Tag: Tags

It’s a new year my dear Island guests. It’s also a year I am starting of rather busy with plenty of people wanting to meet to convey their new year’s wishes. You know the thing, lot’s of coffee and tea events, means also a lot of resupplying, lots of extra house cleaning, additional traveling and all that. So while I am being a busy bee, let’s catch up on some blogger tags I missed either during my hiatus or still have got to do.  We start of with a tag I was mentioned in today! But this one seemed like a good place to start of the new year. A look at my first steps into geekdom. The Geeky Childhood Tag. I was tagged by Lyn, the Otaku Author, who has my thanks. Check out his blog and cool reviews. And of course you can watch HIS answers by clicking on the cocktail below!

The Rules of the Tag

Normally we begin these things by stating the rules, which involve tagging the one who tagged you, a set number of people to tag and displaying a logo. However this time there are no rules. I have no logo to display nor do I have to tag a certain amount of bloggers. So I would like to tackle this a bit differently. I shall tag three people down below, but also nominate every other reader. Just leave a comment below that you would like to take up my invitation and I shall add you to a list to bloggers who actually like to do these tags. Plenty of you out there do not like to participate in these and I have no oversight in who likes these things and who doesn’t. Since most of these post usually have a limited amount of people I can nominate and I hate excluding people to the core, I would at the very least like to keep a list of people who like to engage with these thing. If you have done this tag already, feel free to post a link to yours in the comments, again to show me you are into the taggy thing! Taggers for taggers and all! Please help me give these little nuggets to people who actually enjoy them!

With that being said it’s time to explore my geeky childhood.

Where did your geek come from? Parents? Siblings? Destiny?

Unfortunately the story of me being geeky isn’t a particularly happy one. You see as the tiny thing I was there was already some signs of the wall of my later condition. My motor skills where sub par. I had great difficulty walking stairs, licking my lips, doing some other stuff. While I got therapy, my fine motor skills began to improve but my crude motor skills deteriorated.  I ran funny, I got dressed in the most awkward ways and I was very clumsy. Even with therapy a gap appeared that grew. I was slower, more accident prone and cramped than others so I never really fully got to appreciate playing outside. I was always the slowest to dress up with my girly friends, I was always the first to be tagged out on the schoolyard and got hurt when we would adventure. I broke toys due to sudden loss of motor control for a brief moment and stuff like that. So I never fully got to enjoy myself as much as others did.

Then mom and dad gave me an NES, a way to play where I would not get in the way of myself. For the first time I could play with my friends on the same level, I was as good as Mario 3 as they were, or better. I still liked talking to my girls of course but I didn’t really need to compete in those other things anymore. Of course by the time the SNES came out,  we became old enough that you start bullying each other so in a span of three miserable years I virtually lost all my friends. Except for those who like geeky things and gaming because I actually was kind of good in that. They introduced me to more and more geeky stuff and so I became a geek. It’s the first thing I did not suck at and the first thing that did not alienate me. My first safe space.

The First Geeky Thing You Got Into

So while gaming was the geeky thing that turned me into a geek, the first thing  I officially got into was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the eighties cartoon. Though in europe or at least in the Netherlands we used to call it Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles back than. Twix was still called Raider back in those days as well so you know it’s some early life stuff for me. The neighbour boy across the streets who came over to play a lot was really into turtles so we watched it together and I really got invested in it. The neighbour girl was his niece so she also watched it with us at times but we just connected less, I always felt like I was inferior to her so I sorta rebelled and took more from the neighbour boy than the girl. So rather than dress up like a princess I dressed up like a turtle…and crashed my tricycle when my bandana got caught up in the wheels. I really could have used a half shell right then and there. Turtle-ouwww-er!

Favourite Movie as a Kid

I was a huge disney kid when I was young and later really into power rangers. Now you might think I will say I liked the Power Rangers movie best when I was a kid but no!! That movie sucks.. Even as a kid I saw how much that CGI sucked. I stuck mostly to the disney classics. One of my favorite disney movies however was not even a disney classic. It was Ducktales the movie! It was something we recorded on tv on a video tape (jeez this post makes me feel old) I watched it so much I knew exactly how long to fast forward through the commercials. It was aired on a belgium network and at the end of the movie, when G became a real boy and the subtitles were over, a clip of a belgium singer would play. It was this belgian comedian pretending to be a typical gay guy singing about how manly he is. Times sure have changed. Check this stuff out!

Now while Ducktales the movie is a contender for favorite movie, I gotta say there was one movie that was above it. A movie that I probably should not have been watching at that age yet, but it was Gremlins and even more so Gremlins 2. I loved the mogwai Gizmo when I was a kid. I loved it sooo much. I even had a gizmo plush that at some point just disappeared from my memory. I knew I had one and I was super excited when I got it.. but I think someone might have broken it and mom just gifted me stuff to make me forget..because .. suddenly it’s not there anymore.I did not win the lottery this year so I can’t afford one of those real mogwai toys you got now. Those look so friggin good. The gremlin movies had it all for me, they were scary, they had people die, it was super colourful, very random , adorable beyond  my wildest imagination and the second one featured all sorts of superpowered monsters. Heh I really haven’t grown up a lot have I , thats still the kind of stuff I love.

