I got those too, but those were in my 20s, with my 1st wife. Possibly the subject for another post. Yes, ghosts are real, I've had my share. But I don't want to hijack this thread.
Thank you, exactly what I was looking for! I don't intend to copy you exactly, more to just get a vibe of how other people spent their teens. This is making me feel better about things I would do with my characters in putting themselves in hazardous situations. Lol, less you, more the others. I'm not so good at explaining what I want, which is more info on "normal" people, or rather just people less introverted than me. The trouble with that, is that writers often lean introverted, as, well, I'm assuming most writers are as caught up in their thoughts as I am.
What is it with sacrificing and bartering first-born children? Take a few second-born or tenth-born brats for a change.
It's because a sacrifice needs to be of your best, not second-best or less. If a farmer would sacrifice some grain or a little meat, it had to be from his best stock. So the same applied in human sacrifices where/when those were practiced. If someone sacrificed something that wasn't the best, terrible things were supposed to happen. See, otherwise they'd just use it as an excuse to get rid of things they don't like much, and then it wouldn't mean anything. A sacrifice has to be a willing loss of something valuable, or a small portion of it, to show that what you're sacrificing to or for is a goal worth making such sacrifices for. I believe it's a way of helping people keep their priorities in order and not living for the wrong principles. Thankfully in modern Western civilization we've abstracted out the understanding of what sacrifice really means, so we don't have to practice it as a ritual anymore. We usually sacrifice our energy, time or money for the things we really want, so we have to prioritize what's really worth those things. Most animal sacrifices weren't of an entire animal. A rancher or farmer would slaughter the animal, mostly for eating or selling the meat, and they'd wrap the thigh bones in a layer of fat and put it on the fire. The idea was that the smoke carried the essence of the sacrifice up to the gods.
Oh, I have ghost stories! Ghosts are REAL! I know, I had one. But that wasn't in my teenage years, and I don't want to hijack this thread. But as I recall, it was the topic of conversation that lead to visiting that location to begin with. "You wanna talk about GHOSTS? How about we go and visit a REAL haunted location with a real dark history? Come on, get in the car. It's not that far, I know the way. There's a beer store along the way, there's a guy who works there at nights that'll sell to teenage kids. We'll get a sixpack of malt liquor and some rolling papers, go have ourselves an adventure!" Of course, this was back in the early 80s, before closed circuit TV cameras were a thing in every establishment with a cash register, and the legal drinking age in Texas at that time was 18.
In my high school years after I got a car, I spent a lot of time in band practice, orchestra practice, home practicing, and a job at a burger place. Rarely had time for other pursuits until summer arrived. Then, it was mowing the lawn, hiking in a near-by state park, movies and occasional concerts. And visiting my grandparents about 2 hours away.
I did a lot of bike riding with my friends during my early teens. I did a lot of 8 ball pool and chess during my later teens. And I used to watch movies at the cinema (in the mall) almost every weekend.
We used to read stories and comics (separately) and then talk about them, and then started making our own. And when there was a really cool sci-fi movie on we'd call each other during commercials (if we couldn't watch it together for some reason) and talk excitedly about it, and then be like "Ok, It's coming back on—call you next commerical." We threw a lot of frisbee (did I already say this?) and my friend had these cool things called Wing Bats, made of styrofoam, that were like planes you throw and they had a certain 'flight pattern.' Those eventually broke or got lost, like all the throwing toys (I had a boomerang at one point), on roofs or in trees. Once I had this gigantic inflatable rubber ball that expanded to like 8 feet in diamter that we'd knock around. That one didn't last long, I forget what happened to it. We made a lot of toys and board games ourselves. Oh, and there were Superballs, little rubber balls so powerful when you bounce them they'd go like fifty feet up in the air. Usually if we didn't lose them ourselves some bully kid would walk up, take it, and deliberately bounce it off deep into the woods or into a subdivision where you'd never find it.
