I have a client that just turned 13 and was trying to think of what age-appropriate activities I could be encouraging him to do, that aren't electronics. But, I thought it'd be fun to remember what we were all doing at that age, appropriate or not.
When I was 13, I smoked weed for the first time, had my first kiss, and was suuuuper into Incubus. I was finally allowed to walk up to the local grocery store (it was across a really busy road), so my neighbor and I would do that pretty regularly for a while to get candy and stuff. My "boyfriend" would walk over from his neighborhood sometimes and we'd hang out on my front porch. I don't really remember doing much else, really.
I lived out in the middle of nowhere, listened to blink-182, and sulked a lot. Sometimes I would take books out into the woods and read.
I mostly used the internet to post on punk message boards. I was way into indie rock and No Idea Records and the only Plan It X bands I listened to were This Bike Is A Pipe Bomb and Against Me! I saw my first show, Bright Eyes with Her Space Holiday and the Arab Strap, a little after my 13th birthday. I also got to see Alkaline Trio and Pretty Girls Make Graves that year. I went to the record store on the first Tuesday of every month because they had 20% off everything and my mom would buy me 3 or 4 CDs at a time. I think she did that because I didn't really have any friends so I never went to birthday parties or even go out to the movies or the park or the beach with anyone on weekends or during the summer, but she knew I liked listening to music so that was decent substitute for having friends. I was probably at the peak of my skills as a bassist at that point, too, because I would actually put effort into practicing (I started playing bass when I was 11). I was obsessed with the Independent Film Channel and the Sundance Channel so I'd stay up all night watching movies like Pi, Funny Ha Ha, City of God, Amelie, the Royal Tenenbaums, pretty much the standard mainstream indie movies.
I guess this was when I was in the 7th grade? Because my family moved across the county one year and redistricting another, I went to a different middle school every year from sixth through eighth grade. I was super into band class, but the program at my 6th grade school sucked, and the music program at my 7th grade school was the best in the county; I went from being last chair to first in the low brass section in the course of a year. Besides that, life sucked. I was depressed all the time, didn't listen to rock music, was super into going to church, and some of my classmates knew me as "the kid who never smiles." I think by the end of 8th grade some of the other band geeks were getting into punk and so was I, and I started to really make friends, question religion, and read more challenging stuff.
blink 182 was suuuuper my jam too! i think i was 13 in 8th grade? i started to get into punk in 7th grade so by 8th grade i THOUGHT i was punk as fuck. I had a huge crush on this boy named Roy and spend the entire year trying to impress him, i got into a bunch of bands because they were his favorite bands, some of which i still like (ani difranco!) and some i'm kind of embarassed by (thursday!), we traded mix cds and flirted all year, and then on the LAST DAY OF SCHOOL i finally got up the nerve to ask him to be my boyfriend hahaha. he said yes, and my response was, "you don't have to say yes if you don't want to" or something like that. my self confidence was NOT GOOD (i was a fat tom boy wannabe punk girl with bad hygiene basically). anyway, he said "i wouldn't say yes if i didn't want to". at the beginning of the summer we "went out" a few times, only kissed once, and never really even talked about being boyfriend and girlfriend, then he went back home to nashville until the end of the summer and when he got back we didn't talk about it at all ever again. it was weird!
i can't remember much else about being 13. this is when i started to skip class and make shitty grades even though i was really smart. i left my group of "smart kid" friends and started hanging out with trouble makers. had ISS (in-school suspension!) for the first time. my best friend cut herself reeeeeally intensely and it was a whole drama. my other best friend left school one day and everyone thought she went missing and it was a whole drama. turns out she just left and walked home. i started to gain more confidence in my personality at least and wasn't as shy as before, and became kind of the class clown. i tried to learn how to skateboard but i was really bad at it.
Killing cops and reading Kerouac.
But mostly, it was like 1997 so the internet was starting to become a real, widely-used thing and not just by nerds like me, so I was doing geeky computer things and being a part of budding online communities and learning how to make webpages and junk.
I was probably listening to the entire Fat Wreck Chords back catalog by the point, but I'm years off from finding out about cooler lesser known punk stuff (for example, PIX was only 3 years old and had no web presence). Skatepunk was hip and I got my first skateboard and started wearing "skater" clothes and had bleached spiked hair which was all the fucking rage back in the day.
like lindsey, this is when i started hanging out with "the troublemakers," meaning basically things starting to be fun. I vaguely remember my first kiss being around this time. We all had pagers/beepers back then and that was cool as fuck.
I don't know, I don't remember much to be honest. Too long ago and I'm old.
Lindsey:
Quote from: lindsey on July 22, 2014, 08:39:02 AMnever really even talked about being boyfriend and girlfriend, then he went back home to nashville until the end of the summer and when he got back we didn't talk about it at all ever again. it was weird!
