The Summer We Were Sixteen: Part IV - Ozz

In Australia, summer is Dec-Feb, so my 16th birthday was right before the end of the school year. I remember it clearly because as a 10th grade Elective PE student I had the opportunity to be part of the 7th grade swimming lessons program which lasted a week. Being one of the top swimmers I was assigned with the advanced class which had my sister in it. Bad idea, we get along WAY too well. All week we goofed off during the lessons.
The last day of the lessons was a pool party and my birthday. One of my best friends at the time gave me a stuffed toy sheep with a bib which read: Best Friends. It was possibly the coolest gift ever because I have a weird sheep fetish.
The whole day was a blast, and I ended up sun burnt. So my sixteenth birthday party that night I was as red as a lobster. But a few weeks later I had a nice bronze tan and my hair was sun-bleached.
Like most summers, I spent it at the pool or beach, but that year we had really bad fires around and after Christmas. We lived in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney and that area is a tinderbox. When fire season kicks in, the smell of smoke lingers for weeks. But that year was really bad. Before Christmas almost an entire neighborhood was lost, leaving them stranded for Christmas.
By mid-January, a 30km front was heading straight for the line of towns in which we lived. So a burn off was set into place in the bush which our home fronted. I remember we had to take the dogs inside and lock them up because they freaked out, and wildlife slithered and scampered up into the streets as we watch the firefighters set our bush on fire.
It did the trick though. The fire had nothing to burn, so when it met with the burn off, it went out or changed course away from all the homes. I remember at night going to a lookout and seeing the orange glow crawling down the mountainside like a slow lava flow. It felt so eerie.
A few days later, Dad decided he wanted to go take a look at "our" bush. So we hiked down to a small creek with the dogs. On the way back, I slipped on some ash, and underneath embers still smoldered. It stung like crazy, and I obviously cried and the dogs rushed over to lick my face in their dog-sympathy kind of way.
We rushed home to hose my leg off and found a nice burn from my knee down my shin. To this day I still have a small amount of ash trapped under my skin on my knee.
So, that was my summer when I was sixteen.

~Ozz

The Summers We Were Sixteen: Page

Thanks to Christi for asking us to do this. I'm actually going to do two summers, because they relate to each other. The summers that I was fifteen and sixteen. This might be a little long...

My birthday is in November, so I had a whole two-thirds of the school year to be fifteen before I went from junior high (9th grade in AZ at the time) to high school. I'd made the top choir and the JV Cheer squad, and I was so excited to finally be moving up in the world.

Unfortunately, I had a difficult choice to make that year as well. My church had scheduled Girl's Camp the same week as Cheer Camp. Long story short: I chose Cheer Camp.

Wrong choice.

I won't say I didn't have fun, because I did. I learned a lot, and thought I'd made some good friends. The girls on my squad were nice to me, and I was good at everything we did. But the challenge came when I realized that my new "friends'" bad language was rubbing off on me.

I'd never made a habit of swear words. I'd said them in the past, but only once, and only behind the staircase at my elementary school to prove that I *could* but I didn't ever *want* to. The more I hung out with these girls on my squad, the more these words drove themselves into my brain.

Eventually, school started and I was basically swearing. Not constantly, and definitely not at home or in writing or to anyone I knew it would offend, but the words came out of their own accord. The devil on my shoulder was proud of me, and the angel on the other hung her head in shame.

By the time the cheer squad did the first football game and pep rally, I'd come to the conclusion than none of the girls on my squad even really liked me. Not only that, but cheering had a negative effect on my singing voice, and choir was definitely my top priority at the time. So I quit the squad. Soon after that, I realized that I'd dug myself into a bad hole, and that hole was full of swear words.

I remember standing on the steps of my high school waiting for my mom to come pick me up, and something happened that made me utter a curse under my breath. I was completely alone, and (to be a little religious for a second) the Spirit hit me hard, telling me that swearing wasn't the way for me, and I needed to stop. So, I made a conscious effort to stop. A habit like that is hard to break and it took a long time, but I did it.

