A person's childhood can vary greatly, and can dramatically shape you into who you've likely become. There's quite a bit you can judge it by, but it's not quite all that easy all the time, so, eh.
On my end, my childhood was... comparably nicer than things are now. Of course, my dad smoked back then, and I'd have my occasional spankings and whatnot. It was pretty typical, for the most part, playing tons of games on the Playstation 2 and having a go at Starcraft and Diablo, it was damn fun.
I had a fair amount of friends and was energetic as hell. I could not stop talking, nor could I ever stop trying to play with others. I was pretty reserved to some extent, but I was also social, which had its conflicts. I became pretty damn good at Mathematics and English, material-wise. I had my troubles with behavior and grades, but ultimately, I wound up achieving one of the highest scores of my elementary school and would constantly get "honor rolls" for high mathematical achievements and English proficiency, with recommendations to a pretty high-end school after scoring incredibly highly on a test of sorts. We called it the GATE (or Gifted and Talented Education) program over here in California.
I was a bit of a teacher's pet, and in a way, always have been. Straight-A's, tons of really nice and reaffirming things that gave me validation for some of my competitive nature, but it also helped as feedback for my innate curiosity at the time. I've absorbed tons of information quite quickly, and had always loved all things astronomical and scientific. I'd consistently watch shows like NOVA or Nature on PBS while doing my homework, and I had a pretty rigorous work ethic (which went completely out of the window after middle school).
Though a lot of things were looking up for me, I didn't realize the shit that was going on within my own family, and I slowly developed an understanding of how tiresome life can be, and general concepts of misfortune. I also tried to expand with my interests. I grew to love art and music, and developed an affinity for creating things. I learned how to play the piano, with my dad starting me out with a little bit of general knowledge on notes, and chord names, as well as minor/major scales, but not much more than that. From there on, I have been self-taught on everything relative to music.
He and I eventually went on to collaborate at our family reunion, where his band, North Star, would perform. I got to play the keyboard for one of the songs. I'd come with him to gigs, and generally just take in the atmosphere, and the music, and mess around outside or play with legos while they played.
Arguments between my parents were more frequent, more intense. Nothing physical, don't worry, but it was pretty verbal. My dad was beginning to become immensely stressed, and we encountered a lot of financial problems. We had a burglar invade our home, shatter my room's window with a brick and take jewelry and money, as well as one of my Playstation 2 consoles, which absolutely fucking destroyed me at the time. I very vividly remember crying from that. During the investigation, I got to start getting to know the police. I met a nice lady who gave me some stickers 'n' stuff. I had an appreciation for the police and actually began to wonder if I'd like to be a helicopter pilot for them someday.
But overall, things were pretty normal, of course some events sucked but were never traumatizing (aside from losing the PS2 lol).
...well, until middle school, at least.
That's where pretty much everything deteriorated.
I've already gone into depth about it at various times, and it's still pretty recent, about 5 years ago from this point, so I'll leave it there.
My childhood, up to this point, was nice.
Everything afterwards has been hell, and nothing less.
...but I've learned a lot. and to some extent, I'm happy that this all happened. I don't think I'd otherwise get to know as much as I know now.
So, I can say I enjoyed it all, for the most part.
- - -
SQ.