Numbers

The weekends interlude of snow has passed so I wobble around our estate without fallin' down today which is nice as I don't like being shut in much at all.
Talking in various places across the week brought a few memories back about the past like how we were taught math.

 For us everything started with learning addition and subtraction (take aways) and the decimal system (yay for logical units!) before being introduced to times tables which we had to learn by rote, reciting both individually and as class  up to the Twelve timestable and also by compiling our own time tables  in a grid form.
Everything came from either a text book or more often what our class teacher stuck up on the board for us to either copy down in our exercise books and complete or to work through in class on the board with us being called out to complete in front of the class  showing your working out.
There weren't any work sheets, calculators or a computer back then.
Carrying over numbers and doing long division are kinda etched in my brain which says a lot about how effective the whole class teaching was despite my best effects of telling the teacher I didn't think I should have to, which responded in a sharp reminder who was actually in charge.
We did do fractions but by the time I went to boarding school we got more into equations, area and trigonometry  which I was lousy at to be honest.

Summer and Middledom

Oyez, Oyez,Oyez!
Miss Joanne has her Summer school dress in dark blue with pocket on the right!

It's nice soft and very comfortable and is very much a part of me really and while in the UK you'd associate it more with rising 5 through 11+ schoolgirls in some countries such as Australia you'll see similar dresses wear in high school no doubt with an eye to those hot humid conditions so I could wear this around my 'presenting age'.
I was having some interesting interactions at one site this week around a topic that has cropped up before connected with that last sentence.
You know, you can slice this broad adult littles thing up many ways and lots of individuals do of which the two most common are by those who do wear diapers or by presenting ages although it's possible to have both as in real life I knew teens in diapers cos for them it was a medical, disability related thing.
Although every one of us has our own unique feel for it, there are three main age related categories whose majority accepted definitions I'll go through.
Adult Baby, this is fairly self explanatory and quite simply means the person while an adult is in the headspace of a baby with  related interests and would be up to three years of age.
Although many do, this need not include diapers or the intended usage of and wearing diapers of itself doesn't make you one.
The widest group you'll hear of is that of Adult Littles which can get a bit confusing  as that's also the generic term for all of us, but strictly speaking adult littles are those who identify  as between 3 and 12 years when in regressed headspace, in otherwords the age range that in England goes from Pre-school through last year at Primary School.
In terms of interests and activities we're looking very much at cartoons, stickers, colouring, toys including blocks.
The group to whom this interaction was more interesting in was that of Middles which is a term spoken much of less of  but generally refers to those who identify more with teen interests and  the question was put politely to me a few times to which do I identify?
That is a very good question because my upper limit is around 12-13 which puts me midpoint although I can regress down a few years too.
Having thought about it, I think I'd say Middle first, because a good number of the things that interest me come from there such as more teen centred animes although there is a quite a carry over from the more Littles side when it comes to play and colouring for instance with me which reflects how my disabilities impact who I can do and enjoy.
The other area being some of needs I have cross from that sense of feeling powerful at ten and 11 to the boundary pushing mid teens requiring copious amounts of patience and understanding as well as undivided attention.
Allied to these changes can be issues such as brattiness and challenging authority requiring love, guidance and discipline of which (cough) I'm getting a good deal of as you navigate the World increasingly more by yourself and to which is really helping with the behavioural and attitude issues I've had on my 'adult' side.
The perfect summary was provided by one person I encountered who described themselves as Middle with a little ones side and that's how I see me although I don't feel any of us need keep ourselves to activities and events to just any one group so long as we're able to get a lot from them.
In other words, while defining  yourself is fine, don't be exclusive with it in your littles life.

 

More on the past

Not a bad start to the week with some sunny weather so the layers have been able to come off but I've been thinking a bit about the past as that's so tied to my present in many ways.

 

We had a uniform to wear to school which I loved wearing so much that unto several years back  I actually still had my original school tie and school was a place I felt very secure in with its rules and routines, more secure than at home.

I did have some very bratty times however of this this is worrying close to how it was as I did throw stuff about, write on the chalkboard  and so on. As was the way at the time, I did end up over a few laps at the time for it which worked well with me.

 When I was at school you were often swung by girls and looking back on it, you learned to trust your friends through that play.

