I have loved redo stories since "A Fresh Start" was being posted during the week new. One thing that has struck me however is how different author's have vastly different levels of maturity and in some cases memory's of the past life. Ranging from completely adult in a teenager body to a teenager with vague memory's of being an adult. I'm curious to hear from author's who have written these stories why you chose the level of maturity and memory retention you did, and would you change it now?
No, I would not change it. (TECHNICALLY "A Charmed Life" is NOT a re-do story, but I get your point...)
Number 1, my muse has run away screaming, so my drive to write is just about gone these days.
Number 2, back in the early 80s, when I was in high school (yeah, I know I'm old), relationships like the ones depicted (especially the sexual ones) were frequently seen. (People losing their virginity (male and female) while they were teenagers.)
Don't even get me started on how the FB Reel videos bleep out swear words, kill, hell, etc, these days...
And, for the person who suggested my main character in Knox #3 (Sabrina) would be better as an LBGTQ+ character, that didn't even EXIST when I started writing, or even when that part of the story takes place... Not happening...
And (Grammar Nazi in the room...), "memories" is the correct spelling, not "memory's." And, "author's" is possessive, not plural... "AUTHORS"
(Yeah, at my age, I've already got the "angry old man" thing down pat...)
(People losing their virginity (male and female) while they were teenagers.)
...
And, for the person who suggested my main character in Knox #3 (Sabrina) would be better as an LBGTQ+ character, that didn't even EXIST when I started writing, or even when that part of the story takes place... Not happening...
I've had similar comments for my stories which start in the mid-70s or very early 80s. People don't get it. I've had people tell me, expressly, that there was no way teens were having that much sex. All I can say is, they sure were in my HS in the late 70s and very early 80s.
And people were NOT freaking out about it, either. It was considered normal, even if discouraged by fathers with shotguns.
Don't forget the people who didn't care about others riding WITHOUT SEATBELTS in the back of pickups or station wagons. Then, there's Star Wars on 8-track...
Then, there's Star Wars on 8-track...
My dad had an 8-track player in our Winnebago Chieftan (the 27' one). Listened to dozens of tapes ranging from Johnny Cash to Herb Alpert to the Carpenters while we traveled the entire western US plus western Canada and northern Mexico during the summer of '72.
Still a fan of Cash and Herb Alpert to this day.
Oh, and we never wore seatbelts in the motor home. :-)
I was in high school in the 1950s. The risk of getting pregnant was high. Kids still managed to have sex, especially in the back seats of cars, which at that time were all bench seats. That all changed on May 11, 1960, when the FDA approved the use of "the pill" and birth control without using a condom became practical. The AIDS scare was still a couple of decades in the future.
Yep. I was most of the way through college before AIDS was enough of a concern, and married in '86.
I joined the EMS about the time when they started using actual gloves on calls. The latex ones were nice to shoot across a trauma room to a biohazard trash bin. White talc doesn't mix with black uniform pants...
"Ryan White" was a real thing we learned the important way...
100% agree! I was in my teens in the mid 70's-early 80's and EVERYONE was boinking EVERYONE! Everywhere and anywhere! In cars, trucks n vans, at parties often even if others were nearby. It was definitely NORMAL!
SunSeeker
Don't tell them about cigarette machines with no age checks and a pack cost 50¢ or less (and far less if you bought them at the gas station).
Or riding bikes without helmets. Or going out at 9:00am as a pre-teen and being told to come home in time for dinner.
Their heads will explode.
During my preteen years in the late 70's. I remember walking a few blocks to the corner convenience store. I would purchase a loaf of bread or milk and a pack of Kool cigarettes for my father without even being questioned by the clerk.
and the coin operated condom dispensers in the men's room of the bowling alley, gas stations and convenience stores. I wrote about that, too.
Or riding bikes without helmets.
Oh, I remember riding bikes without a helmet. I even remember the last time I did it in 1978 — not so much the ride as waking up with a concussion. I don't recommend that experience to anyone.
