UC Santa Barbara shooting suspect manifesto

My Twisted World
The Story of Elliot Rodger
By Elliot Rodge
Introduction
Humanity… All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly women. It has made me realize just how brutal and twisted humanity is as a species. All I ever wanted was to fit in and live a happy life amongst humanity, but I was cast out and rejected, forced to endure an existence of loneliness and insignificance, all because the females of the human species were incapable of seeing the value in me.

This is the story of how I, Elliot Rodger, came to be. This is the story of my entire life. It is a dark story of sadness, anger, and hatred. It is a story of a war against cruel injustice. In this magnificent story, I will disclose every single detail about my life, every single significant experience that I have pulled from my superior memory, as well as how those experiences have shaped my views of the world. This tragedy did not have to happen. I didn’t want things to turn out this way, but humanity forced my hand, and this story will explain why. My life didn’t start out dark and twisted. I started out as a happy and blissful child, living my life to the fullest in a world I thought was good and pure…
Part One
A Blissful Beginning
Age 0-5
On the morning of July 24th, 1991, in a London hospital, I was born. I breathed in the first breath of life as I entered this world, weighing only 5.4 pounds. My parents must have been filled with happiness and pride that day. They had just witnessed the birth of their first child, and they named me Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger.
I was born to young parents. My father, Peter Rodger, was only 26 when he impregnated my mother, Chin, who was 30. Peter is of British descent, hailing from the prestigious Rodger family; a family that was once part of the wealthy upper classes before they lost all of their fortune during the Great Depression. My father’s father, George Rodger, was a renowned photojournalist who had taken very famous photographs during the Second World War, though he failed to reacquire the family’s lost fortune. My mother is of Chinese descent. She was born in Malaysia, and moved to England at a young age to work as a nurse on several film sets, where she became friends with very important individuals in the film industry, including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. She even dated George Lucas for a short time.
My mother and father had been married for a couple of years before my mother became pregnant with me. In fact, her pregnancy was an accident. She had been taking pills to prevent pregnancy, but when she visited my father on one of his film sets, she fell ill and the medication she took for that illness thwarted the effect of the anti-pregnancy pills, and so their lovemaking during this period resulted in my life.
Only a couple of months after my birth, I went on my first vacation. My parents took me on a boat to France. I was already a traveler! Of course, I have no memories of this trip. My mother said that I cried a lot.
At the time that I was born, my mother and father were living in a house in London, but shortly after my birth they decided to move to the countryside. We moved to a large house made of red brick in the county of Sussex, with vast grass fields surrounding it. The house even had a name: The Old Rectory. This was where I spent my early childhood, the first five years of my life, and it was beautiful. The memories I have of this period are only memories of happiness and bliss.
My father was a professional photographer at the time, just in the stage of becoming a director. My mother gave up her nursing career to stay at home and look after me. My grandma on my mother’s side, who I would call Ah Mah, moved in with us to help out my mother. I would spend a lot of time with Ah Mah during these years.
This was a time of discovery, excitement, and fun. I had just entered this new world, and I knew nothing of the pain it would bring me later on. I enjoyed life with innocent bliss. I can remember playing in the fields and going on long walks with Ah Mah to pick berries. She would always warn me not to touch the stinging nettles that sometimes grew in our fields, but my curiosity got the better of me, and I got stung a few times. There was a swing in the back of our yard, which I had many good times on.
The first birthday I remember was my 3rd birthday. My parents threw a party for me in our field. I had a helicopter birthday cake. I can remember one of my friend’s parents cutting off the first piece and giving it to my friend. I threw a tantrum because I was expecting to get the first piece… It was my birthday after all. My father bought me a toy tractor that I could ride around in, and I would play with it all the time after that.
Sometime after my 3rd birthday, we all went on a vacation to Malaysia, my mother’s home country. I have only flashes of memory of that vacation. I enjoyed it very much. We visited a few of my mother’s relatives.
For preschool, I was enrolled at Dorsett House, an upscale all-boys private school in the countryside, near where we lived. I was forced to wear a uniform, which I hated because I had to wear uncomfortable socks up to my knees. I was very nervous and I cried on my first day there. I can remember two friends I made by name, George and David. I would always play in the sandpit with them.
I didn’t like school at Dorsett House very much. I found the rules to be too strict. My least favorite part of it was the football sessions. I never understood the game and I could never keep up with the other boys in the field, so I always stood by the goal-keeper and pretended to be the “second goal-keeper”. My favorite part was playing in the woods after lunch. There was a particular climbing structure that I had a lot of fun with.
My preschool class once went on a field trip to the park, where I had the misfortune of getting lost. As my class was eating lunch, I ventured off to another area of the park, and when I returned, my class had moved on. I remember panicking and asking strangers for help. It was a terrifying experience for me. I was eventually led to my class by the strangers I talked to.
I remember one funny incident when we were taking school pictures. They forced us to sit cross-legged, which I hated doing, so I absolutely refused to sit that way for the picture. The teachers eventually conceded, and the picture was taken with me being the only one sitting differently.
The holiday season was the best part of the year for me. It must have been very cold in England, but I don’t remember the cold. I just remember how much fun I had. I was filled with joy when it started snowing outside – I loved playing in the snow. My father helped me build a snowman once. We would start with little snowballs, and roll them around our field until we formed the body, and then we would decorate it.
During Christmas, my parents always had parties and gatherings. My father’s best friend, Christopher Bess, who was also my godfather, came to our house frequently. We would often go to my father’s parent’s house in Smarden, Kent. I would call my grandmother on my father’s side “grandma Jinx”. My
memories of my grandfather, George Rodger, are faint; he had fallen very ill at this period. My father’s brother, uncle Jonny, had a son one year younger than me, who was named George, after my grandfather. I always played games with cousin George in grandma Jinx’s garden. The two of us got along well.
On New Year’s Eve our neighbors once set up a bonfire party in the field next to our house. I was fascinated by how big the fire was. I had never seen anything like it, and it astounded my little mind. This was also the first time I saw fireworks. My father gave me one of those sparklers to play with, which I was enraptured by.
There was one very special place that my father would often take me to. It was at the top of a range of beautiful rolling hills that I termed the “London Hills”, because I thought that London was on the other side of them. We would go there to fly kites. I can remember these experiences vividly. The hills were full of tall straw-like grass, and the weather was always windy – perfect for kite flying.
It was a time of utmost happiness and joy for me. My father taught me to fly a kite by myself. The wind was so strong that I feared it would lift up my frail little body and carry me into the clouds. Once I got the hang of it, it was exhilarating. We would fly our kites together and run with the wind. I will never forget that place.
My favorite childhood film was The Land Before Time. I used to watch that movie all the time with Ah Mah. It was about a baby dinosaur named Littlefoot who had just lost his mother and was journeying through a dangerous world to find the “Great Valley”, a land of prosperity and peace. I remember the feeling of utter sadness I felt during the scene when his mother died, and the triumphant and happy emotions that swept over me when he finally discovered the Great Valley, after going through all the hardship to get there. I watched this movie so many times that just thinking about it brings the emotions back. It was a big part of my childhood.
Already a world traveler, I went on a trip to Spain with my parents and my parent’s friends Patrick and Lupe. It was the fourth country I’ve been to at such a young age. We stayed in an exquisite castle-like house that I believe was owned by a friend of ours. The house had a tower that I was extremely curious about. At one point, my parents and their friends ventured up to the top of it, but they made me stay below because I was too young. I was sorely disappointed. As they were climbing the tower I went outside to look at the cacti surrounding the house. These cacti also sparked my curiosity, and I foolishly decided to touch a cactus. I ended up getting cactus needles all over my hand, and it took a long time for my mother to remove them.
Shortly after my trip to Spain, we went on another trip to Greece. We stayed at a hotel near the beach. It was very hot there. The weather was new to me, as I was used to the cold British climate.
The trip to Greece was significant because during this time, my father received the news of the death of my grandfather George Rodger. He died of natural causes on my 4th birthday, at the age of 87. It was the first experience I had of the death of a close relative, and the first time I saw my father cry. My 4 year old self could not imagine my father ever crying, and so when I saw him cry that day, I knew how shaken he was. It was a very sad day for all of us. We immediately flew home.
I believe that it was during the time after my 4th birthday that my father came to the decision to eventually move to the United States. As he was just becoming a director, he believed Los Angeles would offer more opportunities. We took a short trip to California to gain an initial look at it. I don’t remember much of this trip, but I do remember having a good time. At the age of 4, I, Elliot Rodger, had already been to six different countries. Who can claim that, eh? The United Kingdom, France, Spain, Greece, Malaysia, and the United States.
It was also during this time that my mother became pregnant again. I was going to have a sibling. My parents decided to have another baby, this pregnancy being planned, so that I can have a sibling to grow up with. We later discovered it was going to be a girl.
Before my 5th birthday, my mother went into labor to deliver the baby. I can remember the night vividly. I was very ill that night, a bad omen. I stayed at home with Ah Mah while my mother and father were at the hospital, and we watched movies together. I was fraught with anticipation the whole time. And then my parents came back late in the night, and with them they brought a little black-haired baby wrapped in a bundle. I had a baby sister, and they named her Georgia.
I have no memories of what happened on my 5th birthday. Shortly after it, we were making plans to permanently move to the United States. The news excited me, but I was sad at the prospect of leaving my life in England behind. My father took a short trip to the U.S. by himself to scout out houses. I remember talking on the phone to him while he was there. He told me he found a very nice house for us to move to. I asked him if it had a swimming pool, and he said it did. This news made me very happy.
And then the time came. We started packing everything up at the Old Rectory. On my last day at Dorsett House school, my teacher was giving all of us candies when my mother came to pick me up early. I said goodbye to all the friends I had there. That was the last time I saw them.
My father was given the offer to buy the Old Rectory for about 400,000 Pounds (we were only renting it at the time), but he declined, a decision he would regret later on, as it would have been a worthy investment.
I cried as we drove away from the Old Rectory. All the experiences I had there; playing in the fields, driving my toy tractor, tending to my garden, going on walks with Ah Mah, swinging on the swing; all those experiences were gone. I was about to start a new life. We boarded the plane and took off to America.
Part 2
Growing up in America
Age 5-9
The plane ride was like a dimension between worlds. I was about to enter a whole new world. A whole new life. But none of that went through my little 5 year old head at the time. I slept for most of the journey there, and I can remember looking out the window at the vast stretch of clouds below us. I wondered what it would be like to go down there and run along them as if they were a landmass, not thinking about the fact that I would fall right through!
When we arrived in America, I was very tired. We collected our luggage and loaded them onto a new SUV that my father rented. The image of us driving out of the airport is still fresh in my mind. I often think of it as my first step into my new life in the U.S.
I was so sleepy when we reached our new house that I didn’t even bother to look around yet. The house was partly furnished, and we already had a sofa and a television. The first thing we did was watch a movie. The movie was Independence Day, and I fell asleep at some parts, but managed to watch most of the movie.
In the morning I was full of energy. I eagerly clamored up the stairs to search for my new room. I looked at all the rooms before singling out the one that I wanted as mine. When I told my mother about my decision, she told me that the room I picked was meant to be my sister Georgia’s room. I got a bit upset, but eventually settled for the room next to it.
The house was quite big, with white walls and a beautiful backyard that led to a gated swimming pool area. It was located in an upscale part of Woodland Hills. The town of Woodland Hills has great
significance in my life. It would be the town that I grow up in. A large portion of all my life experiences, good and bad, would take place in this town. I can recall the first time I said the name on my lips… Woodland Hills… my new hometown.
