Rachel Thornton Autobiography

"Up a bubba world so high, like a dima in the sky!!!!!" shouted a much younger, musically inclined version of me as I sang in the middle of our tiny kitchen. The walls were dark brick and the floor a there's-no-way-this-isn't-a-huge-carrot orange. This, my friends, was the house I grew up in; my humble abode in Norwood, Ohio, until the age of four.

The early days consisted of beautifully constructed forts as elaborate as... mounds of laundry, gourmet culinary skills with my Easy Bake oven, and let's not forget the symphony of magnificent nursery rhymes sung through one of those voice distorting, plastic microphones.

As I toddled along into childhood, my home in Norwood where my parents resided with my grandparents was proving itself to be less and less efficient. At the age of four, I moved to Cincinnati, OH. This house had more bedrooms and was much more suitable for our growing family. You see, my mother was seven months pregnant and unaware at the time that she was carrying my alien of a sister. The little bug-eyed, ferocious fiend arrived just before I started kindergarten in the Goshen School district where I remained throughout the rest of my days as a student.

Later I developed my previously outstanding vocal skills to perform in church and in school plays. I also joined a dance team and was a cheerleader for a while. I like to refer to those days as The Dark Age. Why? Not because I have anything against someone who cheers or goes to church, but because that's not what I was really interested in.

I would say that it took until about the age of 14 to realize what I really wanted to do. All of my life I had tried to be just like all of my friends instead of pursuing my own interests. I never really fit in with the others that surrounded me. I would get art awards for paintings and projects when the rest of my classmates thought art class was a waste of time. I would create fictional stories and keep a book of poems and a journal with me everywhere I went. I spent time after classes in Drama Club recreating great literature. I preferred Independent documentaries to main screen films, Indie label artists rather than main screen films. I finally stopped trying to fit in and took the art and science classes that I loved and pushed for a recycling program at my High School. I took part in and also kind of shamefully won some events of the annual science challenge in the area.

My small town was the key factor in deciding to come here to Kent State University. I wanted to move to a more liberal town and attend a school whose students are known to think for themselves; the protests of the Invasion of Cambodia being a brilliant example. This is what landed me here at Kent to pursue my interest in the environment. Not to mention my hopes of being able to work on the Cuyahoga River.

There you have it, my lifetime summed up in a very broad, slightly ambiguous, yet enlightening short story.