I've crashed harder several times since, but never had my bell rung.
I tired break-checking my sister as we rode our bikes (I was trying to be funny - even back then, what I *thought* was funny, really wasn't…) and she slammed into my left pedal, causing both of us to crash, when I thought she'd go sailing by me…
No injuries for either of us, thankfully…
As we've discussed, my story in set in the same period, from summer 1979 to spring 1980. I deliberately chose to make the amount of sex realistic, but at the same time, lots of teenagers were doing it back then, and I also make a point to show (like "Perks of a Being a Wallflower" did) that 16-21 was our main social group, and any outliers were usually on the low end, with the occasional girl from 11 or 12 up to 15 at parties, getting drunk, and sometimes getting laid or giving BJs. I've seen young teen girls at house parties for mixed college/adult, and wrote it in.
Young people were having more sex in the 70s and early 80s than now. Much of that came to a halt in the early 80s when HIV/AIDS came onto the scene. People today have a hard time understanding the (justifiable) fear that caused at the time, not only in the gay community.
An example, my wife worked in NYC at the time. The business she worked had a high proportion of gay men but also a lot of young heterosexual people of both sexes. For a few years it seemed that there was a funeral every month - gays were the majority, but a large proportion of straight men and women.
Young people were having more sex in the 70s and early 80s than now. Much of that came to a halt in the early 80s when HIV/AIDS came onto the scene.
That absolutely had an effect, an a big one, but equally big (and more so in the long run) was the moral panic over 'stranger danger' and the attendant helicopter parenting and the idea that it was unsafe to be ANYWHERE or do ANYTHING until you were an adult (i.e. 18). Lies were told about kidnapping and abuse statistics (and later recidivism statistics) to scare the public.
All one need do is look at the general reaction to a sixteen-year-old guy willingly and happily having sex with a female teacher.
• 60s/70s/early 80s — "Great job, kid!"
• 90s and onward — "My son's childhood was stolen by a predator! (and make her wear virtual a Scarlet A)"
I'm not talking about right or wrong, but about the typical response. Both of the above responses are wrong, but the second one is wronger (to coin a term).
Sorry, are you saying that people being upset about a teacher grooming a student and coercing them into a sexual relationship is a moral panic
At my school the student groomed the teacher. In this case it was a gay kid who quickly worked out he could turn his science teacher into his personal piggy bank and chauffeur. The students all knew about it and felt sorry for the teacher.
The school bike was an otherwise nice girl who couldn't say no and was used by the football team. She took up with the coach, who at least kept the boys away from her, which was a minor improvement in her circumstances as she had a real girlfriend-boyfriend experience instead of being used. The coach was a first year teacher so the age gap was minimal.
Teens have agency. Neither teacher should have been involved with a student under their care, it was a betrayal of the parents trust. It was not a betrayal of the students, they made their decisions and enjoyed the results, with a mature 'boyfriend until graduation'.
Moral panics are used to manipulate society. Any scare campaign along a given theme across time and multiple forms of media is probably deliberate and even if it has an element of truth it will not be nuanced.
Teens have agency. Neither teacher should have been involved with a student under their care, it was a betrayal of the parents trust. It was not a betrayal of the students, they made their decisions and enjoyed the results, with a mature 'boyfriend until graduation'.
Teenagers absolutely have agency, but they also have a tendency to make really bad decisions and do dumb things. It's part and parcel of being a teenager.
Teachers are charged with the instruction and protection of students in their care; guiding them away from bad decisions is their literal job. A failure to execute that role effectively is one hundred percent a betrayal of the student, not only the student in question but also the other students who looked up to a role model that took advantage of their trust.
Teenagers absolutely have agency, but they also have a tendency to make really bad decisions and do dumb things. It's part and parcel of being a teenager.
That's pretty much the point of my book here.
My personal opinion is that no sex should be legal until puberty, but between then and moving out of the home, the parents should be the primary police of their children's activity.