And the memories come flooding in. I had a dart board on a wooden wall in the basement, and once we took a magic marker and drew a human outline, with the dartboard as the head, and we marked off Fatal and Nonfatal areas, and we threw darts at it. We devised this way of holding a dart laying in the palm of the hand with the palm slightly curved, and then really whipping it at the wall, and it made the dart go incredibly fast and hard. Full use of leverage and we'd put a little extra flip in the wrist right at the end (like a trebuchet) that made it even more devastating. When they hit the wall it made a really loud noise and they'd stick in deep. Then one day a friend brought over about a four foot length of water pipe, a spring that fit into it perfectly, a length of dowel that also fit in it, and we did some cutting and work and turned it into essentially a huge speargun. We weighted the front of the dowel by drilling into it and sticking a few inches of coathangar wire in there, so it didn't flip in the air and would fly straight. Oh my god, it was the most devastating thing we ever made!! So dangerous! This was back when they had the game called Jarts, which were big heavy yard darts you'd throw way up in the air and they were front-weighted so they'd always stick in the dirt when they landed (or whatever they landed on). We called our spear gun the Jarrow, like a similar version of yard arrow. We had to disassemble it pretty soon or we would have done too much damage.
We used to wrestle and race, and run through the woods on our trails. Some guys would box, but none of us had gloves or the padded helmets, and we didn't relish the idea of hitting each other in the face. Once when I was probably about 12 or 13 (very early teens) my mom got these big inflatable boxing gloves for me and my sister. Oh my god, what a bad idea!! I think the idea was that we could get our aggressions out without hurting each other, but it didn't work that way. Any time we used them we'd end up hating each other for like a week, she had to take them away.
Huge theater nerd, and most of my social life revolved around that in some way. Even when we weren't in class or rehearsals there would be breakout improv and constant attempts to impress each other with our mad memorization skillz. I remember one autumn showcase I got a role very much outside of my typecast- I was a gawky character actress who was almost always cross-cast, and suddenly I got to play a deadly-serious and vengeful Shakespearian crone. I loved being comic (there's no greater mask for insecurity) but Shakespeare's tragedies were my true love. I only had one shot to make my unlikely metamorphosis and be taken seriously as an artist in the way that only a teenager thinks is possible. I gave it my all. I was excusing myself from get togethers, locking myself in darkened rooms and screaming my lines until they seared into my head, sobbing to make my voice husky before stepping onstage, anything and everything to make the role work. Meanwhile, my scene partner never seemed to show up to rehearsals. He had a test, his friend was moving, some calamity with one of his father's milk cows. Our director read out his lines, disinterested, with the script in her lap. Finally, after weeks of practice and frightening near-misses with venue trouble, snowstorms, and a sick director, I was sure that I would give the performance of my life. I was full of fear, but also a strange confidence that came with the endless hours of practice. Soon the week of the showcase came, and I got a call...My scene partner slipped on an icy driveway and snapped his humerus in half. We were cut from the showcase. It was the rule of the company in these situations to assign crew work to remaining actors in the scene, but it was far too late in the plans for me to be of any actual use. I was too shocked to show much disappointment, and just threw myself into making myself as useful as a third wheel can possibly be in the cramped, dark, makeshift wings. My partner made it to the showcase—to the audience anyway—with a heady dose of Percocet in his system, a scar on his arm the length of my entire hand, and a brand new set of titanium screws. His mom gripped his good arm tightly and pointed out his brothers to him, peeking out from the curtain and waving from the wings. No resentment could stand up in the face of that. I mentally dedicated my backstage floundering to him, and to the show he was too hurt and doped up to fully register from his distant folding chair. The showcase bombed, for so many reasons. There was such a persistent barrage of misfortune for the whole company it could hardly have ended any other way. Lines dropped everywhere, actors missing until the very last second, props lost and hastily replaced. The camaraderie won out though, and we celebrated as usual with midnight pancakes and improv antics while the kids with out-of-town grandparents were taken home to cake and bouquets. I was happily lost in the spirit of it all, but then Agnes sat beside me. Agnes a painter and perennial crew member, ethereally beautiful, and shy to the point of near-voicelessness. I wanted badly to be her friend, but she was a very closed book. I was the one who was always talking and saying nothing genuine, but she was the opposite, and every word she spoke was precious to me. Cruel or kind, she never told a lie. She told me she was sorry that I couldn't perform that semester, and that she heard me practice, not the speedy memorization checks that the director ran through, the ones I did after class each week alone. She said those readings were her favorite in the whole showcase. It felt selfish to be upset, given the reason that my partner bowed out, but the fact that Agnes was thinking of me and my feelings in midst of the trainwreck she had to deal with backstage completely blew my mind. When I got home I bawled out some self-pitying tears, but I was so, so amazed by what Agnes said to me that I really changed that semester. I was totally trapped in a prison of my own angst before then, and that one tiny gesture made me feel so human. God bless Agnes.
