Strange would be the go-to word. I somewhat excelled academically but would always get in trouble for constantly goofing off/distracting other kids. To this day I am never sure if being "smart" was an inherent trait or was a result of having the stereotypical Asian parents. Though I did realize early on that doing well in school made my parents more lenient with other things especially when I got older (which I now think they're super cool for), i.e. curfew, tattoos, pursuing odd hobbies, overall strange behavior. As long as my grades weren't affected, I was left alone to do what it takes to discover myself.

I was a bit of a tomboy too and grew up with boy best friends because the girls in my neighborhood were a bit cruel and made fun of me a lot - was too tall, never girly, tiptoed a lot when I was walking, talked to animals and was not interested in what they were interested in (I cut off the tip of my Barbies' noses). We moved a few times and from ages 8-11 I was a bit lonely, my siblings were too old and too cool for me to hang withand that was when I got into reading. I loved it. My parents also owned a lot of land and trees (fruit-bearing ones, too) so I spent a lot of time alone reading and climbing trees or reading in trees or exploring my mom's garden and befriending mantises, which I appreciated when I got older. But yeah, I definitely knew at a young age that I wasn't quite like the other kids. I was comfortable being by myself but was never too terribly shy around others, I just never pursued relationships and adapted a mindset that if another person and I "clicked" that it would be a friendship in the making, but that it wasn't my responsibility to chase after it, just to recognize when it happened and seize it then. But yeah man, definitely a weirdo. Our neighbors had to have a talk with my parents one day because they found a shit ton of paper airplanes in their backyard with nothing but "arf arf" written on them and signed by me, because apparently I thought dogs could unfold paper and read. How I was hoping they would respond, I've still yet to determine. I also sang road signs to the tune of popular songs/nursery rhymes and my brother got a kick out of that. I wish I had more proofs of the kid I was outside of pictures of me dangling from trees (WITH FOOD IN MY MOUTH, TOO! I've always loved shhhhnnnaaaccckkksss.) but yeah, I'm sure that if I met anybody from this community as a kid that we would've gotten along. I'm already looking forward to reading the responses. Much excite!