Sorry, are you saying that people being upset about a teacher grooming a student and coercing them into a sexual relationship is a moral panic
No. The moral panic changed the popular thinking about those kinds of relationships.
It's also the case the the idea that a boy was 'groomed' into having sex with an older woman is a 21st century notion nobody would have even thought about in the 70s. Ditto if it were a girl and a teacher.
Don't Stand So Close to Me made sense to people because the notions were changing.
My point is, as I said, both attitudes are wrong, but the 'stole their childhood' notion is so over the top as to be literally insane. All of my friends were screwing in our mid-teens and nobody had a fit about it except for one dad with a shotgun and my psycho mom.
Yeah man those psycho moms and shotgun dads getting mad about adults in positions of power having sexual relationships with children entrusted to their care, what a wacky way to react, don't they know that teens are going to have sex anyways and their partners are going to have absolutely zero impact on the teenager's development and growth?
Yeah man those psycho moms and shotgun dads getting mad about adults in positions of power having sexual relationships with children entrusted to their care, what a wacky way to react, don't they know that teens are going to have sex anyways and their partners are going to have absolutely zero impact on the teenager's development and growth?
That is an INTENTIONAL MISREADING of what I wrote.
That was a about teens having sex with EACH OTHER.
Quit mischaracterizing my statements.
Ditto if it were a girl and a teacher.
Don't Stand So Close to Me made sense to people because the notions were changing.
Not sure I agree. At least where I grew up, male teacher/female student was always viewed as a 'violation' of the female student, no matter who initiated it and no matter how capable of consent she was. A lot of that is definitely wrapped up in 'female purity' and the double-standard between boys and girls (boys get points for 'nailing' girls, girls lose points for being 'nailed'). And that goes back a long time.
On the other hand, notions were changing, and maybe that's what you mean. The notion of 'female purity' was getting undermined in that time period. And the song certainly doesn't paint the teacher as 'grooming.'
But one could argue that it plays into the notion that we need ever more oversight to save kids from themselves.
I don't consider the 'stole their childhood' notion to be over the top, in and of itself. It's not over the top in the case where there really is 'grooming' or something nonconsensual (out and out blackmail, for instance). If a person in a position of authority intentionally sets out to get a child into bed, and that child would never have done so, there's an argument there.
For instance, many church-related sex abuse scandals really do fit that mold. It's beside the point that they might have been screwing - they weren't screwing (or, more to the point, being screwed by) adult authority figures, and who you're involved with matters.
Something truly consensual, though - and I would agree that there are a significant number of under-18s who have the capacity to meaningfully consent, even in the case of 'authority figures' (if the authority figure isn't intentionally misusing their authority, anyway) - isn't a 'stolen childhood,' by itself.
Not sure I agree. At least where I grew up, male teacher/female student was always viewed as a 'violation' of the female student, no matter who initiated it and no matter how capable of consent she was.
My point of referencing Don't Stand So Close to Me was the line 'Young teacher, the subject of schoolgirl fantasy'.
The topic of teenage girls and older men was a common thread of songs in the 70s and 80s. Those relationships (including student-teacher relationships) were a feature of stories, TV shows, music, etc. They were tittivating, not scandalous.
Cf, among others, Your Love by The Outfield ("you know I like my girls a little bit older, I just wanna use your love tonight"); Does Your Mother Know by ABBA ("You seem kinda young to be searching for that kind of fun; maybe I'm not the one); Jailbait by Ted Nugent; Stray Cat Blues by the Rolling Stones ("I can see that you're fifteen years old; No, I don't want your I.D"); Jodie Foster in The Little Girl Who Lived Down the Lane and Taxi Driver; Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby; Lolita Vladimir Nabakov and Stanley Kubrick; Little Darlings, etc.
Then there were David Bowie, Jimmy Page, Bill Wyman, Iggy Pop, and other rock stars who had relationships with underage girls.
And let's not forget Jerry Lee Lewis, Elvis Presley, Charlie Chaplin, and others who married teenage girls.