Soon after settling into our lovely new home, we were disturbed by a problem typical of California: An earthquake. My mother woke me up in the middle of the night, and we all hid under the kitchen table. The earthquake actually turned out to be very small, with even smaller aftershocks following it, but I was still scared. Having never experienced an earthquake before, the only impression I had of earthquakes were the huge, land rupturing earthquakes I saw in The Land Before Time. After this experience, I began to see earthquakes as common, minor disturbances.
And there I was, a young 5 year old boy who has so far lived a happy and joyful life about to embark on a new journey; the journey of growing up in the United States of America. I felt a surge of enthusiasm at the prospect. I now considered myself an “American kid”, as I told my parents. I got accustomed to all the American T.V. shows, and I started to adopt an American accent. I was looking forward to my new life.
Soon enough, I was enrolled in school. My father did some extensive school-searching after our arrival, and he found a small private school on Shoup Avenue named Pinecrest. I was to attend kindergarten there. Pinecrest… My 5-year-old self at the time could not imagine how significant this place will eventually become for me. A great turning point of my life will eventually take place there, a tragic turn for the worse. But that will come later, in a darker chapter of my story, when I enter my pre-teen years. For now, I was a kindergartener who was enjoying life to the fullest.
Kindergarten at Pinecrest didn’t turn out so well. I had a very unpleasant teacher who was impatient with how far behind I was in my schoolwork, as I had missed a couple months of school due to the move. During playtime, this teacher would keep me in the classroom to do extra work in order to catch up. My parents didn’t like this teacher, and one of their friends recommended another school for me, a private school nearby named Farm School; it was named after the farm that was attached to it. After only a couple of weeks at Pinecrest, my parents took me out of it, and I would not return again until I go there for Middle School six years later.
My first day at farm school turned out to be a good start. I had two teachers, and they made an effort to introduce me to the other kids. There was one particular boy named Joey who they assigned to show me around. He was nice to me at first, but would soon turn out to be a rotten little prick who I would always get into fights with. He then became my greatest enemy at the school.
The first real friend I made in the United States was a girl named Maddy Humphreys. Isn’t that ironic? The first friend I made in the United States was a girl! She was the first female friend I’ve ever had, and she would be the last. Maddy and I started playing together at Farm School, and eventually my parents became very good friends with her parents. Maddy’s father is the famous British musician Paul Humpreys, and her mother is named Maureen, though we would call her Mo. They had a nice house in Hidden Hills. Our families got together often to have barbeques and dinners.
I was a 5 year old boy playing with a girl my own age like any normal boy would do. I was enjoying life in a world that I loved. I was happy, and completely oblivious of the fact that my future on this world would only turn to darkness and misery because of girls. This girl who was my friend, Maddy Humpreys, would eventually come to represent everything I hate and despise; everything that is against me, and everything that I’m against. I was playing innocently with this girl, in the manner that all children play. We even took baths together; it was the only time in my life that I would see a girl my age naked. When I think about the experiences I had during my friendship with her, it makes me think ominously of the fact that all children, boys and girls, start out the same. We all start out innocent, and we all start out
together. Only through the experiences and circumstances of growing up do we drift apart, form allegiances, and face each other as enemies. That is when wars happen, and that is when the true nature of humanity rises to the surface. At this stage of my life, of course, my war hadn’t started yet, and it wouldn’t start for a long time. I was enjoying my life without a care in the world, not knowing that all of my joy is destined to turn to dust.
My Kindergarten year at Farm School was filled with exciting, new experiences, all healthy for a growing boy. I had friends, I had playdates, I socialized with the other boys at school, despite getting into lots of conflicts with Joey. I only got into trouble once, over a quarrel with another boy during playtime, and I was sent to the principal’s office. Having never been in such trouble at school before, I recall being overcome with nervousness and fear, which caused me to cry for an hour. I especially enjoyed our arts and crafts time, and I loved it when our class would go on visits to the school’s farm.
After a bright and joyous school year, it was time to graduate. I was swelled with pride as I wore my graduation cap at the ceremony. I loved that school very much, and I was sad to leave it. Kindergarten was over, and soon enough I would enter elementary school.
My 6th birthday soon followed. My parents arranged a Disney-themed party at a play center that my mother had been taking me to frequently. I invited everyone from my Farm School class, all the boys and the girls, except for Joey. I deliberately omitted Joey as an act of revenge for being mean to me throughout the year, and I felt a sense of satisfaction in doing so.
The party was cheerful, and there was a man dressed as Merlin to host the festivities. I sat at the end of the table during my birthday meal, wearing a wizard hat. As my cake was presented to me, I felt only elation and glee as I took in a breath and blew out my candles. Life was good.
6 Years Old
My favorite part of the day during this jubilant period of my life was our afternoon trips to the park. Specifically, Serrania Park. This park was beautiful and green, with concrete pathways cutting through fields of grass and a fun playground for us kids to play in. I always took to playing on the slides, and sometimes I would go on the swing, though my father had to push me. I remember getting jealous of other boys who were able to swing by themselves, boys who were even younger than myself. It was the second time I realized my lack of physical capability. The first time I had such an inkling of my shortcomings were those disastrous football sessions at Dorsett House.
Eventually, my father got around to teaching me how to swing by myself, and after some practice, I was able to do it. After that, I would always soar up and down on that swing in the Serrania park playground well into the hour of twilight.
I was very small and short statured for my age. I never gave this much concern during my early childhood, but this fact fully dawned on me the day my family took a trip to Universal Studios. At the time, I loved dinosaurs. I was fascinated by them. I had just recently watched the movie Jurassic Park, and when I found out that there was a Jurassic Park themed ride at Universal Studios, I couldn’t wait to go on it. We queued up in the line and waited for an hour. When reached the front, the park staff presented me with a measuring stick, and I didn’t fit the requirements. I saw other boys my age admitted onto the ride, but I was denied because I was too short! The ride that I was so excited to enjoy at the theme park was forbidden to me. I immediately fell into a crying tantrum, and my mother had to comfort me.
Being denied entry on a simple amusement park ride due to my height may seem like only a small injustice, but it was big for me at time. Little did I know, this injustice was very small indeed compared to all the things I’ll be denied in the future because of my height.
We resorted to trying out the E.T. ride, which I was admitted to. I had a miserable time on this ride, however, because the dark atmosphere and the mechanically moving alien statues that lined the queuing area scared the hell out of me. By the time we got to the actual ride, I was crying in fright, but later calmed down as the ride turned out to be mild and relaxing towards the end.
I always enjoyed my family’s get-togethers with the Humphreys. These get-togethers became a common occurrence in my life. Maddy became a very close friend of mine. She was the only friend from Farm School who I continued to see after I graduated. They had a huge back yard area, and the two of us would go on adventures. She also grew up watching The Land Before Time, and we would watch the sequels together whenever they released a new one.
Sometimes when I went to her house, she would have other female friends there, and I played with them too. I had no trouble interacting with girls at that age, surprisingly. My six-year-old self was playing with girls, unbeknownst to the horror and misery the female gender would inflict upon me later in my life. In the present day, these girls would treat me like the scum of the earth; but at that time, we were all equals. Such bitter irony.
It was now time for me to start First Grade. My parents enrolled me at Serrania Avenue Elementary School, which was just down the street from Serrania Park. I wouldn’t remain at this school for long, however, because only weeks into my First Grade year, my parents decided that they were going to move to Topanga.
Most of the kids at Serrania Avenue school will end up going to Taft High School nearby, a place that will cause me great suffering in the future. Perhaps some of the kids in my class at Serrania will end up turning into those who would bully me at Taft. I don’t remember any of the kids from my class there, so I will never know the answer to that. It’s very disturbing to think about.
I quite enjoyed my brief time at Serrania. My parents sometimes made me stay an hour after school; I believe this was because they figured it would help me make friends. I can remember this after-school playtime being a positive experience. There were always games that I played with the other kids. And thus I was a bit frustrated when my parents told me they were going to transfer me to another school after only a couple of weeks of settling into Serrania. That frustration would soon cease, because the years that I would spend at Topanga Elementary school would be some of the best years of my life. The last years of being a carefree child.
I started First Grade at Topanga Elementary School a couple of weeks before we prepared to move to Topanga. Topanga is a secluded, mountainous community surrounding a canyon that runs through the Santa Monica Mountains, located in between the San Fernando Valley and the Pacific Coast Highway. We had only passed through this community a few times, when we would take trips to the beach. It has a certain rugged beauty about it.
On my first day at Topanga Elementary, I was very nervous. Since it was about a month after the first grade term started, I was going to be the “new kid” at school. I remember the nervousness taking over my body as my mother drove us up the steep road that led into the school proper. My new class was just lining up to start the day as we walked onto the main courtyard. My teacher, Mrs. Matsuyama, was very nice and understanding. My mother said goodbye and I got in line with the other students. The first kid I saw there was a chubby boy named Bryce Jacobs, who was staring at me strangely.
As we got to class, Mrs. Matsuyama assigned one of the students to show me around and help me adjust. This student happened to be none other than Philip Bloeser. Philip was always very mature for his age, and he was nice to me on my first day. He became my first friend at Topanga Elementary.
The day turned out to be one of great fun. Class time was not too boring, and we did some fun arts and crafts activities. For recess and lunch, there were two playgrounds: the Upper and the Lower. The
first and second graders would go to the Lower playground, and the third, fourth, and fifth graders would go to the Upper. The Lower playground was smaller, but it had some nice amenities, especially the sloping hill to the side of it, where I would enjoy running up and down “kicking dust”, a game I instantly created due to the dust-like dirt on this hill. When my mother came to pick me up, I recall having so much fun that I didn’t want to leave! That’s a first. In the past, I was always eager to go home after spending hours at school.
The drive to and from school was a long one, or at least long for my six-year-old self. My favorite part of the drive was the descent from Topanga into the Valley. The view of the broad expanse of the Valley was breathtaking as it opened up before us after clearing the final hill. I would make that trip through the winding roads of Topanga Canyon every day for the next couple of weeks, before we moved to the new house. Sometimes my mother would pick me up, and sometimes my nanny would. I don’t remember the name of this nanny, as she was only with us for a brief period of time.
I loved the new house the moment I laid eyes on it. It was a beautiful, round, wooden house located up the road from Valley View Drive, in the better part of Topanga. It had two stories, a swimming pool, and a lovely deck that provided a view of the lush mountains. I instantly named it the “Round House”.
I was sad to leave our house in Woodland Hills, our first house in America. I would miss the good times I had there, playing with Maddy and my other friends, swimming in the pool, the close proximity to Serrania Park where I spent a lot of time enjoying the elations of a carefree childhood. Our new Round House in Topanga, however, turned out to be a worthy replacement.
My room at the Round House was a bit smaller than my old one, but I remember it being very cozy. Shortly after we moved in, Ah-Mah came to visit from England, and she baked my favorite peanut cookies. We had some very happy times during the beginnings of my life there.
My father’s new directing career was taking off quite well too, and he would go away a lot to direct commercials for prestigious companies, leaving my mother and the nanny to look after me. The only downside of this was my father’s absence from my life. Despite this, I always looked up to him as a powerful and successful man.
Adjusting to my new environment in Topanga was quite easy for me, especially since school was so much fun. I was now a Topanga Kid. During recess at school, I started noticing this boy with slightly long blonde hair who also enjoyed kicking dust. Before I met him, I always mentally nicknamed him the “King Arthur Kid”, due the regal look his hairstyle gave him. It was only a matter of time before our dusting kicking antics would collide with each other. We then teamed up and starting playing the game together, and this was the start of a long and interesting friendship. This boy’s name was James Ellis, and he would become my best friend for the next 14 years of my life.
