That uniqueness was just perfect because it was centred on places particularly schools and colleges so you could and many of us did pick up from the playgrounds we left behind getting back in touch with past school mates such as Jacqueline as we both left juniors to different schools than most of our year group and gender aside were kindred spirits.
It wasn't all just that though, for me it was stepping back to my original peer group and before I had the language even of exploring the world that still resonates to me because in so many ways I was still that boy permanently in that mindset.
Of course it was also the era of "School Disco" which in some ways made re-exploring your school days seem more mainstream that it might of done a few years before with people buying uniforms of varying authenticity to dance the night the away with former class mates in just like it was a year group school disco of the sort we all attended.
I discovered the short lived ASB.org site which while brief, being very much missed even if I was on a different path than some was to prove quite instrumental because to be quite frank as Edward knows when I landed at tumblr around this period I was not in a very good spot at all being exposed to the only age regression communities around who were more into sissification and pushing degendering at me to the point I just lost touch with who I was as much as I tried pushing back.
ASB provided for me a safe place to explore much of business of relating and socializing with just adult schoolboys with no distractions and no pressure to be anything I wasn't comfortable with because it was like being in a virtual school where there was less of a set uniform so much as a common set of understandings about what we all wore.
I soon feel into line presenting in the text book British convention from underwear onwards conforming and people checking how I presented for the first time in ages while I got used to being treated just as a boy. I started dressing every day as that schoolboy.
I had started to explore around my childhood and age regression at ASB to try to get to the 'real me' but that was something I really got into on Tumblr looking what I did, why I did them and what I felt being that boy because those other influences had started to really dine out on them really messing my head up
One of things that came about through that was that so much of that childhood experience was very much within that of everyday boys rather than in any respect exceptional that the attempts to push labels that qualified being a boy as if it was insufficient or I was in fact anything other than just a boy soon lead to me starting the process of moving from all of that.
Some indication of this was in coming out on sites which anything self identity was ambiguous as just male and even as an adult little boy just short of using that very phase, re-writing profiles and gaining respect from people for just being that being an actual gender.
Totally moving away from those influences followed as I understand where there was any real discomfort it had nothing to do with gender but really was around being actually adult which for certain reasons connected with developmental disabilities I don't have many of the abilities to navigate that world and permanent inhabit the mindset of a school boy with all of his needs to the point I don't relate to adults as one.
I also joined sites that keyed into aspects of being ALB such as a site devoted to one writer of Children's Literature and to a private Age Regression site for both sexes using my name and being openly ALB even if with the latter it has mainly females being their on just my own terms.
One thing I have done more over this two years is transition to an openly ALB life not just indoors or behind the keyboard but outdoors so while being mindful not to be seen in things like caps, blazers and satchels particularly with actual school logos around the times chronologically aged boys do travel to and from school or loitering purposely outside one, I do present as my boyself.
In part that is more about being comfortable in my own skin as an adult little boy with no ifs, buts or maybe's but also to detach myself openly from fully adult expectations because - and if you're not like me you won't get it - being expected to act as a adult male when you lack the abilities just because of chronological age is very stressful and I am fortunate to live in a community that having see me 'grow up' with those issues actually accepts I'm not even if I have done important things in my 'adult' life with it.
Thus it is an everyday thing now to see a 'boy' in grey shorts grey blue turn down socks and shirt walking about or like last year voting in uniform and being respected and equally for men to talk to me more as that boy to the point they will effectively instruct me as if I was their son as the adult authority figures in my life.
That's my Easter Egg that ALB me will be enjoying this weekend even if chunks of Easter have been affected by this virus thingy.
Thanks for a frank and honest account of the ALB side of your life. There were many parts I could relate to, particularly where you say, "...One thing I have done more over this two years is transition to an openly ALB life not just indoors or behind the keyboard but outdoors." As I have had similar experience.
ReplyDeleteI would openly go outside wearing short corduroy trousers, in fact, once when I was in Carlisle I overheard a guy tell his mate it was the first time he'd ever seen corduroy shorts. Another time I visited a steam railway museum wearing my green cord shorts. There was a working train at the museum which I went on. It was quite a surreal experience as I really did feel like being a little boy once more.
Once or twice when the weather was quite warm I wore my David Luke shorts to church. I was a member of a local historical society, one night a guy gave a lecture about pastimes,in it he showed a slide of some boys in shorts. He mentioned the shorts they were wearing, I told him I still wore them. At the time I had on my brown cord shorts.