My childhood environment

It's pretty intuitive to think that a person's childhood environment and upbringing would shape har personality. (note: ''har'' is my gender-neutral third-person pronoun -- smoother than ''his/her'') Both my folks were drama majors in college, and that must've shaped our home life, 'cause -- upon reflection -- we were a bit zanier than most.

I was reminded of this when I was home this Christmas. I looked around at the decor, and realized that it wasn't exactly ''typical'' of most people's childhood homes.

For example, my parents like traveling. They don't really collect ''souveniers'' of the places they've been -- but they do tend to bring home a mask. Thus, there's a collection of masks (genrally Asian) on the living room wall.


And, around Christmas-time, they all play dress-up:



There's also the main bathroom. Pretty soon after we moved in, my mom painted the shower stall. I'd like to think that the shower nozzle as an elephant's trunk was my idea -- but it was thirty years ago, so I'm not sure.

Left wall:

Center:

Right wall:

I always thought this was pretty cool -- but I never really realized that most parents don't paint up the shower stall like this.


Finally, there's the bedroom that my sisters shared when growing up. Since they've long since moved out, we now refer to it as ''the Cloud Room.'' Makes it sound like a Bed & Breakfast, I suppose.

This is the lightswitch, just as you come in the door. Note that Humty Dumpty is actually sitting on the house.



This is Niner-Four Charlie -- the airplane my dad flew down to California one time, on a family holiday. (For a while he had a small-plane pilot's license.) The whole ceiling has clouds floating about -- hence, the name of the room.



There's a few hills around the room -- some with houses, some with trees. Clearly, the furniture has moved to different locations than how my sisters had it.



Finally, here's the rocket ship I contributed. I was in gradeschool -- maybe fifth grade? Drew it on regular paper in pencil, and my mom transferred it to the wall. Pretty geometric shape -- I'm not very good at free-thinking, abstract drawing.



So, those are the interesting bits of the house I grew up in. I consider myself lucky that my parents still live in the house I grew up in. For a while, my dad was considering moving after they retire -- to somewhere more interesting or vaction-y -- but they final decided, "eh."


--GG