Sometimes, the two of us would join with Philip Bloeser and some other boys, and play fun games like handball, war games, and tag.
Soon enough, I would start having frequent playdates with James Ellis. His house was just down the hill from mine. James’s father was named Arte; and his mother, Kim, became one of my mother’s best friends.
Christmas arrived quickly, and for my present I got my first video game console, a Nintendo 64! I had little knowledge of video games before this. I barely knew what they were. My father is the one who introduced me to them. With the Nintendo 64, my father bought the games Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. I was fascinated with this new form of entertainment, and my father and I would bond a lot over our video game sessions.
Of course, while playing these video games, my innocent, happy self knew nothing of the significant role video games would play during a large portion of my life… and the sanctuary such games would
eventually provide for me from the cruelties of this world. For now, they were just a form of entertainment like any other hobby.
Life was good at the round house, but soon enough I had to witness my mother and father get into a lot of arguments. I was too young at the time to understand what they were arguing about, but I knew they were not getting along. It didn’t really concern me all too much, because every other aspect of my life was wonderful.
I had playdates with James Ellis every week. Sometimes he would surprise me with a visit after school, as we lived so close by. I went over to Philip Bloeser’s house a few times as well, and I met his younger brother, Jeffrey. The Bloeser’s also became good friends with my mother. They lived in a nice house up the road from our own, with a deck that provided an extraordinary view of the Topanga mountains.
At some point I learned about the possibility that parents can separate… divorce… no longer live together. The prospect baffled my little mind. I once sat down with my mother on our outside deck and asked her if she and father would ever divorce. She told me it will never happen, and that I had nothing to worry about. I was relieved by that. Little did I know, such a thing would happen in only a few months time.
My first grade year ended splendidly. I made a few lasting friends, and I had a blast at Topanga Elementary. I always considered myself a good, well-behaved student, so I was a bit disappointed at the few times I got in trouble. My class had a system where if we do something wrong, we would change our card color from green to yellow, and then to red if we did any more troublemaking. I thought I would never have to change my card, but I had to change it to yellow a few times for minor things. When first grade ended, I made the resolution that in second grade I will never be forced to change my card.
After my last day of school, I was looking forward to a long summer break, my favorite time of the year. I was a bit dismayed when my parents made me attend summer camp. My father had to go away a lot for work, and my mother needed to have some time to look after baby Georgia. Summer camp wasn’t all that bad, I had some fun. It consisted of kids from First through Fourth grade, and we played lots of games and watched movies.
7 Years Old
My last memory of my parents being together was my 7th birthday, and I would always cherish it. We didn’t have a party for my seventh birthday, but more of a small get-together for lunch. Maddy and the Humpreys were our only guests. We celebrated it at Gladstones, my favorite restaurant at the time. It was in the Pacific Palisades, right on the beach. I had my favorite meal, lobster.
It was a very happy day for all of us. I was turning seven. That was a big number for my little mind. I had spent seven years on this fascinating world, and my life was at a good start. I had loving parents, I had friends to play with, I was having fun at school, and I had all the toys a little boy could want. A stranger would look at this seven year old boy and think that he has a great life in front of him, that there is nothing to worry about. Indeed, there shouldn’t be anything to worry about… But I was just a child. I still had a few more years to enjoy life in carefree bliss before I would eventually discover how twisted and cruel this “fascinating world” really is.
My parents seemed happy that day. I remember them laughing and having a good time. It would be the last time I remember them being happy together. Perhaps they really weren’t, perhaps they were
just putting up a front so that I could enjoy my birthday. I couldn’t even fathom the possibility of my parents separating.
Very shortly after my seventh birthday, the news came. I believe it was my mother who told me that she and my father were getting a divorce; my mother, who only a few months before told me that such a thing will never happen. I was absolutely shocked, outraged, and above all, overwhelmed. This was a huge life-changing event.
My father was to stay at the round house, and my mother would move to another smaller house in Topanga. It was arranged that me and my sister will mostly be living with our mother, and we would go to father’s house on the weekends. My father was required to pay child support to my mother so that she can look after us.
My life would change forever after this. The family I grew up with has split in half, and from then on I would grow up in two different households. I remember crying. All the happy times I spent with my mother and father as a family were gone, only to remain in memory. It was a very sad day. Just like the move to the U.S., it would be like starting a whole new life with a new routine.
Despite the initial sadness I felt from my family splitting in half, my new life situation wasn’t all that bad. It was still practically the same life, though I lived with my mother in one house and my father in another.
My mother’s new house was small and red in color, located up a steep driveway from Topanga Canyon Boulevard. I would call it the “Red House”. It was the smallest house I’ve lived in at that point. It only had two bedrooms, and I had to share a room with my sister Georgia. We had a bunk-bed, and I slept on the top. I was quite uncomfortable with this change at first, being used to having my own room and living in bigger houses. My mother’s kind and loving nature, however, made up for this, and she turned the household into a fun environment which I enjoyed living in.
After spending the first week at mother’s house, father came to pick me and my sister up for the weekend. Georgia had become very attached to mother after this week, and she burst into tears when we drove off. I too, was a bit distressed at having to go from one house to the other every week, but I would soon get used to it.
The Round House was very different without mother being there. When we entered, I felt a wave of sadness creep over me as I was reminded of my life when mother and father were together. The house was full of memories; happy, cheerful memories that were lost in the past. With my mother missing from it, there was a sense of bleakness and loss to the place. Father did his best to cheer us up. I could tell that he, too, was very saddened by the recent events.
My father soon rented one of the rooms of the round house to his good friend Dan Perelli, one of his first friends in America. Dan used to live close to our house in Woodland Hills until he was struck with financial troubles, which I’m assuming is why he started renting a room from my father. I would always call him “Uncle Dan”. From this point on, Uncle Dan would stay with us as a lodger for a few years.
The time to start Second Grade arrived. My new teacher was named Mrs. Weisberg, and she was very kind. The students in my class were mostly the same as my First Grade class, with only one or two new students who transferred from other schools. I made a few new friends, such as Shane and Tommy.
I was very disappointed to find out that James Ellis would not be returning to Topanga Elementary for second grade. In fact, his family would be moving out of Topanga to the Pacific Palisades, where they would be renting a house from their friends, the Lemelson’s.
My father’s stay at the round house was very brief. He suffered some temporary financial setbacks on top of the divorce, so he decided to move to a smaller house on Old Topanga Canyon. It was a very
abrupt move, and I would never see the round house again. One day, after he picked me and my sister up from mother’s, he took us to the new house and that was it.
The house was a small, two-story house in a more rustic part of the Topanga mountains. The upstairs portion had only a bedroom and bathroom, and it was rented to Uncle Dan. All around the outside of the house were very small hills and hiking trails that led up to the mountains. Overlooking these hills was a massive, imposing rock called “Big Rock”. When I first saw Big Rock, I told myself that one day I’ll climb to the top of it!
I took a liking to this new environment, and every time I visited father on the weekends, I would always be outside, exploring and adventuring. There were always new places to discover in that secluded region. I didn’t venture too far into the wilderness, however, because of the danger of coyotes and mountain lions.
After only a couple of months since my seventh birthday, a new and very important person would come into my life. After father picked us up from school one day and took us to his house, I saw a woman with dark hair and fair skin standing in the kitchen, and she introduced herself as Soumaya. She would become my stepmother. Father told me she would be living with us from now on. At first I thought she was just another friend who was temporarily staying with father, similar to what Uncle Dan was doing. My father having a girlfriend so shortly after divorcing my mother didn’t even occur to me. I couldn’t understand it. Soon enough, though, I realized that Soumaya was, in fact, his “girlfriend”, and they were together just like how my father and mother were together. It was the first time I learned the concept of a “girlfriend”, and it was hard to grasp. Before that, I always thought a man and a woman had to be married before living together in such a manner, and that it would take a long time for such a union to happen. Father finding a new girlfriend in such a short amount of time baffled me. I was completely taken aback.
Because of my father’s acquisition of a new girlfriend, my little mind got the impression that my father was a man that women found attractive, as he was able to find a new girlfriend in such a short period of time from divorcing my mother. I subconsciously held him in higher regard because of this. It is very interesting how this phenomenon works… that males who can easily find female mates garner more respect from their fellow men, even children. How ironic is it that my father, one of those men who could easily find a girlfriend, has a son who would struggle all his life to find a girlfriend.
I soon became accustomed to Soumaya being part of father’s household. She hails from the Akaaboune family, a very prominent family from the country of Morocco. For the initial period of her being a new member of the family, we got along well, and she was quite fun. But soon she would start to discipline me in a harsh way that I wasn’t used to. I felt that because she wasn’t my real parent, she had no right to discipline me in such a way, and so I rebelled. That’s where the first conflicts arose. There would be many more to come in later years.
Along with the addition of Soumaya, I had two new nannies. The first nanny was a French woman named Celine, though she was only with us for a brief period, so I don’t remember much of her. My second nanny was a German woman named Christine. Christine would stay with us for a year, and I became very fond of her. She would always look after me during my time at father’s house, and whenever I went on my adventures into the hills, she always accompanied me.
Halloween this year marked my first time going Trick-or-Treating. My mother took me to my friend Shane’s house, and we walked around his neighborhood collecting candy. Still obsessed with dinosaurs, I dressed up as a dinosaur for that Halloween. Trick-or-Treating was a new thing for me, as it wasn’t so popular in England. When it was all over, I was amazed that I had so much candy.
Even though James Ellis no longer went to Topanga Elementary, he was still my best friend, and I saw him a lot. Mother would take us to his house in the Palisades almost every week, where I would play with James, and Georgia would play with James’s sister Sage. He got me interested in a new phenomenon that gripped many children of the era: Pokemon.
When I got my first Gameboy console, I started playing Pokemon Red Version, and I was hooked instantly. I then started collecting Pokemon cards, and James and I always compared and traded them. The Pokemon anime cartoon became my favorite show on television. It was a very fun, captivating hobby, and every boy at my school had a folder of Pokemon cards. It provided something to have, something to show off, something to talk about. The best cards were the “shinies”, and everyone coveted them.
Mother was still friends with George Lucas, so we got invites to the red carpet premiere of Star Wars Episode 1. I always was and always will be a huge Star Wars fan. I had already seen the original trilogy many times, and I considered myself very lucky to be able to go to the premiere of the new Star Wars movie.
It was an absolutely astonishing experience. It was just me and my mother – Georgia was too young, so she stayed at home with a babysitter. Episode 1 is infamous for being the lesser movie of the three new prequels, but as a kid I enjoyed it very much. Afterwards, I met some of the actors, and I shook the hand of Jake Lloyd, the actor who played Anakin Skywalker in the movie.
My Second Grade year flew by like a breeze. I don’t remember much of it, but I did have a blast. During recess and lunch, I played a lot with Shane and Tommy. We would play Pokemon on our Gameboys, and sometimes we would have playdates where we played Nintendo 64 games such as Banjo Kazooie, Super Mario 64, and Donkey Kong 64.
I failed in my goal of never having to change my card, which really disappointed me. I went through most of the year without changing my card, but right when the year was about to end, I was caught talking in class with a friend named Danny Dayani, who sat next to me, and I had to change my card to yellow. I blamed Danny for it, because he was always talking in class, but I still had to change my card.