Games were often played in the yard as we only had a tiny field marked out with chalk. You always wiped yourself down with soap and paper towels as our facilities were poor.

Hopscotch was quite popular as was kiss-chase and we'd mark out the playground for it as was skipping which I loved playing up to my mid teens.

On lifestyle (An essay of sorts)

It's a while since I looked at the statistics of this blog, in part cos I think they can be a little misleading at times, but it appears it's had over 51,000 page views since it started and is one of the prominent alg blogs around.
The person who worked out it also could be described as a slice of alg  life blog got that right because its coverage is broader than just about me being a little/middle it's also about the life and how I see that from it.

For I suspect most of us, this life in its differing aspects such as our child-like interests, sense of dressing more as a little - for me little/middle girl - gender presentation for some and so on comes from within.
Certainly speaking purely personally it's something I've felt for a very long time in my so-called real life even if some individual aspects may of changed over time like my more recent feeling comfortable with the more frillier side of being alg.
It is something that we feel, something that we need perhaps in our lives not that we may not have balance this sometimes with more adult responsibilities like paying the bills and for a good many, needing to work too.
We own that sense of self, working it as best we can to suit our requirements and we're in control of that at all times. In other words we're responsible for our sense of little and where we take it.
This is I feel a bit different than what you may see elsewhere where it's portrayed as being "Forced" although I'd say that's not an accurate description so much as the person doing that is more the one enabling, using psychological suggestions, a sense of wanting to be enabled in the subject as no one can in the everyday sense of the word make you do feel or do something you don't wish.
The person buys into it in other words and I suspect they may not have the confidence to just do it by themselves if that's really them. 
It's a different feeling I think from any sense  of, if you're transgendered, wanting wrongs in the form of gendered presentation to be put aright as being enabled to say attend school in the gender you feel which I can well understand from personal experience.
That's just about you as the child back then, being able to be yourself, the gender you really feel, and to have the childhood involving  play and schooling you deserved and all to often never got although through the miracle of age-play you may well be able to recreate something of it such as at meets or in creating say school based role playing especially if it can be face to face.
All I know is I loved some of these elements at Camp, they made me feel more complete and very happy. Maybe it does for you?

Handwriting

Ever wondered about why you feel you can guess male and female handwriting? What makes it so different even though the content may be more androgynous .
There was discussion at a couple of sites about this and as someone who is Ts then in order to be 'me' I needed to find out more about the subtle clues and dare I say practise. One of the best resources out there is the TS Road map who had this to say:Handwriting and gender cues

This is well worth a good several hours careful studying as there is a lot to take in as after all most of us learnt this around age 7 thru 11 years which is a distant memory!

I am continuing on my female handwriting practice.

Learning past and present

One difference between the kind of education I had and that of many children today centres around how we were taught.
For most of my education for instance generally the teacher led the class learning determining what the days topic was in any given subject. They often would dictate notes or write them down on a chalk board for you to copy to your exercise book sometimes with drawings or diagrams too which was fun if you were not good at writing or spelling things as you'd struggle to keep up.
Sometimes we'd have school made duplicated work sheets for some subjects such as Combined Science to complete as we did experiments with bunsen burners, electricity and magnets.
In History we often read from and makes notes using set text books and all homework (and there was heaps of it!) was to be completed by hand.

This scene would be almost familiar to me in high school as we'd move from old style individual wooden desks to clusters of tables and plastic chairs except for one thing.
That's right, where the girl is sat we'd have our exercise book but she has a laptop which looking at this picture closely is something most of her peers do not suggesting she has 'special needs' and has been given one for 'writing up things' with.
That is something I'd of benefited from personally as my hand writing was poor and spelling pretty rotten too.
A number of schools today have huge screens,  some interactive, for teaching with rather than chalkboards (they were called Blackboards until some edict came down saying that word was racist!) but debate rages as to whither or not this is any more effective from the chalkboard and rote learning we had.

Team games II

In the World of Joanne there was only one thing that mattered in school:

Run, Run, Run to get the round all the posts!

 

Wait until the ball is bowled, then stick, followed by run for your life. With my co-ordination it wasn't easy but i put everything into it because I was a good girl.

An overview of the rounders pitch properly marked out.