Then, the summer I was sixteen I was able to go to Girl's Camp with my church. I was also able to attend a program called EFY (Especially For Youth) that members of my church put on each year. It was a whole week of spiritual talks, songs, games, study, and celebration. I met cute boys, made new friends, and had one of the most spiritual moments of my life that I still treasure to this day.

I learned from both summers, about myself and my life. And lessons like those stick with you.

-Page/Darci

The Summers We Were Sixteen: Part II

Didn't you just love Rogue's post about her 16th summer? The fact that she used the word temerity alone, really impressed me. So much so, that I had to look it up. For your enjoyment, here is an account of Lady Jane's summer she turned 16, exactly 14 years ago today!


Lady

Sunday! My 16th birthday fell on a Sunday. And I thought the universe couldn't be crueler. I couldn't date until I turned sixteen anyway and it was just the shard of glass on top of the cake that it fell on a Sunday, a day my family went to church and not much else. 

The only glorious gift given to me by the universe was that it rained. A good, long rain. I grew up in the desert and the simple act of condensation falling to the ground lifted my spirits. 

I didn't even have the fortune of looking forward to getting my driver's license either. There's no one to blame but myself (or maybe the girl that caused a car accident I was in just before my 15th birthday). I wasn't in the mood to be behind the wheel when there were crazies out there who could run red lights because they felt like it. Not exactly the boost of confidence I needed or faith in my fellow driver.

I had a few close friends that I made from being in choir at high school for the last couple of years that I wanted to invite over for my sweet sixteen. I might have been a little over-zealous at my definition of "a few close friends" because when I invited 20 or so kids, only four showed up. I was too depressed to even be happy that those four cared enough to be there for me. 

When I did finally have my first date, I had a blast! I went with a boy I was friends with (no romantic inklings whatsoever, the best kind of date when you're starting out) and we grabbed some pizza with two other couples and went back to my date's house to play relay ping pong. I think that's what it's called, where you race around the table and you can only hit the ball once. Then we finished the night off with a showing of "The Princess Bride". In all, not a shabby first date if I do say so. 


Stay tuned for our next installment of The Summers We Were Sixteen! 

The Summers We Were Sixteen

The word itself almost seems magical. The days are longer, the nights pleasant (depending on where you grew up). But the most magical summers would have to be at the age of sixteen. Licenses are distributed, dating more often (again, depending on how you grew up), your friends are the most important people on the planet, I could go on but I won't. It's Rogue's turn to divulge details on the summer she turned sixteen. For many of the Typelings, it has been over a decade since those treasured years. So come along with us as we scrounge through our attics of teenagerdom and find some buried gems.


Rogue

The summer I turned 16 was a momentous one for me. I remember late-night cruises down empty highways, hanging out of a sunroof and screaming for the joy of the wind in my hair. I remember sneaking in and out of windows, evading curfews and parental interference, stargazing on rooftops, climbing trees and fences alike, and crushing hard core on a different cute boy every week.

I remember my first kiss, crouching in a nest of shrubbery at the edge of a park in the dead of night, the temerity of the moment, the pounding of my hear and the flushing of my face, the feel of gravel pressing into my ankles. I remember hours of hand holding, his palm calloused and sweaty against mine, and how every second seemed both desperate and eternal.

That summer was the first time I ever heard the words "I love you", and the first time I returned the sentiment-the first time I really thought I meant it. 

It was a summer of blistering heat, of reckless bliss, of raucous  friendship, teenage rebellion, and budding romance. It was the high point of my youth, a time I will always treasure. 

Book Lovers Identified

Oscar Hammerstein said to give credit where credit is due, so it was not by my own mind that I came up with this idea of talking about the books that changed the Typelings lives, it was an article out of the Real Simple June 2013 issue. But I thought, "what the heck!" I am friends with a bunch of writers and we read too, a lot, probably some more than others. But I digress.

It was in that issue that John Green a YA author said, "Books are just meaningless scratches on a page until the reader translates them into a story."


