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yakalskovich) wrote2008-02-04 11:41 pm
yakalskovich) wrote2008-02-04 11:41 pm
Year meme
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misslucyjane gave me a year.In 1979, I was twelve. I was in seventh grade on a grammar school that had started with Latin in fifth, and now I had to start with English, formally. It was a catastrophe. I had learned English informally when I was little and my great-aunt had read 'Winnie The Pooh' to me in English, just telling me what the words meant; and now it all suddenly was this formalised, lifeless school subject like any other. Also, the teacher was a disaster area on legs. He was near-sighted as a mole, and by rights had belonged pensioned off on some sort of disability, or at least shouldn't have been let loose on the nasty little kids like we were. I normally was the odd one out, but now I was with the pack. Nasty little rats we were! That poor bloke wore bottle-bottom glasses, had to hold the book directly in front of his eyes to see anything at all, and couldn't see anything we did. So we played all sorts of pranks on him, hinging on the fact that he could never tell which of us did what, handed in what homework, or was speaking to him in the first place. The worst we did was to throw tiny explosive charges that were wrapped in twisted paper and that would explode with a tiny pop when you threw them at the floor hard enough; they were freely available at the local joke shop. He could never see them coming of course, and startled dramatically. Strangely, he didn't call on teachers of higher authority; he must have feared he was in trouble if he couldn't keep discipline in his class. Poor thing should never have been thrown to the lion cubs like that; the headmaster that gave him a seventh grade to teach when there were all sorts of sensible people in 11, 12 and 13 willing to English lit deserves a kicking for that, too.
It was the third year that we went to the farm in the Black Forest for our summer holidays; the first where we had the larger holiday apartment with two bedrooms so my sister and I wouldn't have to sleep in our parents' bedroom. Sphinx, a prim little wuss at four, still insisted she wanted to sleep in my parents' bedroom, and so I had the lovely four-poster bed and rustic furniture, hand-painted with flowers by the farmer's wife (it was her hobby in the winter, when there were no people staying in the holiday apartments) all to myself, apart from the long weekend when my grandmother (the good one, the maternal one!) came to join us, by train. I had riding lessons every other day or so (never during school time, but in the holidays, I was allowed to), and my mother, growing curious, joined me for that, which I found great fun. That people that old would still take up new things like that! (She was 36 that year.) I was really proud of her for that.
The most important thing that year? I discovered Tolkien. It was the year the old LotR animated movie came out in Germany, and as I had read The Hobbit a year or two before, I went to see it -- and fell instantly and lastingly in love. The next day, I got the Silmarillion from the library (as LotR itself was lent out and I needed to go on a waiting list), started reading, was totally puzzled at first; but at least the language didn't scare me. I had read 'A Struggle For Rome' the year before and was used to artificially old-fashioned language. I could follow those tales, no problem. From there, my way led me firmly and forever into fandom and geekdom; and linguistics, incidentally. Of course, while waiting for more Tolkien and other fantasy books to become available at the library, I still followed up with my earlier obsession with the Goths, reading all the books about them that I could get; I think that was the Christmas when my grandfather gave me the bilingual edition of Procopius that I now have, once more, at arm's reach. I still had one and a half years until I would be allowed to start on Greek at all, but I was overjoyed to have it.-
Comment here to get a year to reminisce about on your own journal; optionally, tell me your time limit -- no memories from before year so-and-so because I was too young to remember, kay?
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No, I'm not silly and say something medieval; I say:
1992!
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