Favourite Video Game as a Kid

Once upon a time there was a licensed property title that was actually good. A game that allowed you to treasure hunt in transylvanian castles, the amazon rainforest, the himalayas, the deepest mine of africa and even the moon.That game was Ducktales for NES , the first game I ever finished and too this day one of the best video games I have ever played and something that shaped me as a gamer and  completely defined my tastes. To this day I still prefer retro style platformers, like Shovel Knight, The Messenger, Cave Story and of course the ducktales remake. The NES ducktales was what made me cry when I had to sell my old NES. I was into the SNES now and I wanted money for new toys and more games so mom and dad helped me sell it. While I had not issue letting go of Mega Man 2, Mario 3, Turtles 2, Gremlins  and Adventure in the Magical Kingdom (those were all the games I own I think) I cried to see Ducktales go.. not the NES itself, not other games.. just Ducktales. If have exclaimed my love for the moon theme before, but this game has amazing music, great flow and it’s challenging enough for a kid yet finishable It’s one of those.. game-overing resets all you progress games but I didn’t care as kid. I completed it , several times. The moment your race up to reach that number one dime before magica DeSpell and Flintwood Glomgold get there is the perfect closing of a perfect little adventure.One day I hope to get a NES with a copy of the game again…or even just a copy of the cartridge to display as a trophy. When that day happens I’ll definitely Woohoo!

 Favourite Book as a Kid

This one will be somewhat lost in translation.as this is a dutch book, that only got translated in danish, lithuanian. japanese, korean and german. It’s called “De Griezelbus” which roughly translates to “The bus of Horrors, or the bus of scares. This is a serie of six five books that tell the tale of the victims of P.Onnoval , an anagram for the writer of this series Paul van Loon.  In the books a horror book author, invites a school class to join him in his Bus of Horrors , where he will tell them stories out of his new book. Yet the class doesn’t know Onnoval is in fact really a werewolf that is just stalling them with his stories until the moon comes out so he can eat and kill them. In the second part he rises from his death as a vampire and tries again, in the third he exists as a virtual presence trying to possess someone. Each time the formula is the same, kids get trapped in a bus and here horror stories as they have to find a way to escape from the clutches of this evil man. It’s a mix of an overarching  narrative and horror short stories in alternating order. Since the short stories mostly end badly you really to worry about these kids in the main story.Like the bad endings of the shorts sort of reprogram your brain let go of that feeling that everything will work out in the end.

My favorites in the series are the second one and even more so the third one. In the second one I really cared for the students trapped in the bus for some reason and in the third one the plot really had me invested. In the third one the childeren get told the stories trough virtual reality, but each round one character gets to see the story trough the eyes of the main person. By having them experience their own deaths or something extremely traumatic in first person.. Onnoval breaks their spirits one by one with no escape. Those who experienced the trauma usually go catatonic or extremely meek, as a kid this felt as such a good evil ploy! Credits to the fourth book for having my favorite short story. In this one two girls get to camp out in a museum that has a new egypt exhibition what is build up as a night full of horrors ends up a ploy for the museum ward to poison and mummify them so that two of the mummy girls of the exhibition can go free in their stead.The short ends with the reveal that one of the girls was poisoned from the very start and as she force feeds her friend the poison both go along with the ward willingly (trough the poison) in order to be mummified and placed in the display…. darn, I was a messed up kid.

Favourite Memory as a Kid

I didn’t have to much of a happy childhood, the bullying was relentless, no one wanted to trade pokémon with me..because I was me. People threw worms at me or forced me into barbed wire.. or chased me so I would fall in a pit of trash they made. While by now I have to admire the dedication that was put into making my life miserable it did mean that I might not have AS amazing memories as little miss populair or something., There are two contenders for my favorite memory one is a bit more grand than the other. The less grand memory is simply the memory of me beating Donkey Kong Country. By far my favorite SNES game  This game was one of the hardest to beat and I worked hard to get good at it, dedicated myself and the first time I took down King K Rool i felt an emotion I rarely felt in my childhood. Pride. It might have been a silly thing to be proud about but this game mattered to me. I had no trouble in school to get good grades whatsoever so when I was best of the class with grades, I never really felt proud, I was always one of the top contenders and I never really had to work for it. Unfortunately me getting sicker later ruined that as I could not coast trough things anymore due to being absent a lot and it tripped me up.. but anyway.. Donkey Kong was one of the first times I experienced genuine pride… directed at myself, it’s nice to experience it , especially if you never had it before.