My point is, as it has been for this thread, attitudes have changed significantly. Things that were OK (or at least tolerated) no longer are.
While I agree we have gone a bit to far in moral panic these days, in the 1300's French noble women were married at 12 to late 20 to 30 year old men according to records. With first child coming shortly after. Now there were pressures not present now for that state of affairs, but almost everyone today would condem this practice.
The topic of teenage girls and older men was a common thread of songs in the 70s and 80s. Those relationships (including student-teacher relationships) were a feature of stories, TV shows, music, etc. They were tittivating, not scandalous.
Yes, attitudes have changed in the majority of people about heterosexual relationship. Even the "wholesome" shows like The Waltons regularly had young girls and older guys. Mary Ellen lied about her age to date an older guy and we laughed. Erin was 14 when she had her 1st kiss with a 20 year old guy and we were titillated, as she had grown so much those first couple years, and Elizabeth pined for the new pastor, which was prevented, but recognized as things girls do and no one blamed her.
Yesterday on Twitter Peter Schiff said Epstein wasn't a pedo because he didn't chase prepubescent girls, and stating that when he himself was in college he had sex with high school girls. Oh, the outrage in the responses! Honestly, I don't give a shit if a college guy is banging high school girls. It would be an issue if he was 40 or 50 or 60. But their attitude is "It's illegal, so he's a pedo" which would apply in California but in no country in Europe or the majority of US states.
back in the early 80s, when I was in high school (yeah, I know I'm old),
You are not old, sir, maybe middle-aged. I graduated from high school in 1962.
I chose to portray Jeff as an adult in a kids body because that's what I was interested in — using his maturity and knowledge to avoid a mistake. There's more to it than that, but you'll need to read the story to understand since I don't want to give away a plot twist.
I also played the character straight up — no augmented memories or abilities, just what an adult with certain proclivities (desire for love/companionship, minimal interest in money, etc...) would have at their fingertips.
No, I wouldn't change that part now if I rewrote it.
Several things in no particular order. I was born in 1985 and spent childhood on a bike in my town and was simply told to be home at dark. In high school teen pregnancy was so common that when they started construction on the new school the summer after I graduated, they included a daycare for students babies. The last is to simply say I have a Traumatic Brain Injury and proper grammar is sometimes very difficult.
There did appear to be a rise of teen pregnancies, although back in the day the girls were doing it, but were picking enough to only be doing it with guys they considered marrying, and when they did become pregnant, they married the guy. Like my mom and my mother-in-law did. I graduated HS in '77 and only remember two girls getting pregnant and both were considered before then to be very loose. There were more who got married while still in school. One guy went to Vietnam and brought home a 15 year old bride who enrolled in 10th grade at my HS (a couple years before me)
Today, the girls get pregnant but many more don't marry while also attempting to finish school.
For me, it's somewhat 'all of a piece.' One of the themes in my story is the idea of the do-over as a way to 'fix' things that went wrong. Tied into that is the idea of the first life being, on balance, a learning experience but not something to try to regain. Both to make that work, and to make it plausible, I needed maturity and reasonably detailed memories of what happened.
On the other hand, I've tried to apply the same standard to memories. If a character is decades away from the events of their current year, some things will still be vividly memorable, but other things are vague in various ways. They might well remember, say, that Chernobyl happened, and how, but when? On the other hand, remembering when Challenger happened (to a close approximation) is much easier.
For things like sports betting, business, etc, it's the same standard. I'm not writing a walking sports almanac, but many people remember a modest number of standout events from that age. Nor am I writing someone who memorized the stock market as a whole, but major events and big names may stand out enough to have 'future knowledge.'
I definitely wouldn't change a thing in that regard. It works for me and for the story I'm telling, and doing something else wouldn't.
The rest gets more and more 'off topic' - but relevant to the larger discussion.
