Am I Awake?

I went to a vocational/technical highschool, of which I spent my 4 years in the Carpentry program.

Okay, so this was actually on the same project as the one time we got to mess around with cement. We were building a little roofed area over one of the school's dugouts for either the softball or baseball field. They were in bad shape on one field, and the other didn't have any provided shade.

It was one of the times we got to use staging! Otherwise known as scaffolding! And no I don't know why my teachers called it staging. But they did. A few other sources call it such as well.

And whenever we used the staging on indoor projects it was more likely we were using a wheeled set to get it around more easily. Outside you use ones with adjustable footings so you can make it level instead. Which makes it pretty stable once you've got a few sets hooked up together as they all lock into eachother.

And I'd like to preface this by saying, we were kids and kids are stupid.

Once we'd gotten the staging set up, the project was actually on a bit of a drag as we had some of the materials we needed for the roof already, but some were late on delivery. So we had lots of downtime between doing things. We started swinging on the bars like it was a jungle gym.

We'd hop around and vault between spaces that only offered a few feet to swing through. We got told off whenever the teachers caught us, but they stepped aside for calls in regards to the delivery a lot.

We also were doing the same thing to the support for the giant set of bleachers for the football field that we passed on our way to our work area. If we got ahead of the teachers on the way out, they didn't see us rush under and start flinging ourselves off and around metal. We'd do it on the way inside as well, dragging behind the teachers as they headed towards the doors of the school.

It's a stupid little thing. But everytime we put the staging away I'd miss it. And now that I'm not in school and don't own any I miss the opportunity.

It was closer to how those old photo jungle gyms were than the current ones. Where it was sorta like a geometric blob of metal bars to climb through.

When I'm not struggling with money I want to set up my own junglegym with staging. I've always wanted to get into parkour as well so while we flung ourselves around on metal bars it brought me indescribable joy.

Especially because I'm shit at socializing. I don't think any of the other Carpentry kids hated me, but I know I'm weird and sucked at conversations and cooperation so I didn't get to be as good of friends with them as I would have liked. And I really did want to. I liked them all amd wanted to get along better but I've passed my chances on that for a long time now.

It was one of the few times we were all messing around together. And it was involving things I was interested in(Carpentry, and parkour)

I was probably the second weakest there by the way. The only kid who wasn't in a sport, and had weak ass nerd arms. Half of them also had gym memberships! I didn't even live with someone who drove so I couldn't have gotten to a gym if I'd tried. Which is also why I wasn't in any sports. I wouldn't have had a way home from practices. Or the money for the equipment(I grew up poor).

Anyways, I don't think I'll ever forgot how happy doing that made me. Or how fun it was to actually get the chance to mess around with other kids. Which I had basically no chances of for most of my childhood.

I grew up near kids way older or way younger. And the few around my age, if they were friends with my older sibling couldn't be my friends

(my sibling and I had been stuck in the same room and with mostly the same friends for so long that after moving to this place they were determined to get some time away from me, and I being a younger sibling admired them and followed behind them whenever able, which as all siblings know is common and annoying as all hell)

So I don't fault them that. There were a few kids nearby that I was friends with. But eventually they moved and no one else was close enough for me to hangout with outside of school for a long time, due to the no drivers in my immediate family and my father refusing to let me go past a certain distance on my own. (He's also disabled so he couldn't walk me places himself.)

I couldn't just ask people to pick me up for every hangout ever, and I lived in a trailer so inviting people over from school was... not ideal. It was easier when other trailer kids would be your friends. But once again the few I'd manged to befriend moved. My older sibling was far luckier on that front. Admittedly, most(all) of their friends moved away as well. But they had quite a few more and it took longer. Those kids even came back to visit because they still had family in the area.

And my older sibling put a lot of effort into making friends at school as well! And those efforts payed off! People just up and offered to drive them places to hangout. I wasn't given the same luxury. I befriended people of course. But I almost never asked people to drive me anywhere out of guilt. And I was so used to not being able to go anywhere that I didn't know where normal kids hung out. And I have anxiety, social and otherwise. So I didn't like going out. Or at least that's what I tell people. Which is mostly true. I don't like lots of crowded places and I'd hate to bring down the mood with an anxiety attack.

But as much as I'd prefer staying home most of the time, I do like going out sometimes. I just don't know where to go. Since I never really got the opportunity to go places as a kid. Ha, I'm already emotionally and socially stunted, and I found a third category of stunted to be. I'm not sure what this would be worded as, but I guess it sorta falls under the social one.

Really do miss the few times I almost fit in and my anxiety wasn't screaming at me as I hung out and had fun with people though. I doubt I'll add many more of those moments in life considering how hard it was to collect just a few of them before adulthood. I let my childhood fly on by, regretful of it the whole time.

Someday I'll move somewhere that has a parkour gym. Someday I'll let up my own course. Someday I'll live somewhere where I can bounce off the wall without breaking it so I can actually learn parkour. Can't wait till I fill that little hole in my heart that led me to climbing every surface I could manage.

That actually ties back into the school stuff. My teachers, especially the Carpentry ones knew I was a rule follower out of anxiety, except for when there was something I could climb. They all knew they didn't have to worry about me getting in the types of trouble the other kids did.

To the point I could shut myself in the tool room with the lights off and they assumed I was organizing or doing homework.

But if they turned their back and I was near a climbable object, once they turned back around I'd probably be on top of it or hanging off of it.

They were so aware of that fact that whenever I disappeared, they also checked upwards. It's one of my proudest moments that they found me on the roof of a mock house we built, rather quickly because they scanned the room looking up a bit. Knowing I'd just as likely be on the second floor of the tool cage or on top of a table or halfway up a ladder. And they turned and saw me on a roof, inside a building, asked me to do whatever task they'd been looking for me for and moved on without a second thought. We did deconstruct the mock houses after building them so I didn't get to pull that off more than once, especially cause they kept taking the staging down for that reason.

