on my own life, filling out notebooks of comics of the characters I made for Valve’s Left 4 Dead series, doodling my inspiration for what the mysterious Pyro looked like under the mask. If anything, I was more inspired to escape and create because of my time at Saint Casimir’s then anything else, even if I didn’t believe the same way they did.

[meineneuestimme]

Some Nights

One day in seventh grade, we took a trip to one of the bigger churches down the street for some special mass or other. I sat there and imagined what would happen if Invader Zim came down with his cruiser and what would I do then? It wasn’t the most holy imaginings, but it was far better than wondering if I was gay and really going to go to hell for it.

The priest started to wave incense around the room and I tried to stop breathing. It made me cough, the way it infected my lungs and made everything smell… not great. It was my least favorite part of any of the churches but the teachers had explained that for some reason this time it was special. I think they just wanted to justify the bad smell to themselves.

[meineneuestimme]

Great Vacation and Emperor’s New Clothes

St. Casimir’s had a high turnover rate of teachers, or at least, teachers for the special parts of our education, like computers or music. We didn’t have a music teacher the entire first year and the second year he’d frequently get upset if we didn’t say the pledge of allegiance proudly enough. He’d bring up people in far countries who didn’t have any freedoms and I whispered to the kid next to me, then we should have the freedom to not say it and he repeated it but loud enough for the teacher to hear and got the whole class in trouble. When that teacher got upset, he’d pace the entire room.

The computer teacher, or at least one of them, got in trouble for the same thing that my dad did, according to Megan at least, who knew a lot because her mom also worked for the FBI, or so she said. I thought that was a shame because he would give me books on coding because I wanted to be a video game designer when I grew up and we didn’t get a replacement teacher for the rest of the year, which meant we had to do other boring stuff that was nowhere near the computer labs.

But it made sense, most of the teachers who were for the special extra classes were weird in some way. The religion teacher had recently become a nun, which while she was young, still seemed like a weird choice of occupation in the 2010′s, but I was thirteen, so what did I know? She sometimes seemed like she was very fond of me but other times seemed annoyed at the questions I asked.  Megan’s mom volunteered when we needed a gym teacher, which was my least favorite class. The Spanish teacher would always make jokes about hitting students, but none of us were sure how much of a joke it was. Even the normal teacher’s were weird. The sixth grade teacher was nice, but we were her first class so she wasn’t really sure what to do. Sometimes she’d read to us if we finished class early. But that wasn’t often. My seventh grade teacher once yelled at me for reading in class and for someone teaching at a religious school, she sure sounded like a demon. I had to leave the room because I was so scared. I wound up adding the person who became the eighth grade teacher on Facebook, but she de-friended me after I made my profile picture Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco from one of his music videos.

[meineneuestimme]

Real Life and Kesha‘s Warrior

Towards the end of seventh grade, Megan’s mom was there a lot. Finally it was spring and we’d be able ditch the freezing walk to the school gym that we used and instead go to the park. Usually, a point of joy. I would hide during the class beneath the far trees, just out of sight, and read whatever I could have sneaked out of my classroom.

One day I started wheezing on the walk to the park. Usually, it isn’t a big deal, only one or two blocks and I would always pace myself. I had a cough all day, something that had developed after my mom had dropped me off. That day we were supposed to run three laps around the park. I had barely made it to the park on my two legs, I couldn’t handle laps but Megan’s mom said that I didn’t have a note, so I couldn’t be excused.

I took the longest to make the laps. When I crossed the finish line, everyone clapped for me but it felt sarcastic. I collapsed and laid on the grass until we had to leave.

I was absent from school the next week, hiding at home. We went to the doctor’s office. A nurse who I’d never seen there before took me back and declared I just had a cold. We went home and my parents talked in whispers wondering if I was faking it. But thermometers don’t lie and I certainly had a fever. 

I languished dramatically on the sofa trying to find something to watch on tv. I’d already made it through my Invader Zim DVD’s that had been so hard won and I didn’t want to watch them so much that I grew tired of them. I didn’t have the strength to sit myself at the desktop. I wasn’t getting better. My mom dragged me back to the doctor’s office to see an actual doctor this time, someone who had seen my brother when he was younger, even if that had been years and years ago. She took one look at me and ordered X-Rays of my lungs, and when she took one look at those, she ordered an ambulance to take me straight to the hospital even though it was only a block or two away and extremely drivable. 

I had double lung pneumonia and they shoved tubes down my nose. That sucked but I was even madder at my mom for refusing to let me play the video games that they had in the ICU. I wasn’t allowed to get up myself because the tubes weren’t very movable and I didn’t want to accidentally pull them out and have to have them put in again. My parents kept on bothering the doctor’s and they’d have very long conversations outside where I couldn’t hear them. My mom didn’t want me to play the video games because she didn’t want me to overexert myself. I had to beg to even get access to my laptop. Finally, I was able to leave.

I’m not going back to St. Casimir’s, I told them as soon I got into the car. And there was no argument. My mom drove me through Hillside which wasn’t the middle school I wanted to go to, I wanted to go back to the school district I’d been in in elementary school, but she refused. Something about worrying about kids bullying me because of my dad. I always thought that was stupid because he never did anything to anyone in real life. But I was just glad that I’d be able to wear normal human clothes instead of the ugly blue uniforms so I didn’t protest further. Summer had rolled around, so I never had to set foot in that building again. Probably for the best. .

I’d been in the hospital for so long I wasn’t quite sure what songs were even on the radio anymore. They all seemed very new and there were very few familiar artists on now but at least my old favorites were just a click away when I was finally able to log onto my desktop. It was nice, returning to Neopets and my old haunts. My reward for going through this near-death experience was a trip to Gamestop where I picked out two D.S. games that were reasonably priced - not the high costs of games made by Nintendo, but a series of games that were made by some third party or other called Drawn to Life. Those, at least, had some comfort for me, until the entire cast of characters were revealed to be the collective coma dream of a brother and the desperate wishes of his sister for him to get better after they were in a car accident that killed their parents. Who made this and who decided it was geared towards children? I almost ruined my health again by staying up until early morning for a game that ended like that. Well, until that point, it was an incredible story, at least. 

[meineneuestimme]

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