After a fast and fantastic year, summer came quickly, and with it my 8th birthday. My 8th birthday was mellow, but pleasant. I remember my mother inviting a few of my friends from my second grade class and we had a cake. During my weekend at father’s house, we all went to the restaurant Typhoon in Santa Monica to celebrate it. It was quite a fancy restaurant next to a small airport, and they had a lot of exotic dishes that I tried.
8 Years Old
As I was now eight-years-old, father decided that I was old enough to climb Big Rock. Whenever I was at father’s house, I would always see Big Rock looming in the distance, and I was just itching to climb it. I had already conquered every other rock in the area… there was only Big Rock left. And so I set out with father and a few of father’s friends to finally climb to the top. The furthest I had climbed on this rock was about half way up with Christine. There was a very steep rise which I wasn’t able to ascend without some help. The second half of the journey was quite a challenge, but it was so exhilarating! I was very nervous the higher we climbed. The best part, of course, was reaching the top, and the sense of accomplishment I felt. I finally did it! Looking down, I could see the vastness of the Old Topanga Canyon region, and father’s house looked tiny down there. I was too scared to venture close to the edge, and I felt a sense of dread at the prospect of falling from such a height. The way down was even more challenging, but I felt so proud of myself for climbing that rock that it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.
I was very excited to start Third Grade. As Third Graders, we now got to play in the Upper Playground of Topanga Elementary, and I considered myself one of the “big kids”. The Upper was vast, with a bigger playground, more handball courts, and four basketball courts. My classroom was located in a bungalow adjacent to the Upper, and my teacher was named Mrs. Buntin. She was a young teacher; I believe she was in her late 20’s. Being used to having very old teachers, I was surprised at how young my new teacher appeared.
I continued to play with the same friends during recess and lunch, where we would spend our time comparing and trading Pokemon cards. In the midst of elementary school, I didn’t interact with girls much, but this was normal. I was at that period of life where the boys played with the boys and the girls played with the girls, completely separate from each other. Girls were the last thing on my mind. Maddy was still the only friend I had who was a girl, and I only saw her on the occasions when our families would have a get-together, which became more and more rare after Maddy’s parents divorced and Paul Humpreys moved back to England.
It was as if the girls in elementary school were part of a separate reality. Despite not having much interaction with them, they treated me cordially, as they treated all other boys of my age. This was fair, and I was content with this. I hadn’t gone through puberty yet, and so I had no desire for female validation. My eight-year-old self had no inkling of the pain and misery girls would cause me once puberty would inevitably arrive and my sexual desires for girls would develop. Sexual desires that would be mercilessly spurned. Some of the boys in my class would grow up to be embraced by girls, while I would grow up to be rejected by them. But at that moment in time, we were just innocent children growing up together. All innocence is destined to be shattered and replaced with bitter brutality.
I was living in ignorant, innocent bliss. And I was happy with it.
This period of my life, aside from my early childhood in England, was one of the best periods. Life was fair and life was satisfying. As kids, proving our self-worth and gaining validation among our peers was achieved in a fair manner, by how good we were at the games we played, or how big our collection of Pokemon cards were. No one had unfair advantages. This was perfect, and this is how life should be.
And… boy did I have a lot of fun. James’s family had to move to yet another house in the Palisades, and mother would always take us there. She became great friends with James’s parents Kim and Arte. James and I would battle on our Gameboys, trade Pokemon cards, and walk to the recreation center down the street to play in the pool, and then for dinner we would all go to the restaurant Mott’s in the center of the Palisades.
I was quite proud of my collection of Pokemon cards. I had gained a few “shinies” over the last few months, and I enjoyed showing them off to other boys. Shiny cards came randomly in card packets our parents would buy for us. The card that I coveted the most was the Charizard card, and one morning when my mother opened a packet for me and I looked through the new cards… there it was. It felt like the best day ever, and I was swelled with excitement. I jumped up and down all around the Red House, and I couldn’t wait to show it to James, who already had a Charizard himself.
Through being friends with James Ellis and going to his house a lot, we became acquainted with the Lemelson family, who were family friends of Kim and Arte. The Lemelson family is a very wealthy family who has been financially helping James’s family for a while. Rob Lemelson is the son of Jerome Lemelson, the inventor of the bar code, and his net worth is in the hundred-millions. Rob’s son, Noah, is our age and great friends with James, and eventually I became friends with him too, though we would never be close friends. Sometimes we would all go to the Lemelson’s house, also in the Palisades, and the three of us played together.
For Halloween, we went to the Lemelson’s for Trick-or-Treating, and from then on it would become tradition to go Trick-or-Treating with them. I dressed up like a dinosaur again, because I couldn’t think of anything else to be. I wanted to dress up as Ash Ketchum from Pokemon, but no store had that costume in stock. The Palisades was full of wealthy families, so the candy they gave us would be in much larger amounts, obviously. I remember competing with James and Noah as to who would get the most candy at the end. Afterwards, we would have dinner at Rob’s house, and then we would dump our candy in piles on the floor to examine what we got. That was my favorite part of it.
Early in my Third Grade year, my mother would often take us to a festival near Topanga Canyon Boulevard, where small concerts were held and people barbequed great food. A friend of hers had something to do with these events, and I played with the son of this friend. He was named Riley Anapol, and he was two years younger than me. A First Grader. I played with some other younger kids there as well, peers of Riley, and I had a good time. Riley became a common friend for a while. The significance of this is that Riley Anapol would eventually become someone I would harbor a great hatred for. Riley would grow up to get lots of girls, and I would grow up to be rejected by girls. But back then he was a friend, a peer, and we were playing together as equals. It’s funny how the world works.
When the holidays arrived, my father announced that we were going to take a family vacation to Soumaya’s home country of Morocco and meet her family there, and afterwards we were to stop by in England. I wasn’t excited about Morocco, since I didn’t know much about it except that it was in north Africa, and I wasn’t too excited about the fact that we’ll be staying there for six weeks either, which meant that my entire winter break would be spent in a foreign country that I knew nothing about.
But of course, I had no choice in the matter, and Morocco was added to the list of the many countries I’ve been to at such a young age. I looked forward to visiting England afterwards and seeing family there.
Morocco was very strange and foreign to me, even more so than Malaysia, which was more westernized. I found it to be very backwards, though it had a lot of culture and the people were friendly. I remember disliking a lot of the meals, but enjoying the deserts and pastries. Soumaya’s parents were divorced, though they lived walking distance from each other in the Kasbah, a historic community located in the center of Tangier. Soumaya’s mother, Khadija, has a small but elegant house, and her father, Abdesalem, has a very large, almost castle-like house that is famous for being a location where a scene from James Bond: The Living Daylights was shot. This fascinated me, as I was a huge James Bond fan at the time. In the center of this house there was an open courtyard where I always played with a kid named Ayman, and his two younger brothers. They were adopted by Soumaya’s father a few years ago and live with him.
After a long stay in Morocco – too long in my opinion – we made our stop in England to visit relatives. We stayed at grandma Jinx’s house, and I was able to play with my cousin George for a few days. On one of the days we stayed in England, my mother’s sister, Aunt Min, and my grandma Ah Mah came to visit and brought me a lot of English chocolates which I relished.
All in all, it was a good trip and I was glad to be able to experience it, though the length of the trip cut into my school schedule, and I missed a couple of weeks of school.
After the holiday season, my nanny Christine had to leave back to Germany, and this saddened me deeply. Chistine would always be my favorite nanny, and I was in a sullen mood on the day she left.
The remainder of my Third Grade year went by quickly. I continued my Pokemon endeavors, increasing my card collection and progressing on the Gameboy game.
I had a conflict with my friend Shane during this time. Because of some arguments we previously had, I started to play a game with him in which he would become my enemy and rival at the school. For me, I
was just playing with him, but he took it seriously and the conflict escalated a lot more than I thought it would. We once got into a small physical fight in which I hit him on the arm and was sent to the principal’s office. That was the biggest trouble I’ve been in at Topanga Elementary. This little conflict with Shane lasted for the rest of Third Grade, but we would later reconcile and play again as friends in Fourth Grade.
Before summer came, my father’s spontaneous career as a commercial Director took off once again, and he became very successful. At this point, he was probably the most successful he’s ever been. With this success, he decided to move to a bigger and better house. After doing some searching, we moved to a house in an upscale area of West Hills, near Woodland Hills. I loved this house at first sight. It had five bedrooms, which was more than enough space for our family along with Uncle Dan who was still staying with us. It also had a huge swimming pool with a spa, a large grass field to play in, a basketball court, and a nice view of the Valley. I was a Valley kid again.
Despite father’s move to a much larger house and all the benefits that came with it, I still preferred my time at mother’s house, just because of her gentle and fun attitude and the energy of her household. My mother indulged in me more than my father and Soumaya ever did. She knew what I liked and what I didn’t like, and she would go out of her way to make my life pleasant and enjoyable. I was quite annoyed with the recent decision between my mother and father to extend my stay at father’s by two days of the week. From that point on, me and my sister would only be at mother’s house from Monday to Thursday, and on Thursday night we would go to father’s house until the following Monday.
My 9th Birthday was spent at father’s house, and father and Soumaya threw a party for me. They invited a few of my friends from Topanga Elementary, though the only friend I remember being there was Philip and his younger brother Jeffrey. James was invited, but he wasn’t able to make it. They also invited a few of Georgia’s friends, which really annoyed me, since it was my birthday, and not Georgia’s. It was quite an eventful party, and it took place in our backyard. My father hired a magician to perform tricks for everyone.
9 Years Old
My ninth year was very interesting, and I went through a lot of changes emotionally and intellectually. It was the year in which I matured to a point where I would start observing the world more conscientiously. Before I turned nine, I was living life as a carefree child in a world that I thought was only good and pure. From this point onwards, I would gradually discover more about the world and society. I would face problems and frustrations that I wouldn’t even think about before. My life would still be positive and bright, however, and I would live it to its fullest.
The first frustration of the year, which would remain for the rest of my life, was the fact that I was very short for my age. As Fourth Grade started, it fully dawned on me that I was the shortest kid in my class – even the girls were taller than me. In the past, I rarely gave a thought to it, but at this stage I became extremely annoyed at how everyone was taller than me, and how the tallest boys were automatically respected more. It instilled the first feelings of inferiority in me, and such feelings would only grow more volatile with time.
I desperately wanted to get taller, and I read that playing basketball increases height. This sparked my brief interest in basketball, and I would play it all the time during recess and lunch in the Upper. Most of the basketball courts were unused, so I would play it by myself, or with anyone who cared to join me. During my time at father’s, I would spend hours playing basketball at father’s basketball court, shooting
hoop after hoop long into the evening, and I also remember lying on the ground in the basketball court trying to stretch my body as much as I could in between basketball sessions.
When I played basketball at school, some boys would join me, and when they did I saw that they were much better at the sport than me. I envied their ability to throw the ball at double the distance than I could. This made me realize that along with being short, I was physically weak compared to other boys my age. Even boys younger than me were stronger. This vexed me to no end.
My fourth grade classroom was located in the center area of the school, and my teacher was named Mrs. Gill, who had an assistant named Mr. Devine. Fourth grade was a strange year due to the emotional problems I would go through, and I didn’t have as much fun at school as I did in previous years. In class, I sat near Keaton Webber, and I got into a few conflicts with him. We weren’t quite enemies, but I disliked him intensely and I would always consider him a foul prick.
By nature, I am a very jealous person, and at the age of nine my jealous nature sprung to the surface. During playdates with James, sometimes he would have other friends over as well, and I would feel very jealous and upset when he paid more attention to them. Feeling left out, I would find a quiet corner and start crying. My mother and Kim were very understanding, and did the best they could to console me.