So what you're saying is, you still have a boyfriend to break up with.
When I was 13 I played rec. league baseball (all-star centerfielder, hot dang!), started getting into punk (Fat Wreck, Epitaph stuff), and read a lot of books. That's pretty much it.
Quote from: dakotafloyd on July 22, 2014, 10:57:45 AM
When I was 13 I played rec. league baseball (all-star centerfielder, hot dang!), started getting into punk (Fat Wreck, Epitaph stuff), and read a lot of books. That's pretty much it.
This reminds me that I also played softball. I also think that 13 might have been when I went through my archery phase.
listening to the live blink album, wrestling on the middle school team, enjoying the semi-new discovery of masterbaution and being stupid
i was living in a wilderness program on the application around ashville back then, i picked up spinning fire poi around this age & a little later i took to studding iado "a form of bushido', both served a good deal in self meditation.
The summer I turned 13, the guy I had had a huge crush on for the last year finally kissed me. That fall, we would hang out in his garage, which was separate from his house and all done up. We would make out and he would finger me (lol...remember when that was a THING?). I remember one time it was while watching Varsity Blues, haha. My dad died that fall. I started hanging out with the "popular" kids, I think because they felt bad for me about my dad. I started hanging out with my (still) best friend. Later the kid started dating a sophomore and dumped me and I was pretty devastated. I was into Dave Matthews Band and Blink 182 (I didn't really get into punk stuff til 14 or 15.) I went to a lot of parties that involved bon fires in someone's yard. I was pretty serious about ballet.
When I was 13 it was 2002-2003 and I was in 8th grade at a catholic school, where I had maybe 29 classmates (who had been my only classmates, more or less, for the previous 9 years). I was friends with the weird reject girls, but we pretty much didn't hang out outside of school, except that I had started going to see local punk shows, and two of my friends tagged along a couple of times (my other two friends thought we were out of our minds for going to such a dangerous activity). I found out about local punk stuff because a family friend started playing bass in what turned out to be a pretty decent ska band. I went to every show they played I could possibly go to, and it exposed me to mosh pits and weirdos outside of my small school. I was too shy to make friends there, but I felt good being around people like that, and in my vivid imagination world, I felt an unspoken camaraderie with the kids there. Also, I went to every one of these shows chaperoned by my parents.
The year before I was super depressed and awful and freaking out, and a lot of the school administration had it out for me, and wanted me to go to some intensive therapy, as well as get held back. I also had to take a literacy test because they thought they I couldn't read (which I could read, I just hated reading out loud because I had no self-esteem and was filled with anxiety). The only thing good that happened when I was 12 was that I started playing bass.
8th grade though I had kind of gotten my footing. My super confident friend that I looked up to helped me feel more confident, and I could see the light at the end of the tunnel - I was going to a school away from all of these people who hated me, I could meet new people.
At home I listened to a lot of really weird music, pretty much any band related to the band The Residents, as well as Zappa and some other Avant-Garde nonsense I loved because of my weird parents. I downloaded music a lot. My brother and I spent hours on music forums talking to strangers about weird music and downloading stuff. I got into Sigur Ros as the first band I sought out on my own. I played bass along to tabs all the time, and pretty much never plugged my bass in. I had a paper route and saved all my tips to buy myself a digital camera and my own ibanez, so I could stop playing my dad's gibson with flipped strings (I am left handed).
In short, things were terrible but I could see how they might get better so I kind of held on to see what a new school and what punk could offer me. As usual, music saved my life or whatever.
Quote from: jer on July 22, 2014, 09:04:38 AM
Lindsey:
Quote from: lindsey on July 22, 2014, 08:39:02 AMnever really even talked about being boyfriend and girlfriend, then he went back home to nashville until the end of the summer and when he got back we didn't talk about it at all ever again. it was weird!
So what you're saying is, you still have a boyfriend to break up with.
haha, yeah i guess that's true!
i've been cheating on him a loooottttt oops
When I was 13 I was obsessed with Kurt Cobain/Nirvana, Green Day, grunge music in general, as well as discovering punk bands via 120 minutes on MTV, and pamphlets that came in Lookout! Records, and Epitaph Records/Fat Wreck releases. This was before the internet was prevalant. I also discovered bands via t-shirts that members of my favorite bands would wear. I would buy albums based on this.
I had my first real girlfriend along with my first real kiss along with playing around in other various ways short of sex.
I was very depressed, socially awkward, and anxious. I was dressing a mix between goth and punk and would do any substance my cousin and my older friends (who I met through my cousin) would put in front of me in order to prove myself.
Most of my time was spent cruising around with friends doing dumb things that would get me in trouble while smoking a lot of weed and drinking.
I also played a lot of bass guitar and would learn songs via tabliture found in various guitar magazines. I did well in school and went to my first concert at 13 (the Smashing Pumpkins).
