Game-show life

Sometimes I still wonder how things would've been different if I'd done the usual teenage things like dissect frogs, have crushes, or angst over acne and prom dresses. I don't even know if that's what high school's about so correct me if I've got it all wrong.

At the time, however, I didn't mind because I hated school from day one (which was also when I started having asthma attacks). By the time I was 10, it was all fear, loathing, and unutterable boredom. It was almost inevitable that, after a few half-hearted attempts--one of them lasting for just one day--I would end up a high school drop-out at 14. It's really quite defining and, even now, I can still be as foot-shootingly mulish as I was back then.

And so, for years, I just stayed home and read. Later, I took out memberships at Alliance Française, Goethe Institut, and the British Council. Alliance was still at Pasong Tamo and the last two were at the New Manila area. They've all moved since. My favorite library was the Institut's and I pretty much read everything from Never-ending Story to Kristin Lavransdatter to Freud to books with titles like Life is Like a Chicken Coop Ladder.* (I also remember being taken there as a little kid to watch movies like Aguirre, the Wrath of God, hence the extra affection.) The picture up there is from the last time I went.

Funny how things turn out.

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*Why? Because it's short and shitty.