On the rare occurrence that my mother would have Maddy and Mo over for dinner, or if we would go to visit them at their house, Maddy often played with my little sister Georgia instead of me, and this too made me jealous. I remember all the times I cried when this happened.
Jealousy and envy… those are two feelings that would dominate my entire life and bring me immense pain. The feelings of jealousy I felt at nine-years-old were frustrating, but they were nothing compared to how I would feel once I hit puberty and have to watch girls choosing other boys over me. Any problem I had at nine-years-old was nirvana compared to what I was doomed to face.
A few months into fourth grade, it was decided by my parents to change me and my sister’s living arrangement yet again. This time, we would be switching between mother’s house and father’s house each week. One week would be spent at mother’s, and the next at father’s. This was a fair split. At first I wasn’t so sure about it, because I always disliked any change to my life, but I found it to be a better arrangement. This enabled me to spend weekends at mother’s house, during her week, and I was very excited about this. I’ve only ever spent weekends at father’s beforehand.
During father’s week, I would mostly be looked after by our two new nannies, Rosa and Amparro. They were of South American origin and didn’t speak much English, but they were very kind.
I started to have intense conflicts with Soumaya. I hated the rules she imposed on me, which I believed she had no right to impose, as she wasn’t my true parent. I hated how she would force me to drink milk every morning and very foul-tasting soup for dinner. I made such a fuss about having the soup that she used it as a punishment. Whenever I did something wrong, she would force me to drink the soup. I once had a playdate with Philip at father’s house, and when I yelled at my sister because she was annoying us, Soumaya punished me by sending me to my room for an hour, embarrassing me in front of Philip. After this incident, I never had a playdate at father’s house ever again.
This conflict with Soumaya started a trend in which I would love being at mother’s house and dread the weeks I had to spend at father’s house. On top of the conflicts with Soumaya, father was rarely there, as he was always out of town for his work. After spending a nice week at mother’s house, I would cry when Sunday came and I had to go to father’s on Monday. I would then spend the entire week at father’s house looking forward to going back to my mother’s. I remember those Mondays when my mother dropped me off at school for the first day of father’s week… I felt so sad that I cried when I saw my mother’s car driving away. Of course, I would hide the tears to avoid embarrassment at school, but I would feel miserable for that whole day.
I always had a pleasant experience during mother’s week. She always arranged playdates for me, because she knew I was too shy to initiate them myself. She always made everything fun. On weekends after dinner, we would have “treat time”, where she would bring out a box of candies for me and my sister to choose from.
I had a lot of playdates with Philip, and through Philip I also played with his brother Jeffrey, who was two years younger than us. While Philip was calm and mature, Jeffrey was the complete opposite. Jeffrey Bloeser was wild and boisterous, which often brought a lot of fun to my playdates with Philip.
My mother once had a party at her house and invited all of our family friends. James Ellis came over, and so did Philip and Jeffrey. It was the first time I saw all of them together, and it made for an interesting experience. I got a bit jealous, however, when Philip and Jeffrey seemed to respect and pay more attention to James than they did to me. When we were playing on my Nintendo 64 and I was competing against James, they rooted for James, which really upset me.
As my fourth grade year approached its end, my little nine-year-old self had another revelation about how the world works. I realized that there were hierarchies, that some people were better than others. Of course I was subconsciously aware of this in the past, but it was at this time of my life – at nine years old – that I started to give it a lot of thought and importance.
I started to see this at school. At school, there were always the “cool kids” who seemed to be more admirable than everyone else. The way they looked, dressed, and acted made them… cooler. These “cool kids” as I called them, included Keaton Webber, Matt Bordier, Michael Ray, Trevor Bourget, Zalman Katz, John Jo Glen, and a few more. They were cool, they were popular, and they always seemed like they were having a good time.
The peaceful and innocent environment of childhood where everyone had an equal footing was all over. The time of fair play was at its end. Life is a competition and a struggle, and I was slowly starting to realize it.
When I became aware of this common social structure at my school, I also started to examine myself and compare myself to these “cool kids”. I realized, with some horror, that I wasn’t “cool” at all. I had a dorky hairstyle, I wore plain and uncool clothing, and I was shy and unpopular. I was always described as the shy boy in the past, but I never really thought my shyness would affect me in a negative way, until this point.
This revelation about the world, and about myself, really decreased my self-esteem. On top of this was the feeling that I was different because I am of mixed race. I am half White, half Asian, and this made me different from the normal fully-white kids that I was trying to fit in with.
I envied the cool kids, and I wanted to be one of them. I was a bit frustrated at my parents for not shaping me into one of these kids in the past. They never made an effort to dress me in stylish clothing or get me a good-looking haircut. I had to make every effort to rectify this. I had to adapt.
My first act was to ask my parents to allow me to bleach my hair blonde. I always envied and admired blonde-haired people, they always seemed so much more beautiful. My parents agreed to let me do it, and father took me to a hair salon on Mulholland Drive in Woodland Hills. Choosing that hair salon was a bad decision, for they only bleached the top of my head blonde. When I indignantly questioned why they didn’t make all of my hair blonde, they said that I was too young for a full bleaching. I was furious. I thought I looked so silly with blonde hair at the top of my head and black hair at the sides and back. I dreaded going to school the next day with this weird new hair.
When I arrived at school the next day, I was intensely nervous. Before class started, I stood in a corner franticly trying to figure out how I would go about revealing this to everyone. Trevor was the first one to notice it, and he came up to me and patted my head, saying that it was very “cool”. Well, that
was exactly what I wanted. My new hair turned out to be quite a spectacle, and for a few days I got a hint of the attention and admiration I so craved.
My interest in Pokemon faded away at this time. In third grade, Pokemon was considered “cool” and everyone was playing it. Towards the end of fourth grade, I found out that everyone was growing out of Pokemon, and the only ones who played it were the geeky kids. I heard some kids joking about how lame Pokemon players were, and I decided it was time to quit.
I talked to James about this. He was still interested in Pokemon, so I gave him my Charizard card as a gift, and as an act of my resignation from the game. Pokemon gave me some really happy and memorable experiences, but it was time to move on.
I then started to notice that all of the cool kids were interested in skateboarding. I had never even ridden on a skateboard before, but if I wanted to be cool, I had to become a skateboarder. I expressed this to my parents, and my father was glad that I was showing an interest in an active sport. He took me to the store Val Surf on Ventura Boulevard to buy me a new skateboard, and I was fascinated by all of the different choices. I settled for a red Val Surf branded Skateboard, and they took it down from the wall and built it for me.
I was thrilled to have this new skateboard and the possible chance it gave me to be a cool kid. It was time to start practicing. I found it very hard to even ride on it in the beginning, and I spent many hours outside trying to get the hang of it. And that was that, I was now a skateboarder, though not yet good enough to reveal myself as one to the kids at school. This was the start of an obsession to copy everything the supposed “cool kids” were doing.
Part 3
The Last Period of Contentment
Age 9-13
Fourth grade ended, and once the summer started, I took a vow to mold myself into the coolest kid I could possibly be by the time Fifth grade began. I anticipated the approval the other cool kids would have of me once I reveal myself as being similar to them, and I looked forward to it.
After about a year and a half of living in the house on Hatteras St. in upper West Hills, my father decided to move into an even better house. This time, all of us spent a day looking at open houses together as a family. We went with a real estate agent and examined some beautiful homes around Woodland Hills. My favorite one was a 3-story house on Llano Drive, in the Woodland Hills Heights, the most prestigious area of Woodland Hills that bordered Calabasas. It didn’t have a pool, but it had a sloping backyard almost three-times as large as our current one. The house had six bedrooms, and I took an intense liking to one particular bedroom that had its own bathroom and a personal balcony. My father showed extreme enthusiasm about possibly buying this house, and I became obsessed with getting that particular bedroom as my own room. When I brought it up with father and Soumaya, they said that the room would most likely be Georgia’s because it was closer to the master bedroom. They said that I would get a bedroom downstairs, one without my own bathroom or balcony. I was furious, and I threw a huge crying tantrum.
Soon enough, father went ahead with the decision to buy this house. I made a big deal about the possibility of not getting that lovely bedroom I wanted, and I kept sulking to father and Soumaya about it. When they finally moved and the first week of father’s at this new house started, I was very anxious. But then, as we entered, father and Soumaya surprised me and revealed that they decided to give me
the room I wanted. I was so happy! I danced and leaped with joy all over the house, and then I went to my new balcony and looked out at the beautiful view of Woodland Hills for an hour.
After the move to this new house, father would never move again, and he still lives there to this very day. I would have many important experiences there for the next decade, both good and terrible.
I needed a skateboard for mother’s house too, and so my mother took me to Val Surf and bought me a gray Val Surf skateboard. I would use this skateboard much more than the red skateboard I had at father’s house, since I had all of my playdates during mother’s week, and mother would make more of an effort to indulge in my new interest, eventually taking me to skateparks every weekend.
I became very excited about my new hobby, and I shared it with James Ellis and Philip Bloeser, my two main friends. I wanted to get them interested in skateboarding as well. It was tricky to get James into it, but he soon got his own skateboard, and we would start skateboarding together around his neighborhood.
As I now considered myself a skateboarder, I wanted to dress in the clothes that all the cool skateboarders were wearing. My mother took me to Val Surf once again, this time to shop for new shirts. I picked out a few that had the logos of skateboard companies on them. Later that day I put on one of my new shirts, and I was thrilled to start going around in it. I felt cool.
At father’s house, I was introduced to a new nanny who would be living with us. Rosa and Amparro left back to their home countries a few months before we moved house. This new nanny was an African American woman named Tracy. She had a very fun personality, and I always had a pleasant time when she looked after us. She was able to drive, unlike my previous nannies, and so she would be the one who would always pick me up from school during father’s week from that point on.
Uncle Dan had a quarrel with my father, and he was forced to move out. I would never see him again after that. Tracy would, in a way, replace Uncle Dan as the lodger who would live at father’s house.
Early in the summer, father forced me to attend summer camp at an elementary school nearby our new house. This school was Bay Laurel Elementary School in Calabasas. I hated the prospect, and I vehemently protested it. The last thing I wanted to do was spend my coveted summer at a school where I didn’t know anyone.
I was starting to like going to father’s house a lot more after moving to our lovely new house with my exquisite new room, but this decision of father’s made me dislike my weeks there again. At mother’s house, I had it my way more often, and that’s how I wanted to live.
I hated having to go to camp during the summer, and I was miserable at the start, but a couple weeks into it I made friends with two brothers named Thomas and Tyler.
On mother’s week, I spent more and more time practicing skateboarding, and I had lots of playdates with James where we would skateboard together. We also had a lot of fun playing Nintendo 64 games, such as Donkey Kong 64, Banjo Kazooie, Banjo Tooie, James Bond Goldeneye, and many more. He also got me interested in collecting Beanie Babies. At first I thought such a thing was very lame and girly, but we used them to fuel our imagination and have mock battles and wars with each other. It was our secret hobby that we told no one about.
I was relieved when summer camp ended, and once it was over my 10th birthday arrived. I had been on this world for a decade, and what a decade it was… full of discovery, fun, and happy adventures. I can’t say the same for the following decade.
I didn’t have a party for my 10th birthday, and I believe I celebrated it during mother’s week. We went out with James and his family to a restaurant in the Palisades.
10 Years Old
I was eager to re-bleach my hair to a fully blonde color, after the disastrous failure of my previous attempt. This time, Soumaya took me to the right salon, and they gave me a short haircut and bleached all of my hair blonde. When I looked at myself in the mirrior, I felt an intense level of satisfaction.
I went to James’s house soon after I acquired my new hair color, and the look of surprise on his face when he first saw me gave me a good laugh.
A couple of weeks later, my hair started to grow and my black hair would show at the roots, but the blend turned out to suit me well, and this would become my hairstyle for the next year.