If I had more positive things to do, I probably could have avoided over a decade of drug abuse. That's one of the reason that I try so hard to get my teenage clients involved with things in the community or with positive people. It's hard to find in a small community but can be done. There are always things available nowadays if you look. I would do some research as to what is available in your area for that age group and push them to experiment with these positive things to see which ones they enjoy. I usually try to have them find a hobby involving music, art, or other creative outlets. Sports also seem to have a very positive effect on the kids I see so I would explore that with them, as well.
Quote from: lindsey on July 22, 2014, 11:40:40 PM
Quote from: jer on July 22, 2014, 09:04:38 AM
Lindsey:
Quote from: lindsey on July 22, 2014, 08:39:02 AMnever really even talked about being boyfriend and girlfriend, then he went back home to nashville until the end of the summer and when he got back we didn't talk about it at all ever again. it was weird!
So what you're saying is, you still have a boyfriend to break up with.
haha, yeah i guess that's true!
i've been cheating on him a loooottttt oops
You really should track him down on Facebook and send a long winded confession and apology and make it all dramatic and see how he responds.
...sigh...stuff like this.
https://soundcloud.com/rankresistance/false-alarm
I listened to a lot of local crust and hardcore and thought I was the shit.
Now I listen to a lot of local crust and hardcore and think I'm the anti-shit.
When I was 13 I was:
-Playing BBall with my best friend while waiting for Linux CDs to come in the mail from eBay
-Playing LORD and Tradewars 2002 on a local BBS
-Walking through the woods and along the stream to find cool looking rocks
-Cutting flowers/plants open to see what they looked like inside
-Just starting to get into pop punk (Dookie was my first album quickly followed by Blink 182 stuff)
-Had a GF in 6th grade, so I was prob around 13 or so when that happened?
-Spent a lot of time fingering Becca
Quote from: jer on July 23, 2014, 07:53:20 AM
Quote from: lindsey on July 22, 2014, 11:40:40 PM
Quote from: jer on July 22, 2014, 09:04:38 AM
Lindsey:
Quote from: lindsey on July 22, 2014, 08:39:02 AMnever really even talked about being boyfriend and girlfriend, then he went back home to nashville until the end of the summer and when he got back we didn't talk about it at all ever again. it was weird!
So what you're saying is, you still have a boyfriend to break up with.
haha, yeah i guess that's true!
i've been cheating on him a loooottttt oops
You really should track him down on Facebook and send a long winded confession and apology and make it all dramatic and see how he responds.
we are actually friends on fb, and we were friends all through high school until he eventually moved permanently to nashville, we just never brought up our "relationship" after that. weird! his younger sister lives in portland now too and i once sent her a message to see if she wanted to get together some time, and she never responded. it's weird because she always thought i was really rad when we would run into each other in asheville?
Cool now it'll be easier to break up with him
He deserves some closure.
i had some pretty intense family issues around the age of 13 and was an incredibly unhappy young teenager. my grades at school started to drop around that time and i didn't really have any friends. yay!
When I was 13 I had no friends and spent most of my free time playing The Sims.
Quote from: momitsnowme on July 22, 2014, 06:24:07 PM
\ I started hanging out with the "popular" kids
you were one of THEM? you had to be a fake one, like a regular kid but more like an undercover agent doing an operative mission to see what those self obsessed little assholes did all day when they weren't dictating what was "cool" amongst barely pubscent micropeople.
going to a ridiculous amount of bar/bat mitzvahs
Skateboarding, listening to punk, ska, hardcore, and folk music and causing shenanigans. Nothing has changed.
Quote from: pronetoaccidents on July 24, 2014, 03:41:47 AM
Quote from: momitsnowme on July 22, 2014, 06:24:07 PM
\ I started hanging out with the "popular" kids
you were one of THEM? you had to be a fake one, like a regular kid but more like an undercover agent doing an operative mission to see what those self obsessed little assholes did all day when they weren't dictating what was "cool" amongst barely pubscent micropeople.
Yeah, I wasn't really. They just like...let me sit at their table for the last 2/3 of 8th grade, like I said, I think because they felt bad about my dad. The next year when I started hanging out with the weird kids, I stopped being friends with most of them. Though there was a weird thing at band camp before senior year where all the seniors had a bonfire and were supposed to go around the circle and say things to each other and they all pretty much told me they respected me for being a badass and being who i wanted to be. And now I'm in touch with a few of them through Facebook and stuff. I dunno...popular in rural WV is a little different than popular elsewhere, I think. The kids who called my new friends and I names I distanced myself from and the people who didn't, I don't think are/were that bad.
