Childhood Diet

I think everyone has been asked time and time again what their favorite music is or favorite movies or favorite whatevers. That's all fine and dandy, it's a way of learning if someone has similar interests as you do. As a psychology student, I've been asked an equal amount of times about my childhood. I'd have to say I'm kind of standard when it comes to what people think an artist's young life is like. I almost fit the mold quite well. Skipping all the gory details, let's just say my family didn't want to breed such a creature as I am. So how did it happen? Well!

My movie diet? My all time favorite movie that I rented over and over and over again, every weekend if not more, was "Watership Down." I didn't read the book 'til high school but the movie I loved. Oddly, as I grew up, I forgot about it except that it was about bunnies. I saw it for sale and snatched it up right quick a few years ago. Oh... my... god. I understand my dementia to a tee now. I can't believe my mom let me watch this... of course she introduced me to horror movies at four... *grins* Anyways, I also still own a variety of Disney movies. The most overwatched were probably Fantasia, Alice in Wonderland, The Land Before Time and The Lion King. The Last Unicorn, All Dogs go to Heaven, Ferngully and The Secret of Nihm were also part of my burnt out VHS collection. I didn't watch any of the nitty-gritty, nasty horror movies I do now when I was a kid: I remember loving Freddy Krueger though. I know most kids were not allowed to watch the kind of movies I did on a regular basis - not even something that I, now, consider really tame like Jaws or Poltergeist. I remember watching a slew of horror movies from the eighties before high school 'cause of my mom. Shocking, considering I had night terrors as a kid and I drove her nuts with my nightmares. Her reply to that is "I figured I should give you something to cry about."

Cartoon-wise, I watched a lot of eighties and early nineties obviously. Mostly, these were rented movies as I didn't watch a lot of tv in my younger years. My Little Pony, Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw, Rainbow Brite and Lady Lovely Locks were my favorites as a kid. On tv, I only ever caught Fragglerock, She-ra: Princess of Power and _. As I got a little older, the nineties series of the X-Men, Spiderman and Batman as well as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Thundercats and Samurai Pizza Cats. Candice and I used to watch Sailor Moon like crazy, she was an avid anime fan very early on. I caught Beast Wars and Reboot occasionally. If you want to push the envelope beyond childhood, I watched Ren and Stimpy, Cybersix and The Maxx and occasionally caught episodes of Rocco's Modern World, Duckman and Captain Star. I used to love Teletoon, what the hell has happened to it these days? Bleh.

Books! Oh I was a reader alright. I'm ten times worse these days because now I can buy them myself. Hahahaha. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass were my absolute favorites. I used to have a collection of Pony Pals as a kid and Warriors of Virtue [originally a movie I believe]. I was also a huge Black Beauty fan, I had both cartoons and books in both English and French. Since I went to a French Catholic school, I read a lot of the books in the school library - French books often in the fantasy section. I was also given many Disney books and the usual Fairy Tales - Red Riding Hood was one of my favorites. I remember one book about those Troll dolls. If you don't remember them, you can't possible understand my amusement about having READ about them. Anything about a different world interested me. I started reading a lot more in high school though.

Finally, musics! Before the age of eight, that is, before I was introduced to the computer, I was all about classical music, Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie only. I also listened to a lot of my mom's music - mostly rock n' roll, KiSS, Poison, so forth as well as musics from Eurythmics, Cindy Lauper and Joan Jett. Once introduced to the computer, I downloaded LOADS of techno and whatever variant thereof. Don't know why to be honest. I know a little later in my childhood, before high school, I also listened to No Doubt and Aqua... I think I still have their CDs somewhere too. I think my mum bought me a Spice Girls and Britney Spears CD when they were first starting up. Marilyn Manson and classical composers like Tchaikovsky, Bach, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Beethoven [more well-known junk] were always the base of my diet.

If you want to get RIGHT into childhood details that a shrink will actually look at, um. I've had a glass of milk every morning since I was able to. I get cranky if I don't. My food diet has always been obscure because I'm finicky as hell. I'll try things once these days but before, yeesh. I have very little love for meat because it was often undercooked or charcoaled when I was kid [depending who was cooking]. I've always loved plushies/stuffed toys. My whole bed used to be covered with them, I hated feeling alone. My mum recounts the tale that, when I was young, if my nightmares didn't wake me up, my sleeping habits still sucked. I used to stay awake 'til eleven-thirty at night on the dot... even after she took all the clocks away. It creeped her out. I don't have an explanation for it. So... mucked up eating habits and mucked up sleeping habits have prevailed throughout my life but, then again, so has my imagination and artistic talent.

So there you have it. The twisted little monster that I am wasn't born of blood and gore, she was born of rainbows and gumdrops. Yeah... that's right. Gumdrops.