Mother took me and my sister on a short vacation towards the end of the summer. We drove up the 101 Freeway to Ventura, where we stayed at the Holiday Inn (which has now been replaced by the Crowne Plaza). I found the hotel to be comfortable and luxurious. It was located right on the Ventura Promenade, a beautiful walkway along the beach that led to a long pier.
At this stage, I was very enthusiastic about my new interest in skateboarding, and I took my skateboard with me. I enjoyed practicing on my new skateboard all along the Ventura Promenade. During this trip, mother took me to my first skatepark, which was called SkateStreet. It was humungous, and I was awed by all the towering ramps. I attended a beginner’s class, and the instructor taught me the basics of riding on these ramps. I was absolutely terrified at first, but by the end of the class, I was able to go up and down the smallest of them, and I had a blast.
When we got back to the hotel, we had a nice room-service dinner, and then the three of us watched the movie Finding Nemo on the hotel television. It was a lovely little trip.
Before Fifth grade started, I went with my father and Soumaya to a dinner party at their friend’s house. I forgot who these friends were, but it was a nice house in Beverly Hills. There were lots of guests, and I did what I usually did at such dinner parties… I sat around eating snacks and talked with my sister, sometimes going to father and to ask for a sip of wine.
During this party, I found myself having a conversation with father, Soumaya, and one of the party guests, a boisterous middle-aged man who I can’t recall the name of. Father and Soumaya were talking about how I just turned ten years old, and we discussed life and what the future had in store for me. This man we were talking to… he patted me on the back and told me that I have a great life ahead of me. With a grin on his face, he told me that “in the next ten years, you’ll have a great time… a great time”. I had no idea what he meant by that. I wasn’t even thinking about my future at that point; I was living in the moment.
Now I know what he meant. Childhood is fun, but when a boy reaches puberty a whole new world opens up to him… a whole new world with new pleasures, such as sex and love. Other boys will experience this, but not me, it pains me to say. That is the basis of my tragic life. I will not have a great time in the next ten years. The pleasures of sex and love will be denied to me. Other boys will experience it, but not me. Instead, I will only experience misery, rejection, loneliness, and pain.
At that moment in time, I didn’t think much about this man’s comment. I don’t even remember who he was. But after those ten years have passed and I’ve experienced what I’ve experienced, I can’t help but think about that moment. If only I knew what was in store for me, right then and there.
It was time to begin Fifth Grade. It started out excellently. My teacher was named Mrs. Damart, and she would always be very kind to me.
For the first week of Fifth Grade, I was at mother’s house. I considered myself to be very “cool” by now. I had gotten better at skateboarding, I had blonde hair, and I dressed like a skateboarder. I felt great anticipation for what the cool kids would think of me once they saw my transformation.
To my disappointment, no one really cared. They were all in their own worlds. I don’t remember any kids showing recognition of my new “coolness”. Eventually, I was regarded differently than I was in Fourth grade, which I became content with. The cool kids talked to me more, and I started hanging out with them during recess and lunch.
When father’s week came, I felt frustrated because I didn’t have enough cool clothes there, and it took a while for me to get father to find the time to buy some for me. Mother always got me what I wanted, right when I wanted it. At mother’s house, all of my needs were met with excellent precision, whereas at father’s house, there would always be a time delay because father and Soumaya had less time for me, and paid less attention to me.
Shortly after my Fifth grade year began, my mother decided to move out of the Red House to a small house in Woodland Hills. This new house was located on Topanga Canyon Boulevard, near Dumetz street. Father’s house was just up the hill from there, so it was practically walking distance to father’s house.
I would miss the Red House, despite its smallness and the fact that I had to share a room with my sister. I had some very good times there. This new house was more convenient. It was still a two bedroom house, but one room was big enough to be split in two, and so by having a wall built in the middle, my sister and I each got our own room.
As I got better and better at skateboarding, my mother made an effort to take me to a skatepark every week. By now, skateboarding wasn’t just a sport I was doing to copy the cool kids. I was truly interested in the sport. I even had hopes and dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder. That became my life goal. I loved skateboarding so much. I pictured myself doing amazing tricks in front of a cheering crowd, just like I saw Tony Hawk do in some videos. I pictured the admiration on their faces, and it was awesome.
The skatepark my mother took me to was Northridge Skatepark, and she would take me there every Friday. Northridge Skatepark was an average-sized outdoor skatepark with fine wooden ramps. First, we would have dinner at the Northridge Mall, and then I would sign up for the 7pm to 10pm session at the skatepark. I usually went alone, but after a few weeks of going I made a few acquaintances there, and people knew me. This became a Friday tradition during mother’s week.
On the following Saturday, James usually came over for a sleepover. We would play Nintendo 64 games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Donkey Kong late into the night, and then on Sunday morning mother would take us both to Skatelab, an indoor skatepark in Simi Valley. James had become really interested in skateboarding too, or so I believed. I was always better at it than him though, and I liked it that way.
This was the way every weekend went during mother’s week, and I had the time of my life.
I was so interested in skateboarding that I took my skateboard trick-or-treating for Halloween. My costume, of course, was myself as a skateboarder. We went to the Lemelson’s for a nice dinner and then set out to collect our candy. It was quite tricky to hold a bag full of candy while skateboarding, but I had fun. I remember some teenagers seeing me on my skateboard and saying “why didn’t I think of that”. Hah, that was gratifying.
For Christmas, my mother bought me the new Playstation 2. I had been wanting it for a long time, and when I unwrapped the present and saw the box, I felt so elated. Beforehand, the only video game
console I played was the Nintendo 64 (and the Gameboy, if that counts). The Playstation 2 was much more advanced in graphics, and it amazed me.
When mother announced that I would have to share it with my sister Georgia and that I can’t keep it in my room, my excitement turned to indignation, and I threw quite a tantrum. After crying for a bit, I calmed down and settled to sharing it with Georgia. She wouldn’t be using it much anyways, I told myself.
Even after getting a Playstation 2, I still played my Nintendo 64 a lot because I loved the games I had for it, and I had an emotional attachment to it. The Nintendo 64 was the first video game console I played, and it would always have a special place in my heart.
One day during winter break at father’s house, father and Soumaya went out for a few hours and left me and my sister with Tracy. When they came back, they had a little puppy with them, and announced that it was our new pet. It was mainly a present for Georgia. Georgia had been desperately asking father for a pet puppy for the last year, but I didn’t think he would actually go through with it. I was so shocked that we now had a dog. I was always afraid of dogs when I was little, and I never imagined having one as a pet. The only pets I’ve had previously were my turtle and iguana, who both died within a year of acquiring them. Georgia was given the choice on what to name the puppy, and she named it Lucky. I thought this was a very lame and stupid name.
When I returned to school after the winter break, I noticed that all the cool kids had another interest: Hacky sacking. It was a simple sport consisting of kicking a bean-sack into the air as many times as you can without it landing on the floor. They all had hacky sacks, and they would spend recess and lunch kicking them with each other, since skateboarding wasn’t allowed on school grounds. I didn’t have a hacky sack, and I decided that I needed to do something about that. Mother took me to the store Pac Sun where I got a hacky sack with an orange and green design. When we got home from the mall, I started practicing. I remember struggling with it first, but I spent the next few afternoons concentrating on getting good at it. I spent many hours well into the night practicing in my backyard.
Once I was able to kick the hacky sack properly, I made a big deal of the fact that I was now interested in it. I would go up to the group of cool kids and show off my skills, and I played with it every single minute I spent outside during school time.
The Upper playground was rebuilt over the break, and there was a brand new playground to play on. I always loved brand new things, and the new playground was quite engaging. On the very first day that we were allowed to use it, I played tag with Philip Bloeser, Addison Altendorf, Bryce Jacobs, and a few others.
I never really became good friends with the so-called “cool kids”. I would see them more as competitors than friends. During recess and lunch, I mainly played with Philip and his little clique which consisted of Addison Altendorf, Kevin, and T.J Tassone.
I made a few Fourth Grade friends through hacky sacking, though I forget their names. I mainly played with them during recess and lunch. One day, after I stayed an hour after school at the Upper, I was hacking sacking with them and I kicked my hacky sack up onto a roof. It wasn’t first hacky sack, thank goodness, but I was quite fond of it and I was sad to lose it. I wonder if it’s still up there… No, it would have been cleared away by now.
I still refused to have any playdates when I was at my father’s house due to the incident with Soumaya in Fourth Grade. Because of this, my father and Soumaya became concerned that I didn’t have any friends.
Soumaya forced me to befriend some of the neighbor’s kids who lived just down the road. They would often skateboard outside of their houses. I was aghast… the prospect of walking up to a bunch of kids who I didn’t know and asking to play with them was terrifying to me. They were “cool” skateboarders, and that made it even more intimidating. Of course, I wanted to be friends with them and join in their fun, but I was too scared that they would think I’m weird. I have always been shy by nature.
Soumaya didn’t understand this, and she gave me no choice in the matter. She sent me out of the house and wouldn’t let me back in until I introduced myself to them. I tried pretending that I was playing with them, but instead I would hide in a quiet street corner. To my surprise, Soumaya somehow knew I was doing this, and she came to confront me. She then got Tracy to take me down to where the kids were playing and push me into it. Tracy went up to the kids and asked if I could play with them. I felt embarrassed and timid, but they welcomed me.
I always had the subconscious preconception that the coolest kids were mean and aggressive by nature, which is quite true, and I was shocked that these kids were being nice to me and letting me play with them. After a fun afternoon skateboarding around the streets of Woodland Hills, I regretted not befriending them sooner. They went to Woodland Hills Elementary School, the school my sister would soon go to.
A couple of weeks later, Soumaya forced me to befriend yet another group of Woodland Hills kids. This second group lived nearer to my house, and they weren’t skateboarders, however they liked riding bikes and scooters. One of them was a black boy named Lucky Radley, who I thought was very nice at the time. I found it strange that he had the same name as my dog. He was a fourth grader, and he would later go to the same middle school as me, where he would become an object of my extreme jealousy and hatred. Looking back, I can’t believe I actually played with him as a friend in my father’s neighborhood.
In the spring, uncle Jonny and the cousins came to stay at father’s house. Cousin George bunked with me in my room, and the two of us became instant friends. I hadn’t seen him since my last trip to England, and back then we were little kids. I enjoyed having a friend to play with on a daily basis without having to arrange a playdate, and the week that they stayed with us was great fun. I once took him along to play on scooters and skateboards with the neighbor kids, and we also went to the beach a lot.
Indeed, it was a great week, and I was sad to see them go. I looked forward to seeing him again when we were to go on our vacation to France and England in the coming summer.
After Jonny and the cousins left, Soumaya’s mother Khadija came to stay for a few months, and I was made to share my room with her, because father had converted two of the guest rooms into his office, and Tracy was staying in the downstairs room. I had an extra bed in my room, so I suppose it made sense to them. I was a bit annoyed with this at the start, but I bonded well with Khadija, so I soon became ok with it. She was like a third grandmother to me.
My mother attained tickets to the red carpet premiere Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones. We received four tickets. Georgia was old enough to go, and I persuaded mother to let me give the fourth ticket to James. I was awestruck by the time the movie ended. It found it to be absolutely phenomenal. James and I talked about it for hours afterward.
My life at school was starting to become mediocre again, and I became frustrated with my struggle to be cool. I didn’t have a regular group of friends who I always played with. I was like a nomad, moving from group to group and trying to fit in with each one, but never fully integrating. I feared that the cool kids didn’t regard me as one of them, and even Philip’s clique never considered me one of their core
friends. Despite all of my attempts to be cool, I didn’t feel as if the other kids respected me as such. I was still quite the outcast, as I always will be.
My social life changed somewhat when Mrs. Damart announced that we would have new seating arrangements in class, and the process of deciding on who sits where was up to us. Our class consisted of tables that seated about five to six people, and when our name was called randomly, we could choose anywhere to sit, meaning that everyone had a chance to sit with their group of friends. I didn’t have a core group of friends, so I was thrown into a state of panic.