So what books changed our lives? What stories did we bring to life?

Those books captured my imagination from the tender age of 10. Because of them I would dream up my own fantasy world for hours on end and left me thinking, "man, I'd love to write."

~ Pinocchio aka Todd Chapman

This is a Young Adult book which I first read when I was twelve. It's about an Italian girl, Josephine, born and raised in Sydney, during her 12th grade year. She starts off not knowing exactly who she is or where she stands within her community, her mother gave birth to her when she was sixteen and she has no father, she's a poor girl in a prestigious Catholic school on a scholarship, and just generally feels isolated and outcast. But throughout the book she goes through a series of learning experiences with her grandmother, boys, friends and also her long lost father who didn't even know she existed. There's a lot of humanity, emotion and self discovery, and over the years it's remained as a top pick for me and I've read it several times. I want to be able to create stories overflowing with emotion and the human experience like Alibrandi does.

Ozz aka Katie Hamstead Teller

"She reads books as one who would breathe air, to fill up and live." - Annie Dillard

I was always a reader. I still am. Even while writing novels and blog posts and tweets galore, I always have something, either on my kindle or in paper, to read. The books that really defined my life as a reader -- the ones that every other book was compared to -- were written by David Eddings. If you look him up, you'll see he has many titles to his name, but the most popular are two series of five books each (ten total) called THE BELGARIAD and THE MALLOREAN. 

These stories follow the traditional Fantasy tropes to a 'T', and they do it with wit, flair, and a dash of sarcasm. Eddings says he basically set out to make fun of the Fantasy genre, and he ended up with a brilliantly funny take on every trope in the genre. The main character, Garion, starts out very naive, and throughout the story he becomes wise beyond his years. Even so much that by the end of THE MALLOREAN he's giving very sage advice to other characters -- and yet still being caught off guard by his whip of a wife, Ce'Nedra. 

Overall, I can't praise these books enough. And, now that I've told you all about them, I think I'll go read them again.

Page aka Darci Cole

When asked to choose a book that has changed my life, my automatic reaction is to simply reply, "There are too many" and leave it at that. My second reaction is to go for the obvious choices, such as Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. My third reaction was to really sit and give this question some serious thought, and this is what I came up with.

Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
While books have always been important to me, I did, in my early 20's, experience my own personal Dark Age, in which I allowed my love of reading to diminish in lieu of less worthy interests in television shows and films. I picked up this book on a whim one day, and found my passion for the written word not only reawakened, but exponentially increased. This book is ABOUT loving books, worded with excellence, and enlivened with characters that became as dear to me as members of my own family. And may I just say...Dustfinger, you rocked my world. You and your pet ferret. I love you, man.

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
This book completely changed not only the way I feel about writing, but the way in which I experience life. Dean Koontz is the ONLY author who has ever made me step back and re-evaluate my understanding of love, loss, and hardship. He is the only author who has ever made me truly aware of the profound depth to the world in which I live. He has instilled in me such awesome gratitude for the mysteries of the earth and of my fellow man. And he did this all through a character name Odd Thomas. Odd is, in my opinion, the most fully-realized character ever to take form from the tip of a pen. He faces terrible adversity with a sense of optimism that never wavers. He is someone I truly admire, and a character I will revisit over and over for the rest of my life. PS, the sixth book in the Odd Thomas series comes out on the 28th of this month!
Rogue aka Marie Aguirre

"There is no such thing as a child who hates to read ; there are only children who have not found the right book." - Frank Serafini

I like to think that quote was written with me in mind. I wasn't a voracious reader (I'm still not) but when it comes to a book that truly speaks to me I can't put it down for days. This was the first chapter book I ever read in elementary school. When I first read it I couldn't put it down, I was engrossed with Minikin Snickasnee (Minx for short). She was a sweet, kind, big-hearted girl who learned to love in spite of her care-taker, a dreadful aunt who defined witch. It was because of Little Witch that I enjoyed reading as a young kid. 

I think I'll go out and order a copy to cherish forever.

~ Lady aka Christi Gray