Before we installed windows I kept using one of those large metal carts for drywall with the upwards bars to support and devide them to get in to the highest window of the mock house as well. There was a back room type thing that was likely supposed to be a bathroom which had a higher window. Of which was also part of how I got on the roof without the staging once.

Whenever the staging was up it was easy to get to the roof, as was the reason it was there. So sling myself around a bar and hang there during the morning until I was needed for whatever we were working on.

Anyways point is, the teachers had a mental map of where to look for me. And knew if I was hiding in the back on a ledge people wouldn't sneak over to there to smoke. So i a rule follower except for climbing was a good enough deterrent to limit their blindspots by one. Kids still kept vaping in the other blindspots caused by being in a giant woodworking shop that for part of each year had mock houses or half constructed sheds before we shipped them out to whoever we made sheds for.

I, no joke, used a desk as a makeshift bed during summer. I had a loft bed, which is bunk bed, except it has a desk on the bottom instead of a bottom bunk. Which means summer sucked, severely.

My specific one, had a desk that was the same length as the bed, some have them on the short side instead.

So I put a pillow down and turned a fan towards me and I was set for summer naps. It was also just, whatever the material was, didn't get super uncomfortable to be on while sweaty.

I did take the entire top of the frame apart and put it under the legs of the thing and move my bed to the floor part way through the summer as well. So I couldn't get a chair close enough to the desk to use the desk. But I accepted that as a consequence and until I got a new bed I simply refused to put it back together the way it was supposed to be and continued to swap between the floor level bed(it was still on a bed frame which was a couple inches of metal and bars so no I was not on the floor, technically) and the desk that I was treating as a nap space.

It was very comfortable to me. But my dad was worried that if anyone had seen it back then that cps would have been called on him and he tried to convince me the floor bed was a bad idea. And that's how I got a new bed! Except I miss the layout now. 😔 it was very cozy and I liked it.

I have a glass rock, it says happiness. I have spent most of my life saying that I use it to bash depression in the head. Thats what they get for telling a literal child it has depression, very weird coping mechanisms. Such as getting a rock that says happiness to bash over depresssions head.

I do not know if my rock held anger before I touched it, but I have fed it rage beyond measure. For they told me I was a broken thing before I even know I was a thing. Broken in several ways, I chose to combat them as I wanted.

Nowadays I run mostly off of spite, sugar, and caffeine. Most of these things are all from the same can. The spite is simply the backbone to what I am now.

I've always been really interested in the idea of podcasting and I love videogames. So naturally I like so many others would love to go out and be a famous YouTuber or such. But every once in awhile something I do or think about sets that fire back in my heart despite it being more of a side passion and not something I'd ever do super seriously.

Once upon a time, there was a school assignment where my teacher wanted people to actually discuss things. We had topics and split into groups and she slapped a project level grade onto this cause my class notoriously did not do open discussion well. ( I've recently escaped the necessary years of the school system and was there during covid so it helped make quite a few grades far less social )

So we were split into groups(I think we got to pick) and sent with devices to discuss chosen topics and such. It was a mini podcast session, basically with a grade on top. I loved it. It was a little awkward, and I'm glad it was just a voice recording, not a camera, because I hate cameras. But I, as socially awkward and anxious as I am. Had a discussion with two school friends, and that's what they were. I didn't ever see them outta school and only talked in class or at lunch. Didn't even have their numbers yet. (I'm still friends with them, and I'm not gonna lie this memorable moment and videogames are probably the only reason for this) I don't even remember what we talked about.

@biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist well, since you asked so nicely :)

Someone else threw away my teeth.

The reason my father doesn't like dentists and didn't bring us to them as we grew up!

So reaso 1, the lesser reason first. Apparently floride can have minor, but still, negative effects on your immune system. And we already had some health issues as kids so when the dentists kept insisting on Floride treatments. Which your allowed to refuse normally but apparently they were real insistent, my father just decided to not take us back. That's it.

Except he also already had dentist issues of his own. So next reason.

2. My father, and I'm gonna get this story a little wrong cause I can never remember all the details. Got mouth cancer, and lost all his teeth from the damage. They were all falling out and not attached properly and this was after the dentist issues so he pulled them out himself. I believe my sibling accidentally walked in on this as a baby.

So he got some sorta dentist treatment or whatever, and there were wounds in his mouth that he should have been warned about, and he was not. Then those wounds got exposed to radiation from, I think an xray, or something. Which if he'd known there were medically produced wounds in his mouth he wouldn't have done.

And then he got really bad mouth cancer. Same man that had also bit of the tip of his tongue when he was younger.

The cancer centered In his gums and with the previously mentioned damage he lost all his teeth roots to it, or all the gums around them? He had to yank em all out for whatever reason. I was too young to know about this but was possibly already born.... just like not a conscious being. So I don't remember this. Which is why I'm the only one who never remember all the details that haunt my dad and sibling, who has been horribly afraid of blood since seeing him remove his teeth.

But my dad has an accent from his home town, which he'd trained out of himself before the lose of tongue tip and teeth. Which are both valuable parts of making some sounds.

@biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist well, since you asked so nicely :)

Someone else threw away my teeth.

Thank you @podcasts-rotting-chaos and everyone who got me to 5 reblogs!

Hah, forgot that there was a function like this cause this isn't my main. I know All the reblogs are on the spine post cause I don't really set the others into the wild. Also this wonderful achievement is over a hundred days old and I just didn't check notifis for this in a long time....