Originally, I was sitting at the table where Philip’s clique sat, but all of their names were called before me, and I was booted from their table. At this point, I just chose to sit anywhere, and I ended up sitting next to John Jo Glen. Matt Bordier and Danny Dayani also sat at our table. These were kids who I regarded as cool, so I was content with sitting with them.
I never really interacted with John Jo Glen that much in the past. He was one of the biggest jerks of the school, next to Trevor and Keaton. We quarreled a bit at the start, but soon enough we started socializing, and I talked with him about some new games I got for my Playstation 2. We became friends when John Jo suddenly asked me if he can come over to my house. I felt happy that he asked me this… it would be the first playdate I would have without my mother arranging it for me. This would spark a fun new friendship that would last well after Fifth Grade. The random seating arrangement next to John Jo was the best thing to happen to me in Elementary School.
Despite my struggles to be regarded as “cool” and my obsession with attaining such recognition, Fifth grade was my favorite school year in Elementary School. I played with more people than I ever did in previous grades, I was less shy, I wasn’t a dork, and I had an awesome time learning how to skateboard and hacky sack. It was memorable year filled with joyful experiences.
I didn’t want the school year to end. Once Fifth grade was over, I will have to go to Middle School, and the prospect filled me with anxiety. My little innocent mind always looked at Middle School as something far in the future, when I grow up. I didn’t want to grow up. I was enjoying my life as a kid right at that moment. I didn’t think about the future.
Kids in my class told many rumors of Middle School life that filled me with fear and sent a shiver through my spine. Even through watching movies and T.V. shows I got a glimpse of what was in store for a Middle Schooler. There was talk of girls, and how it would soon be “cool” to be popular with the girls. Girls were like completely foreign creatures to me. I never interacted with them… I wasn’t expected to. In Elementary School, boys played with boys and girls played with girls. That was what I was used to. That was my world. I heard stories of how boys are expected to start kissing girls in Middle School! Such things overwhelmed me. I tried to dismiss it as much as I could and enjoy my life in the present moment.
My school arranged a camping trip for the entire Fifth Grade class before graduation day. At first I didn’t want to go because I would be away from my parents for five days, something I was never used to. I was afraid I would get too homesick. I never spent more than one night away from my parents. On the rare occasion that they had to go out of town for a few days and left me with a nanny, I would cry at night.
My teacher Mrs. Damart came up to me one morning before class started and persuaded me to go, saying that the graduation trip was something I wouldn’t want to miss. It would be a once in a lifetime experience, and after some hesitation I agreed to go along.
I forgot exactly where this camping trip took place. It was located at a special camping retreat somewhere in the forest to the north of Los Angeles. It was very secluded… a small village of cabins and tents surrounded by wilderness and hiking trails. For the trip there, I decided to go with my friends Bryce and Charlie in a car instead of taking the school bus with everyone else. This was much more comfortable, and I was glad to have snagged a spot in the car with them.
Everyone was assigned to groups of five to share a cabin or a tent. I was originally placed in the group with Charlie, Bryce, and a few others… but that group was given a tent to sleep in. I was appalled by how drab and uncomfortable the tents looked. I wanted a cabin. So I went to my teacher and asked to be transferred to a group that was sleeping in a cabin. She placed me in a group of some cool skateboarder kids, including Michael, Sam, Trevor, Matt, and Stephen. I felt a sense of pride to be part of this group.
During the daytime on this trip, the whole Fifth Grade class participated in games, outdoor activities, nature hikes, and barbeques. It was great fun. Nighttime in the cabin was like having a sleepover with five people, and it was a new experience that excited me. Before bedtime, Michael Ray took out a magazine that had pictures of beautiful model women, and all of the boys gathered around and looked at them. So… even at the early age of ten, boys were starting to be attracted to the female body. I didn’t understand this… I hadn’t yet reached that stage. I pretended to be interested just so that I wouldn’t appear uncool. All of those boys probably lost their virginity by sixteen. Damn them.
The trip ended up being so fun that I didn’t cry at all about being away from my parents for so long.
And finally, it was time to graduate from Elementary School. Before the ceremony, our whole class watched a video full of footage of school life throughout the year. I saw a few glimpses of myself caught in the footage, and I felt gratified. My life at Topanga Elementary School was a blast, full of memorable experiences and wonderful times.
I dressed in a nice shirt with a tie for the ceremony. All of the Fifth Graders lined up and walked down an isle through the center of the Auditorium, with the audience of parents and siblings on either side. When I saw my parents, they looked so proud of me. Each student had to walk up to their teacher on the stage and receive a graduation award. We weren’t required to give a speech, to my relief. I would be too nervous to talk in front of an audience. The graduation theme song was “Time of Your Life” by the band Green Day, one of my favorite bands. Whenever I would hear this song again, I would think about that glorious day, and the memories would make me feel an extreme sense of nostalgia. In the afternoon, there was a graduation party at the Top of Topanga community recreation center, a lovely place that provided a view of the whole Valley.
My mother took me to have dinner at the sushi restaurant Kabuki afterwards. It was just me and her. As we sat down at the restaurant after all the excitement, I took a moment to fully ponder over the fact that Elementary School was all over. It was done. I felt so accomplished and proud… I was happy, things were good. But along with that happiness was a feeling of sadness that I will be leaving all of those experiences behind. A whole chapter of my life had just passed, and a new one was beginning. That day was such an extraordinary day. A day to remember, a memory to cherish.
For the first few weeks of summer, mother arranged playdates with various friends and acquaintances I made from Topanga Elementary, including Trevor Bourget, Matt Bordier, Charlie Converse, John Jo Glen, and Philip Bloeser. It was interesting to have Trevor and Matt over. I never thought I would have playdates with them. Matt was one of the coolest kids in the school; he was a skateboarder and a baseball player who seemed to garner respect from everyone. I envied him during Elementary School even when we were friends, and I would deeply envy and hate him later on in life, when I find out how much success he would have with girls.
Again, I repeat, that as children we all play together as equals in a fair environment. Only after the advent of puberty does the true brutality of human nature show its face. Life will become a bitter and unfair struggle for self-worth, all because girls will choose some boys over others. The boys who girls find attractive will live pleasure-filled lives while they dominate the boys who girls deem unworthy. Matt Bordier will go on to live a life of pleasure. Girls will throw themselves at him. And I will go on to be rejected and humiliated by girls. At that moment in time, we were just playing together as children, oblivious to the fact that my future will be dark and his will be bright. Life is such a cruel joke.
My mother continued to take me to Northridge Skatepark every Friday, and I also attended a skateboard camp at Pedlow Skatepark for a couple of weeks. At this camp I bumped into one of the kids I played with around father’s house.
I had been trying very hard to get better at skateboarding, but when I saw that there were boys a lot younger than me who could do more tricks, I realized that I sucked. I was never good at sports or any physical activity, and when I discovered skateboarding, I thought that finally here was a sport that I could excel in and even became a professional at. It crushed me a little inside to see that I was a failure at skateboarding after more than a year of practicing it. I could never master the kickflip or heelflip. All I could do was the ollie jump and ride down a few ramps. I saw eight-year-old boys at the skatepark who could do a kickflip with ease, and it made me so angry. Why did I fail at everything I tried? I asked myself. My dreams of becoming a professional skateboarder were over. I felt so defeated.
Because of this, my interest in skateboarding slowly faded away during this summer. James had recently told me that he was no longer interested in the sport, so I no longer had him to skateboard with anyway. I just decided to forget about it for the moment.
James’s family moved to a new house in Malibu. The house was owned by the Lemelson’s, and they were staying in it temporarily. Mother took us there a few times where I adventured with James in the wilderness area that surrounded the house. We would often go to a small plaza in the center of Malibu. There was a playground there, with a few shops and restaurants surrounding it.
It was time for my 11th birthday. I was at mother’s house and just decided to have a small playdate for my birthday. I invited James over, along with another kid who I had befriended at the Woodland Hills recreation center. My mother made a small cake, I blew out the candles, and that was it. I was eleven years old.
11 Years Old
The trip to France and England began shortly after my birthday. We had been talking about it for a while at father’s house, and I was really excited to go. We traveled on Virgin Atlantic Upper Class. I was extremely enthusiastic about this, as I always loved luxury and opulence.
We stopped by in England for a couple of days to say hello to grandma Jinx. The cousins weren’t there, they were already in France, so it was a bit boring. When we arrived in France, the feeling of wonder and curiosity swept over me as it always did when I visited a foreign country. The last time I was in France, I was only a few weeks old. This was the first time I was able to truly experience the country. France was a whole different world, and it was a world that I liked. French culture is so exquisite and refined compared to American culture.
After booking a couple of rooms at a small Inn near the town of Toulouse, we met up with Jonny and the cousin’s at Aunt Jenny’s house. Aunt Jenny is my father’s sister, and the last time I saw her was when I lived in England, before the move to America. She had a few kittens in her house that I loved to play with.
George and I immediately resumed our friendship that started in the spring. There was a vast forested area surrounding the house. George told me there were lots of wild boars in the forest, so we went “wild boar hunting”. It was just a game, and we never ended up seeing any boars at all, but the suspense of possibly finding one was what made it fun.
We stayed in Toulouse for about a week, and then we said goodbye to the relatives and set off to tour the country. We toured many cultural towns and stayed in castle-style hotels. This should have been a great experience for me, but my conflicts with Soumaya soured it. There were a few incidents in
which she punished me by making me stay in my hotel room while she, father and Georgia all went out to dinner at a restaurant. I hated her for this.
On the way back, we stopped at grandma Jinx’s house in England for a week. The cousins were there this time, and it was a lot of fun. We all slept in one room, so it was like having one big sleepover. One day we went on a trip to a museum, where I had an argument with Soumaya. She shouted at me in front of George and threatened to punish me. This was so embarrassing that I fell into a miserable mood for the rest of the day. I always loved traveling, but I learned that traveling with Soumaya just ruins the whole experience. And this wouldn’t be the last time I would be forced to travel with Soumaya either, to my utmost dismay.
The trip lasted three weeks in length, the perfect length of time for a vacation, in my opinion. I quite enjoyed it, if I don’t count the times Soumaya ruined it.
It felt nice to be back home after a long, cultural vacation. At father’s house, my nanny Tracy got into an argument with father, and she was forced to leave. I was sad to see her go. She was always pleasant and fun to be around. Once Tracy left, Georgia and I would no longer have any nannies. We were getting too old for it. I wasn’t a little child anymore… having nannies became a thing of the past. From now on, if father and Soumaya had to go out to a dinner party, they would just hire a baby-sitter to look after us, and soon I would be old enough to stay by myself in the house.
I got a haircut, and this time I decided not to bleach my hair blonde. The black hair always grew out anyway, so the full-blonde look only lasted for a couple of weeks. Having blonde hair seemed to have lost its spark, so I just didn’t bother with it anymore.
The summer was pleasant and relaxing, but it quickly came to an end. The time for Middle School had come. My fear of this day haunted the back of my mind all summer. I was enrolled at Pinecrest Middle School for Sixth Grade. I had mixed feelings about going to this school because I didn’t like my experience there during kindergarten. Father said it’s the best option for me, because it was a small private school. I didn’t want to go to a large school like Hale Middle School… that would have been too overwhelming for me.
On the first day, I was shaking with anxiety and fear. I didn’t know what to expect. Transitioning to Middle School was a big deal for me, even more so than starting elementary school. I was much older and I cared more about what people thought of me. I was no longer an innocent little child who didn’t have to worry. I had to worry about a lot of things, and oh, did I worry! It was a whole new school full of people I didn’t know. They all previously went to elementary school together, so most of them already knew each other. That made me even more nervous. The only person I knew who was going to Pinecrest was a geeky kid named Nate Grossman, who I didn’t really interact with that much in Topanga.

