Fifteen Years of Daughter Number Three

It has been 15 years since I started this blog back in 2007: 5,594 posts and counting.

When the real Daughter Number Three was 15, she looked like this and was a sophomore in high school. That was the year I started to become who I am as an adult. It was only the beginning of the process, which went on for another 10–15 years (and continues to this day, but most of it happened between the ages of 15 and 30). 

In 10th grade I began to care just a tiny bit less what other people thought. I gave up on being "normal." I started liking intellectual concepts for their own sake, finding ideas in schoolwork that I took a shine to. I had teachers who inspired me, often because they didn't use textbooks, or only textbooks. 

That change showed in my grades, which averaged out to 92.6 for the year (compared to 87.3 the year before), and got me into Honor Society at the start of my junior year. Then I felt compelled to maintain those kinds of grades through the rest of high school. 

And I guess I was healthy, too, with 0 days absent all year. Though I bet I had headaches and was taking a lot of aspirin! 

Let's see, what was going on outside of school? As I turned 15, Richard Nixon had just resigned a few months before. My grandfather — who lived with us — died soon afterward, having held on to see the scoundrel leave the White House. My oldest sister left home to start college just before my birthday. And my grandmother, who had some form of late-stage dementia, went into a nursing home. 

It was a time of big changes at home. In retrospect, it seems as though school was probably a refuge for me.

There aren't many big changes happening on this current 15th birthday. Thanks for reading all or part of these years!

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 My past anniversary posts, each with an age-appropriate photograph:

• First
• Second
• Third
• Fourth 
• Fifth 
• Sixth 
• Seventh
• Eighth 
• Ninth
• Tenth
• Eleventh
• Twelfth
• Thirteenth
  
• Fourteenth