5th
1998…
Searching for a spare notebook in my house today, I found loads of poems/doodles which I wrote when I was 10, back in ‘98 (as the ‘AKY WOZ ERE 9T8’ on the front cover of one such notebook leads me to believe). These poems were pretty cute, about aliens, colours, world peace and one about the millenium bug eating people (unless they loved their family or something like that). But possibly the most bizarre thing I found was this:
Background: When I was about 9/10, me and my friend Joe would sit around and make up our own computer games, with stories, plans and maps etc (I know what you’re going to say, so don’t say it! Rainy days and so on…) What I found was one of these plans, but one which I think remained unfinished… but anyway, here it is, it’s pretty bizarre:
“City Slicker”
In this you are the head of the council for a town. You go round the town seeing what’s happening. You can put shops up for sale and sell them in the market square. If you click on someone’s head, you can see what they’re thinking. You can hire mayors and choose them on a specific interest (such as the mayor could hate pandas!). You can also make your mayor open shops, but instead of cutting the ribbon with scissors they cut it with a chainsaw.
Then there’s a picture of a mayor (looking like an extra from the film “Wall Street”), cutting a banner saying “Old Panda Rescue” between two palm trees with a chainsaw. There’s a little speech bubble saying “Oh, I do like pandas!” and a contradicting thought bubble saying “Not!”. The mayor has a sash saying “mayor” and a badge saying “re-elect me!”.
I’m quite proud that my 10-year-old self could unintentionally satirise yuppiedom so ingeniously. I am a bit worried about what the hatred of pandas could represent though… psychoanalytical answers on a SAE please!
EDIT: It’s Michael Douglas. It’s clearly Michael Douglas.
