When I was born, my parents were living on a farm near Eden Valley, a small farming community in central Minnesota. I don’t remember this period because we moved away when I was 3. From stories my parents told me, this was an adventurous time. I started a tractor and drove it into the silo. I got lost in a corn field and was found by the family dog. My sister and I got naked and took a mud bath in the pig sty. Fun times!
Over the rest of my childhood, we moved to a series of places in Minnesota. We lived in Richmond for a year, then Fridley, three places in St. Michael, St. Cloud, and Avon. I blamed this constant moving for my difficulty in developing close attachments later in life. I wonder now if this difficulty is due to the fact that I seem to be somewhere on the autism spectrum.
At age seven, I read my first thick chapter book. This kicked of a lifetime love of reading. I was reading three books a day when I was at North Junior High and a freshman in Apollo high school in St. Cloud. This was possible because the schools I was attending used something called “modular scheduling.” With modular scheduling, the school day was broken up into 20 minute “mods.” We spent a few mods a day in class and the rest of the time was free. We were supposed to take this free time and use it to get our coursework done. I did the minimum coursework needed to get by and spent the rest of my free time in the library reading books. I would take several books home each night and read at night.
The next three years were spent at Albany High School. This was a traditional school and I did the minimum required to get by. I got a full time job when I was 16 and spent my money on beer and liquor and driving around the county drinking beer and liquor. This was not a particularly productive time from an education perspective. I developed a hobby making Maple Syrup in the Spring, but generally, work and partying were my main occupations.