The Lost Children: When Behavior Problems Traumatize Siblings

By James Lehman, MSW

369

Shares

11

Q: What do the other children in the family experience when they have a brother or sister who’s hostile or acts out chronically?

James:
It’s traumatizing when something hurtful happens to you, and you can’t control it, you can’t stop it, you can’t predict how hurtful it’s going to be, and you can’t predict when or whether it’s going to happen. Children who grow up with a chronically defiant, oppositional sibling grow up in an environment of trauma.  They don’t know when they’re going to be verbally abused.  They don’t know when their things are going to be broken.  They don’t know when there’s going to be a major breakdown in the kitchen, and someone’s going to be restrained as they’re yelling and screaming. 

Often, acting out kids target their siblings as sources of power. It makes them feel powerful to say mean or abusive things or to hurt their siblings. They like that feeling of power, so they do it over and over again.

Several things happen in the mind of a child who lives with this kind of trauma.  First, the siblings of acting out kids become used to witnessing outbursts, and it has a negative effect on them in the long run.  These are people who grow up willing to accept higher levels of abuse in their marriages and their friendships.  They become desensitized to disrespect and abuse. They become numb to how it really feels to be called a name. They tolerate higher levels of disrespect and abuse in other areas of their life once they become adults.  Their ability to be assertive also diminishes.

They learn not to assert themselves.  They learn how to avoid people and situations, and it can hamper their social skills.  In our world, a certain degree of assertiveness is necessary to communicate in a way that gets your needs met, and these kids don’t learn how to do that.

I’ve worked with the siblings of kids who act out in my practice, and they are, by and large, nice kids, but they have a lot of problems asserting what the problem is with their sibling and confronting it.  They make a lot of excuses for their sibling’s behavior and abuse. They tend to defend him to outsiders, and it develops a very unhealthy social persona in them.

Q: The child with the behavior problem tends to get most, if not all of the attention in the family. What effect does this have on the other children?

James:
My experience is that this manifests itself in two ways.  One is that the sibling becomes what is called a “lost child.”  This is a child who avoids family situations. When a family discussion starts to get a little heated, this kid disappears into his room. As things get more complex and as he gets older, he stays in his room more.  He avoids conflict and confrontation.  In emotionally charged situations such as dinnertime, the lost child will tend to avoid dinner because the acting out child uses it as a forum for his aggression.  The lost child will tend to say he’s not hungry or his stomach hurts. Anything to get away from the tension and abuse.

On the other end of the spectrum, kids will develop higher levels of attention-seeking behavior that we call “adaptive responses.”  For example, a child who’s adapted to a calamitous situation at home shows his adaptive response in school by hiding out. He doesn’t raise his hand. He doesn’t get involved in group activities.  He uses an avoidance adaptation in school that makes him stand out as if there’s something socially wrong with him, and it’s how he’s adapted at home.  Some kids will act out even more than the hostile sibling, although this is rare.

An adaptive response to trauma means avoidance of anxiety and hyper arousal—in other words, watching out for trouble, listening very carefully to catch wind of tension, always remaining on high alert for hostility so that they can catch the pain before it comes.

Q: What should parents do to minimize the negative effects of the acting out child on the other children in the family?

James:
The first thing parents have to do is make every effort to make the sibling safe.  And that leads to them not holding the acting out, abusive kid accountable.  No matter what he does.

If parents are afraid of backtalk because it makes them feel powerless, it’s very likely that they’ll tell the defiant child to stop doing it, and the child will say, “I don’t have to listen to you.”  The parent feels as though there’s nothing they can do about it, and that leads to them not hold the child accountable because they don’t want to be embarrassed and feel powerless. 

Inevitably, parents stop setting the limits. The result is the other children in the family wonder who’s really in control, and they identify the acting out kid as the person in charge.  As the defiant child acquires more power, the siblings challenge him less and give in to him more.

However, if a parent does tell a kid, “Stop that. It’s not acceptable” and turns around and walks away, and the kid says, “Screw you,” the siblings don’t see him as powerful; they see him as primitive.  That’s the important thing.  If the parent holds the child with the behavior problem accountable and takes away his “power,” the siblings see the parent as in control and see the kid as out of control.  Most important, the parent reduces the environment of trauma for the siblings. Instead of wondering when the pain and chaos will erupt next, they will know the parent is in control and nothing will erupt.

It’s also important to have a “safety plan.” Just as families are encouraged to have a plan of action if there’s a fire (where to meet, how to get out, what to do), I have always encouraged families to sit down and talk about how they can help the acting out child. Do this without the child being present.

I have taught parents to say this: “If Johnny starts acting out, I’m going to deal with him. I’d like you go to your room for five minutes.  The best thing you can do to help Johnny when he’s acting out is to leave him alone.  Don’t feed into him. Don’t fight with him. Just let me know.”  When parents set up this structure, the siblings have a plan for what to do when this kid starts to melt down.  When they know what to do, it reduces their feeling of panic and helps them to ease the trauma.

The plan should be framed as how can we help Johnny. Parents should say openly, “We’re going to help Johnny by holding him responsible for his behavior and setting limits. But Johnny doesn’t always respond to that, and sometimes it takes us a while.  The best way you can help Johnny is to stay out of it and go inside.”

Remember that trauma comes from not feeling that you have any control over the situation.  If the children have a plan for what to do, then it’s not traumatizing because they have some control. The situation may be annoying and frustrating for them, but it’s not traumatizing.