Leaving and resuming years later

In the old order of things you'd be in school this week as Summer Term wound itself down as we couldn't really go any further in our classwork  so we'd have trips out, maybe a school production, certainly a school leavers service and board games on school desks at other times.

I remember that time in July 1975 quite well as we had a composition to write about our time at school, the things we learnt and our hopes for our futures at high school all to the backdrop of It Ain't Half Hot Mum on tv and Whispering Grass sang by two cast members on the radio.

The kit you need, I need even, as the eternal boy reflects that era although we didn't have caps and blazers, and the latter was one item I had to get that summer, removing any outward appearence of an adult.

Restoration to a school aged junior boy is the order of my day which is why two impliments are included for bringing my behaviour in line consistant with that era as that's what I understand best.

A juvenile little boy really is best treated for his misdeanours with a well caned bottom which he was used to if not merely threatened with 1975 style.

It is a very effective way of teaching me a lesson and I support adults who as this adult little boy teaching me right from wrong caning me without question.

It'll make a good boy out of me.

Summer Littles Away time

This year I did get away with some littles even if bits weren't really my cup of tea for being,well, girlish.

As an adult little boy who is more on the Middle side for me this whole thing is rather like the Caregiver/little side of things in that it is a space to allow the child-like me out to play and interact as if I was an actual child at a emotional age appropriate level for me, the one impacted significantly by my developmental/learning disabilities that in so many ways I function ordinarary and with no choice at that level.

It's hardly age-play, I mean I didn't choose it, it just the hand I was given and it's a matter of learning to make the most of the only life I have.

I have been interested as much as I'm more around upper UK juniors and first year senior side about things more associated with younger children as for example I've always been drive to spin or rattle things such as whizzing tape reels around or enjoying the sound of winding a cassette back with a pencil or impulsively leaping to a rattle.

While I was away a "Baby Gym" with a pretty patterned mat and mobiles that made noises had been set out and I though, "Right, it's a quiet area" and decided to have a bit of a play with it.
It only took a few minutes and I sensed myself shifting to a younger more tactile headspace playing with it so while I may not identify with AB, some things from it could be in my little space needs that benefit from being met.

The other large side to this that for this whole period I am in a setting where my behaviour and attitudes are under the gaze of adults with authority over me and where I know I will be taken to one side and spanked without exception for any breaches of what I know isn't acceptable.

We did have a games morning where in sports kit we played in teams which was rather fun plus jigsaws and models to complete.

I brought my Beano summer special with me rather like I used to on family holidays in the past and a plushie to keep me company.

Alternative presentations in the Famous Five

I do enjoy reading not least the books written by Enid Blyton although over the years they have suffered from Bowlderization as social mores have changed, ill judged attempts at modernizing to make them more "relevant" to today's children and that applied to how the children were dressed.

The Famous Five series suffered from that with children of the 1940's being put into jeans and modern bright t shirts when boys would of worn above the knee short trousers and girls typically dresses with "George" alias Georgina showing her rebellion by wearing boys shorts and only answering to George.

This really it undermines a big part of the story beyond the adventures.

The 1978 adaptation for Tv followed that ill advised  alteration but the 1995 ITV Tyne Tees series kept more of a period feeling including as shown in this picture the very attire Enid had in mind.

Age play

What does age play mean to you?

It’s not a phrase I use simply because my Middles with a little side flows from my inner child in real time less than the notion of say taking on a pre-defined role with an script, running more with actual child within emotional responses and  needs as it happens in real time. 

I'd call this 'age regression'.  It’s more space for my Middle with little side to express herself with the ‘play’ being the setting where she comes out.

It also is the case with developmental disabilities and brain damage, even at school, not least high school, I was considerably younger than my years which left me out of sync from my mid teens onward with most of my peers although I could share in say a love of music and some movies at least but with a lot their more grown up interests and sexual references going completely over my head, like they’d be talking about making out and I’d be more interested in having a teddy bears picnic or a tween sleepover

.
For me those situations either on line or in playmeets  with some of my friends over here are very therapeutic to me because they’re where I can really let that side of me out without the fear of people poking fun although the community where I live are very tolerant of my child-like ways and being know to have “special needs” does run  to my advantage in that way, allowing a greater degree of self expression than I’d of imagined after leaving high school.