I will definitely agree with the way childhood was in the 1980s. There were limits, at least in my experience - most parents would frown greatly on a couple going into a room and closing the door, for instance. Necessity is the mother of invention, and plenty of sex was happening, but there were constraints. On the other hand, 'I'm going to the mall - back tonight!' wasn't uncommon, and 'the mall' might well have meant 'the mall, three other stores, the park, the library, a friend's house, and a restaurant,' and the parent would have no idea (nor would they feel the kid had lied, even by omission).
For high school in the 1980s, though - and in my experience - teen pregnancy was very uncommon. When it did happen, it was hushed up. Perhaps the girl, or the whole family, 'moved away,' or perhaps there was an abortion.
Nowadays, there are daycares in all of the nearby high schools and many middle schools. Back then? Anyone admitting they were or had been pregnant would have been a complete pariah.
It's easy to tie the rise of cell phones to the decline in 'just be home by dark.' There's some truth to that, but it's much more complicated than that, I think. In theory, cell phones make it easier, not harder - you can track your kids and make contact on a whim.
It's much more an overall rise in risk-averse parenting. More than once I've mentioned an article I remember reading in Time decades ago (late 1990s, almost certainly). The author was in some sort of medicine and their thesis was 'There has been a huge drop in the number of kids with broken bones. This is a bad thing.'
The argument was that the decline was because parents forbade things like climbing trees, playing on pavement, and other behaviors that sometimes result in broken bones. The author believed (and I generally agree) that the short-term payoff in 'safety' was being achieved at the expense of kids developing risk-management skills. If you never put yourself at risk, you don't learn to assess it, you just reflexively avoid it.
I've also personally witnessed a parent charging across a playground screaming and scooping up their kid because there was roughly a 1% chance that another kid on a swing might possibly have bumped into their kid, then giving their kid a lecture. Or parents running to the aid of their kid with a very minor cut or abrasion and treating it nearly as a medical emergency.
A friend was telling me that his 14 year old granddaughter just graduated from 8th grade. He said that there were 27 pregnancies/abortions between the 6th, 7th, & 8th grades last year with an enrollment of about 225 per class.
Since this thread has already drifted, I have to wonder how the personality and memories of an adult can be fitted into a child's brain. Surely, the very act would make the brain an adult brain and therefore the child would be subject to adult-type memory lapses and reduced learning capacity.
AJ
Given our limited understanding of cognition, memory, and thought processes, I'm not sure that would be the case.
Given such an overlay is well beyond our understanding and ability, I think we're safe in saying 'we have no idea how that would work'. :-)
Since this thread has already drifted, I have to wonder how the personality and memories of an adult can be fitted into a child's brain. Surely, the very act would make the brain an adult brain and therefore the child would be subject to adult-type memory lapses and reduced learning capacity.
Those memory lapses don't come along until old age. And adults can learn as well or better than kids. Less distractions.
As for fitting adult personality into a kid's brain - haven't you ever known a child who some people would describe as being "an old soul"?
Those memory lapses don't come along until old age.
I believe they increase from the moment the brain matures. Medically they're classed as normal. They're not usually symptomatic of brain health deterioration.
And adults can learn as well or better than kids.
It takes adults longer to learn a new language or to play a new instrument or to become proficient at a new sport.
AJ
I believe they increase from the moment the brain matures. Medically they're classed as normal. They're not usually symptomatic of brain health deterioration.
It seems as if you believe memory loss has a single cause. I believe there are two types of memory lapses: temporary and permanent.
Temporary memory lapse seems to be related to the brains ability to retrieve a memory. Typically, the memory is retrieved, which infers that damage is to the memory retrieval system, and that type of damage is repairable. This is the type of memory problems that are typical of young people.
Permanent memory lapse seems to be related to death of brain cells that store the memory. When the brain cells containing the memory die, the memory is lost and there is nothing left to retrieve. This type of memory loss is permanent and it is common in older adults.
Brain health deterioration is related to the death of brain cells, regardless of the cause of brain cell death. I believe temporary and permanent loss of memory is related to the death of brain cells, but the dead brain cells are in different parts of the brain.