When I was 13 I got really into AFI, which would later launch my exploration into other punk music and then somehow that would evolve into listening to a lot of post rock. I played percussion in the school band, but not of the other percussionists could read music so I always played the bells or marimba, which I was cool with. I also played piano a lot outside of school. My mom wouldn't let me go hang out with friends without adult supervision, so I missed out on a lot of hangouts outside of school. My mom finally let me go to my first dance and it was pretty mediocre so I didn't go to any more.
I was in Girl Scouts.
Oh! My friend, Justin, had a crush on me and wanted me to be his girlfriend, but I didn't really care for that. But our other friend kept bothering me to say yes to him while I was reading a book I was really into, so I finally gave in so she would let me keep reading my book. A year later Justin came out, and looking back on it I think our "relationship" happened because people were teasing him since they thought he was gay (he was, but he wasn't ready to come out yet. 13-year-olds can be assholes). We held hands in art class so this jerk at our table would stop giving him shit.
Man being 13 sucked so much. I guess I still played baseball, that was cool.
i was watching mtv's beach house summer circa 1993 hosted by jon sencio, pauly shore, kennedy, and jon stewart and eating probably seven lbs of frozen french fries a day. in between games of shining force on the sega genesis.
Quote from: ian on July 26, 2014, 02:11:51 AM
i was watching mtv's beach house summer circa 1993 hosted by jon sencio, pauly shore, kennedy, and jon stewart and eating probably seven lbs of frozen french fries a day. in between games of shining force on the sega genesis.
I'm not the oldest person on the new board anymore! Happy days are here again.
watching the twelfth season of the simpsons. I remember drew barrymore was in an episode and i had a huge crush on her at that time
Lots of xbox and trying to fit into a school full of rich families since I was the poor kid.
i played ragnarok online for 4+ hours a day (iRO, private servers, then i started gming on a friend's server), and i talked to a lot of people online. i spent a lot of time in chat rooms, and i was on a few forums. i used to be able to have conversations with multiple people every day. besides those things i played a lot of other video games and other shit, i started getting into mogwai and the pillows a lot.
as far as physical stuff i was just going to school and stuff. i wore sweatpants every day and i had like some kind of aversion to pooping? i tried not to poop for like 10 months, so i always had to poop / smelled like poop. i also had acne and braces and bad breath, i was going through a shitty puberty i didn't want. i spent a lot of time online
me irl @ 13 (http://i.imgur.com/UoOHvBc.jpg)
i should say that that isn't really a picture of me irl when i was 13 but this is (probably) http://i.imgur.com/s05cIYO.jpg
it turns out my funny meme pic is from a comedy central show who woulda thunk
Quote from: James Anarchy Scallywag on July 25, 2014, 04:07:15 PM
Man being 13 sucked so much. I guess I still played baseball, that was cool.
completely forgot until i read this, but i was also playing soccer at school and i was the only not-super-preppy girl on the team. it was kinda rough for me socially, because (this is going to sound like bullshit but it isnt) all the preppy girls really hated me because i didn't give a shit about being popular and i was the only 7th (and then 8th) grader on the varsity team that started every single game of the season. also i was fat so they were extra pissed that i was basically a star player. they were dicks to me and all my actual friends were on the softball team. they tried to get me to play softball with them but soccer was just too important to me. womp womp
Hatmoose your experience is probably the closest to mine, and then you posted that photo, and you looked just like my best friend growing up did when he was 13.
momitnowme your experience is the most foreign and therefore most fascinating to me.
I really wanted to play basketball when I was in 8th grade but I'm very short and team sports scared me because I was so nervous to let everyone down. So it never happened. I have very small regrets about this.
Quote from: rory on July 28, 2014, 06:36:51 PM
Hatmoose your experience is probably the closest to mine, and then you posted that photo, and you looked just like my best friend growing up did when he was 13.
momitnowme your experience is the most foreign and therefore most fascinating to me.
I really wanted to play basketball when I was in 8th grade but I'm very short and team sports scared me because I was so nervous to let everyone down. So it never happened. I have very small regrets about this.
if it makes you feel better, a year later i started hanging out with the punk kids, stopped showering as often (and eventually had a mohawk), got a guitar and skateboard (but never learned to skate, haha) and got called a dyke on a regular basis, haha.
13 to 14 was a momentous change for me. overnight i could ejaculate and i got an operation ivy cd. talk about simple pleasures of life
I ran a lot, had a full beard until i shaved it finally and saw how pretty i was. I did thousands of crunches and leg lifts and lunges in m room listening to green day and rancid and iron maiden and system of a down. stayed up late playing n64 and watching adult swim in my room with friends who lived near me. played yu gi oh cars with friends late into the night. alot of climbing trees and running around and play fighting with sticks...OH!! AND SWINGING!!! Went to school and hated people. Played tony haw proskater and ocarina of time and smash bros and goldeneye and perfect dark...masturbated alot...was really shy...