How do you express you inner-kid: online? offline as part of your everyday life?

Online is fun as I am very childlike, cracking lame jokes, getting super excited but thankfully most people are at least tolerant of my childlike ways although I make serious posts on non IK sites but am very open at sites like DDLG World  about my little side sometimes really regressing in say a IK chat room
In what we call Real Life, as will be apparent later on, my 'big’ and I express ourselves pretty much the same, which can be fun  cos I just can’t help being myself as I use child-like phrases and words instinctively, often have plaything with me (my last works colleagues 'got it’ and were super understanding of me being very much a child to the point of buying childrens gifts at Christmas),  do dress in a more child-like way, often have cute plushies around, and easily move into little/middle headspace when I’m out, playing with thing.

My IK really comes out at Adult Little Boy meets and sleepovers, it’s just like boarding school which I loved having been to one and I’m always dressed as Middle in either playwear or English school uniform which fits me perfectly.

How do you view your innerkid? As an integrated part of you? As being totally separate? .. or maybe you don’t feel you have an innerkid per say just feel littler.

The answer to this is simple  which is to say I don’t have much of adult sense of self through the real world impact of learning, development and intellectual disabilities to the point much of the adult world is beyond my personal comprehension, having no interest or need to. 

I have chores like tidying up and helping with hoovering.

Basically I’m a child with a big age number living more like a child apart from paying taxes and that.

Challenging ideas

Can past ideas around boyhood presentation and roles be an inspiration where today's seem so tame and lacking any meaningful kind of challenge and adventure with a big bundle of cotton wool to wrap around you as much as you feel that urge?

Just what is so wrong with idea we might learn to do things that call for attention to detail and self discipline and maybe have a role with some responsibilities?

This boy would of loved to had been dressed up in short short trousered sailor suit rather like these members of a Soviet era youth organization, looking very smart rather than the messy casuals I had (and don't mention the beeping jeans!).

That was more my idea of being a boy not a pint sized carbon copy of Dad.

A note from the dorm, 77 style

Imagine instead of it being 2016, it was actually 1977 where we'd made major technological breakthrough where instead of being sat typewriting a letter leaving a space for illustrations, we'd actually got the internet?

Well, one thing I'd of been writing about from our dorm is my comics because back in 1977 our newsagents had a few shelves full of them for boys and girls of all ages, not mini magazines or tat infested fim, toy and footie tie-ins.

Comics that had stories existing in a self contained world we'd all drift into.

I remember Tiger from Juniors but the one I really got into big time was the War Comic, Warlord that launched in September 1974, to the point my parents went all over Nantwich, Cheshire to get me some back issues I was missing.

It fitted in well with my mania for Action Man.

Roy of the Rovers was a boyhood institution that gave rise to popular phrases, the inspirational footie figure who combined ball control with the kind of emotional control to be a mature player on and off the pitch.

It also had features on the actual game although strangely enough then there were weekly footie magazines for boys our age 10-14 like Score! 

Comics reflected life as we lived it, to the boy of today it may seem another land with different rules and expectations.

The grown ups were our enemy, we'd always be trying to get out of things, playing tricks on them, forever pushing the boundaries but our luck would run out and soon enough our bottoms were made to pay the price.

That's the thing you notice when you re-read a good number of the comics and their annuals today, you were always shown cheek, bullying, lying and damaging other peoples stuff would be punished and adults wherever we were did with immunity.

Summer and me

Summer after the Whit Holiday was always something to look forward to as after six weeks of lessons, end of term tests and all that we had the Hols, six solid weeks away from school and all its boring rules and petty swabbles between classmates except for the fact after two weeks "we woz bored"!

Sometimes the period tied in with key events such as sorting your subjects to study at the end of the third year for GCE's (or C.S.E's) for the next two years and the examinations or moving up to another part of school like the last term in Infants or the Fifth Form where come september you'd be in sixth and treated more as a young adult.

Summer term in 1974 was big with me as we'd just moved to a new school building with lots of new things we could now do but we'd only have a whole school year before we'd make our own ways to differing secondary schools.

Also being a year older I was finding I was getting more out of popular singles of the time as I understood more about what the songs were so my tastes were getting a little more sophesticated and an example of that was "Jarrow Song" by Alan Price which was about the march protesting being out of work  and One Man Band by Leo Sayer.