It seems as if you believe memory loss has a single cause. I believe there are two types of memory lapses: temporary and permanent.
Temporary memory lapse seems to be related to the brains ability to retrieve a memory.
I'm thinking of temporary memory lapses, like going into a room and not remembering why you did so. (Until you leave the room, and suddenly your mind remembers.)
I understand it's due to short-term memory becoming over-cluttered.
AJ
I understand it's due to short-term memory becoming over-cluttered.
I don't think anyone, even doctors, understands the brain and how it functions. All you have to do is review all the different conflicting theories that the medical researchers seem to generate.
I understand it's due to short-term memory becoming over-cluttered.
I don't think anyone, even doctors, understands the brain and how it functions. All you have to do is review all the different conflicting theories that the medical researchers seem to generate.
I've seen claims that we never genuinely forget anything, but rather our brains lose track of what's where in it's storage.
People with total recall just have better indexing.
I'm increasingly drawn to the opinion our long term memory functions much more like the current generative "AI" models anyone wants to admit.
In short, we reconstruct the memories from a schematic and promt of basic concepts up every time we recall it, rather than retrieving it whole like a video or something such. What's stored is a relation link map between the concepts. That graph can tolerate minor damage in most cases, but loss of a major node breaks the chain and thus disintegrate the memory. Minor damage is "repaired" by basically making a plausible guess, making up the missing details on the go.
Memories are mutable. Every time we recall something, we do a reinterpretation of the structure graph in actual context, and populate it with current values of the concepts required by it. Concepts that may have undergone complex overhaul since. Then optimize it all so it made sense again, again in current context and conditions, and actualized opinions we now hold as true. Then we store away the recreation, overwriting the original, just to repeat it again the next time. Frequently recalled memories become narratives, stories, legends we tell ourselves over and over, subtly editing each time, without knowing.
Memories get packed and merged, and unified as categories of a general scheme, sacrificing accuracy for capacity, more concise promts against a better qvantizied model of concepts. As the model evolve, old promts become inaccurate and inefficient and ultimately produce nonsense, then discarded -- or not.
That makes sense and is similar to what I just described for myself. I was good at remembering things verbatim and having a good mental image, while my wife remembers her interpretation of what people said, rather than what they actually said.
There are people and events from when I was 2 or 3 years old that I can remember not remembering, even as a child. Even in elementary school, my parents would tell stories of when Mom and I went to visit Dad when his reserve unit got called up, and even then had no clue, but I have several other memories from that time, even to this day. I used to be able to multitask, doing five things at once. Now, if my wife wants more than two things from the grocery, I need a list. I need them at work because if I have to do several things in sequence I'll always forget one or two of them, thinking I've done them when I haven't. I remember being 30 and for the first time forgetting something I knew. All my life there've been some memories off-loaded to behind the curtain, that can be recalled perfectly once I'm reminded, but now, in my 60's, it's harder for things to stick. I can read or hear something and a minute later it's gone forever. So...some I think are indexing problems, memories that aren't properly indexed or have lost their link, and now some things that never make their way into memory. The window was shut when the event arrived.
I don't think anyone, even doctors, understands the brain and how it functions. All you have to do is review all the different conflicting theories that the medical researchers seem to generate.
Agreed, it all seems very anecdotal.
AJ
I'm thinking of temporary memory lapses, like going into a room and not remembering why you did so.
Don't you know it is the door causing that?
There was a comedian who mentioned: Now that I'm getting older.. I find myself thinking about the 'here after' a lot more.... like.. every time I enter a room, I'm like "Now what am I here after?"
Consider this:
After many hours per day, usually 5 days a week, for 12 years in public school, 19% of high school graduates in the US can't read.
https://www.abtaba.com/blog/us-literacy-statistics
Yet a completely illiterate adult can be taught to read in about 100 days.
https://www.academia.edu/3441595/Literacy_for_All_in_100_Days_A_research_based_strategy_for_fast_progress_in_low_income_countries
Who learns faster?