The second memory is a bit more grand, it’s a chain of events that is a mix of bad luck that lead into something positive.  It all started with a competition held by a local bakery that got his supply from a local windmill. They held a colouring competition and me being creative, created blossom out of my moms nail polish on the trees,  made the sky a sunset orange rather than a normal blue and really made it feel like a warm spring late afternoon. My creativity led me to win the first price, I remember the second price was a set of lego’s shaped like a windmill which I really wanted to have…but I won the first price. So I had to go up the windmill to fetch my price.  This scared the bejeezus out of me as the stairs there.. along with my motor skills and on and off fear of heights, this already was a terrible experience. I managed to get up there.. all cried up and flustered, just to find out they wanted to take pictures of me and ask me questions for a local newspaper. My first anxiety attack was the result… yaaay fun! Turns out I won a brand new bike… which I was way to tiny for..but of course for the picture I had to get on the bike regardless…. I fell off…. So now I had a bump on my head, a red up cry face, an anxiety attack and a bike that was to big for me.  Things weren’t looking good. I was very upset. Than my parents took me the city treated me to a “frietje met kroket” some dutch junk food that is basically french fries with a stick of breaded beef stew, deep fried. Than dad told me he would sell the bike and I could get a gameboy for the money of that bike. So I got my gameboy and got a game and finally that day turned around. The day I got my gameboy is still etched into my memories and I was one happy camper. I never got that lego windmill though.

A Character You Looked Up To as a Kid

Since being the cool kid was out of the question from a very early age, I guess I determined I would be the good thing. So as a kid I took on a sensible role model. Captain Planet. Saving nature and saving animals was something I deeply respected, as well as his other wisdoms such as to stay in school and all that standard be a kid crap. I loved shows that focussed on saving nature. Right now I have really moved away from that, it’s not like I don’t care anymore but we can take things a bit far, I matter as well, at least for me. While I listened to captain planet… and dutch santa for that matter, I risked falling into that. “All work and no play make Pinkie a.. giant douche ‘  kinda trope. While most of our cartoons were subbed they also got pulled from tv very fast. Which meant we had to watch the rest on the german station RTL. Captain Planet in german is much harder to follow for a non native german speaker. I mean I can still talk with germans, like casually but when we talk about poison gasses, types of poulton, deforestation and such.. yeah I am gonna lose track.

So soon I replaced Captain Planet as my hero with Dotty, the mouse inventor of the rescue rangers. I pretended to be her a lot, I would love to invent stuff like her so I spend all day in my room playing to be dotty inventing stuff. Among my greatest inventions for example were.. putting water in your piggy bank so if someone stole your money you could follow the water on the floor and find out who stole it, Attaching a Lego shark to a pencil.. because the lego shark made everything look cooler.. and the msot famous one.. my glow in the dark lamp. It’s a desk lamp on which I melted all sorts of glow in the dark stuff. It would charge the glow in the dark stuff when you used it as a desk light.. and if you entered your room in the dark .. it would glow and you would always be able to find the light. Of course it looked like ..basically a lamp dipped in candle wax, it would stink of molten plastic every time you turn it on, drip hot plastic on your skin if you weren’t careful  and mom threw it away after a few days, ..but Dotty at least inspired me to invent something! It was awesome… then again those might be the plastic fumes talking.

A Character That Scared You as a Kid

I never really had big troubles with  monsters in series or anything. Shredder from the Turles never scared me, nor did Stripe in Gremlins. While I found some characters exciting I never really feared”the monster under my bed”. So my parents thought I was immune for it. It was an evening like any other, I just played with a punch of cardboard turtle toys, I got from my aunt and uncle, they were amazing when a new episode of Ducktales was on tv. It was the episode that in english is called  Duckworth’s Revolt. In this episode the butler of Scrooge Mcduck gets abducted by aliens and Huey Duey and Louie follow to rescue him from the evil Vegedonians. Evil vegetables that force you to labour in their gardens for life.. or throw you in the vacuum of space. Brigadier Broccoli, Lieutenant Garlic and Sergeant Squash, there was also a whipping plant that never got a name but that one looked darn evil as well. Sergeant Squash for some reason scared the soul out of me.

That night I had nightmare after nightmare about Sergeant Squash about being forced into slavery or crushed into death. That’s right when the little ducks ask what happen if they don’t work for him he tells them he will squish and squash them. The dutch voice actor does it with so much intensity that too this day I still can hear those words that haunted me that night. Even adding it to scenes where the orginal did not use it.. as a catchphrase. You see them nearly throw the butler into space and yeah these aliens were cruel. I could hear them patrolling the hallway in our house. I screamed in terror so much that night my mom took my out of bed and forced me to rip apart all those new turtle toys as punishment. It did not help. now I felt sad and scared.. and anger to my mom.  When I woke the next time I guess my mom saw the terror in my eyes for real and I saw she regretted making me tear up those toys… “Oh shit Pinkie is really scared I messed up” It was as if I could read my mothers thoughts in that moment. I told mom I deserved my punishment to try and make her feel better as I knew I forced her hand. I did not get any sleep that night, I stayed up..pretending to be a sleep , but I was staring at the empty book that once held those cardboard toys, while behind me in the hallway I still heard them…Squish Squash..Squish Squash… Never did I get so spooked by anything ever again… and why it was this particular thing I don’t even know.

And the Nominees are:

As Told by Carly
Fred 
Inskidee

And of course everyone reading this will be able to participate! Let me know if you are interested in doing Tag Posts or not in the comments! I’ll make a list!