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Originally Posted by Estelyn/The old thread
I know there are quite a few "I was reading Tolkien before the average Barrow-Downer was even born!" site members - this thread is for us! Since I don't know the average site age, I have just picked 18 as the legal coming of age. So how many of you have been reading LotR and other Tolkien books for at least 18 years? Please tell us how long ago you first read the book(s); if you like, your age at that time and what prompted you to read Tolkien.
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Registering for the club!
My father started reading the LotR to me in -75 when I was 8-years old. It was never finished, but I read the books a year later by myself.
So it makes this my 30th anniversary with Tolkien! 
I tried to make better of my father and actually managed to read the LotR, Silm and the Unfinished Tales to my children when they were about 5-8 (Lommy may correct the actual years of them). Lommy sure has surpassed myself in times of reading Tolkien already many years ago as I have read the basic books only 2-5 times each. And there's some time I've read any one of them the last time (I'm having The Silmarillion on my table, waiting to be read again).
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But I agree with you "northern-pales", being one myself by attitude if not by skin (I'm not the pale-kind like my younger daughter is), that this summer was sometimes just unbearable. A hobbit-whole would have done fine.
And all the trees and grasses dying from the drought! In August the earth has looked like we would live in the Middle-East and not in the northern part of Scandinavia (=Finland). Nothing green, just faint yellows and browns around.
Maybe it's this northern kind of attitude, but I prefer -30 (Celsius) to +30. And anyhow, from -30 you can always get in to get warm, but from +30 you have no way of escaping...
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Originally Posted by Sharon
For those blessed with younger hobbits, let me tell you things are not so easy! (Poor Pio has already heard an earful of this.) Perhaps this state of affairs is only in the U.S. and other countries haven't gone beserk. But, in the U.S., if you have a student who loves academics and has his or her sights set on competitive schools, or is trying to win a merit scholarship, be prepared to fork out generous amounts of dollars on SATI's, SATII's, AP's, and applications and then get set for some large headaches.
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Maybe you have a headstart in the U.S., but unfortunately we are following suit. I just hope my daughters will be old enough to duck the tide. As a teacher I really don't like the look of things.
Lommy (my daughter) made it to the Senior Secondary High School I'm teaching in, and that school only takes in about 150 from something like 400 applicants! Okay, it's an art-school and really hard to get in by Finnish standards, but anyhow: it's a question of principle too if you take in only a third to a school for 16-year olds! From European (North-European, Scandinavian, Finnish?) perspective it's pretty scary. The competition is heavy on those age-groups already.
(No, she didn't get in because I'm her father. She has a different surname than I have and the schoolboard didn't know she was my daughter as she applied.)
Where are the times when you were just a careless teenager trying to have fun and think about the future later, if you then would have time?
PS. Happily even the higher education is still "free" in Finland and even subsidiced by the state (on a very low rate, but still). But the future looks bad...
PS.2. Nice to see how one writes in the "old-timers" thread, just wailing and complaining about everything...
