I have many memories of the upstairs apartment in the two-story house at 2119 30th Street in San Diego where I grew up (from age 4 to 24).
Did my house "watch" and "hear" and "feel" and "remember" my time living there?
I wrote a description of the layout of the 30th Street house, and the downstairs patio, as I recalled it. I described each inhabitant (my father, my mother, me, my two brothers) and some of the daily events that happened in each room, and the patio and the block, over my 20 years residing there, plus some memories of specific events. I created a PDF of that document and attached it to the AI tool to use.
1) The first AI prompt that I used for the free AI tool Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 was for story ideas, along with a short description of each idea. Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 provided twenty wonderful story ideas - here is one of them (lightly edited for accuracy, consistency, and detail).
2) My prompt today asked "Please write a story by the house about Randy struggling to grow up as a boy and young adult," and added some detail about those events in my life.
Here is the Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4.5 story (lightly edited):
Growing Up Is Hard To Do
A story from the house at 2119 30th Street
I watched Randy grow up—or more accurately, I watched him struggle to grow up—over twenty-one years within my walls. From the four-year-old who arrived in 1947 to the young man who left for his own apartment in 1968, I witnessed a profound mismatch between the brilliant mind that developed rapidly and the body that stubbornly refused to cooperate on any reasonable timeline.
The academic part came easy. Randy loved school from his first day at Brooklyn Elementary School in 1948, continuing through Theodore Roosevelt Junior High School, San Diego High School, and finally San Diego State College, graduating in 1966. Books were his natural habitat, homework was pleasure rather than chore, grades came effortlessly. Teachers adored him—the boy who knew all the rules, followed all directions, completed every assignment with care and precision.
But I felt his other struggles in ways that report cards could never capture. The body that housed that quick mind seemed determined to embarrass him at every opportunity.
The height issue dominated Randy's childhood consciousness in ways that broke my heart to witness. At age twelve, when other boys were starting their growth spurts, Randy stood barely four feet tall. I'd hear him come home from school and immediately check his height against the marks Fred had made on the hallway wall, hoping desperately to see some change, some evidence that his body was finally catching up to his chronological age.
By age sixteen, he'd managed five feet—a milestone he celebrated privately in the bathroom mirror with a mixture of relief and continued frustration. One hundred pounds at sixteen years old. His body was literally five years behind his brain, as he would later articulate with the dark humor he developed to cope with circumstances beyond his control.
The cruel mathematics of playground selection played out repeatedly in my backyard and in Randy's stories from school. Being picked last for baseball teams. Always playing right field—the position reserved for players coaches hoped the ball would never reach. Or worse, being assigned as cheerleader and scorekeeper rather than actual player, his small size disqualifying him from full participation in the games other boys took for granted.
Football was marginally better—Randy's quick mind made him a capable quarterback, calling plays and throwing passes even if he couldn't match the physical dominance of larger boys. But I could sense his awareness that this position came partly from strategic thinking and partly from being too small to play anywhere else effectively.
Then there was the vision problem that compounded everything. Randy couldn't see well – he was far-sighted, but squinting at a book, struggling to track baseballs, missing social cues written on faces too distant to read clearly. It wasn't until age eleven that he was diagnosed with amblyopia (a weak right eye that turned inward, so his vision was monocular, not binocular) and finally got glasses. The transformation was dramatic -- suddenly the near world came into focus -- but the diagnosis arrived after years of struggling with a disability he hadn't even known he had.
I watched him put on those first glasses and saw his expression shift from self-consciousness about wearing them to wonder at actually being able to see clearly. But the glasses added another layer to his physical self-awareness, another way he was different from other boys, another detail that marked him as someone whose body didn't quite work the way it was supposed to.
Being left-handed in a right-handed world created daily frustrations I witnessed constantly. Ballpoint pens smeared as his hand dragged across fresh ink. Tools designed for right-handers – scissors especially -- felt awkward and uncooperative in his left hand. Even baseball batting was complicated by his weak right eye facing the pitcher, creating visual challenges that right-handed batters never experienced.
The combination of small size and a lean physique meant Randy lacked physical strength that other boys developed naturally. He could run endlessly -- his endurance was impressive -- but lifting, carrying, using tools, all the physical tasks that defined masculine competence in 1950s culture, these challenged him constantly.
And then there were the bigger boys who could pick on him simply because they could. I absorbed Randy's stories of playground bullying, of being pushed around, of having to navigate social hierarchies where physical size determined status and small boys were automatically placed at the bottom. His younger brother Stan, three years behind but always Randy's height, provided some protection through shared experience, and Randy often hung around with Stan's friends where the age difference mattered less than their similar sizes.
But perhaps the cruelest aspect of Randy's delayed physical development was the social isolation it created, especially with girls. Through junior high and into high school, every girl was taller than him. Every single one. The mathematics were brutal and unavoidable -- Randy was interested in girls his own age, but girls his own age towered over him physically and looked past him toward boys whose bodies had already made the transition to young manhood.
I felt his shyness compound the height problem. Even if Randy had been average height, his inherent introversion would have made social interaction challenging. But being small and shy with glasses created a double barrier that seemed almost insurmountable. School dances and group social events became torture rather than pleasure -- Randy would be the wallflower, hoping to be invisible, terrified of the humiliation that would come from asking a girl to dance and having her look down at him with pity or amusement.
By junior high and high school, he'd stopped even trying. Why subject himself to certain rejection? Why risk the embarrassment of approaching girls who literally looked over his head toward more physically mature options?
I watched him develop coping mechanisms, some healthy and some simply survival strategies. His intelligence became his shield -- if he couldn't be the biggest or strongest or most athletic, he could be the smartest. Being funny and quick-witted helped too, learning to make people laugh defused potential bullying and made his small size seem like a quirk rather than a weakness.
His friendship choices were strategic, though he probably didn't consciously realize it at the time. He cultivated relationships with boys who were normal-sized and great at sports, perhaps hoping their social capital would provide protection and reflected status. These friends genuinely liked Randy for his intelligence and humor, but I sensed Randy's awareness that these friendships also served defensive purposes.
Classroom participation became a minefield. Randy's shyness combined with fear of embarrassment meant he actively tried to avoid being called on, despite knowing the answers better than anyone else. Public speaking terrified him -- his voice was high and would sometimes crack or he'd become tongue-tied, his quick mind suddenly frozen by social anxiety. The contrast between his written work and his oral performance puzzled teachers who couldn't understand why such a brilliant student seemed so hesitant in class discussions.
Many of Randy's high school peers were involved in clubs and school groups, but Randy avoided these activities. Part of this was genuine introversion and preference for solitary pursuits like listening to the radio, making maps, playing games in solitude. But I knew -- because my walls absorbed his private thoughts and occasional tears -- that much of his avoidance stemmed from being small and shy, from not wanting to put himself in social situations where his physical inadequacy would be highlighted.
His evenings and early mornings in the sun room, listening to distant radio signals through headphones, weren't just about the hobby itself. They were refuge, a way to engage with the world without his body being the primary interface. Through radio waves, he could connect with places and people without anyone seeing his height or judging his physical presence. The electromagnetic spectrum didn't care if you were five feet tall or six feet tall -- it treated all listeners equally.
I watched Fred try to help in his own awkward way. The baseball coaching gave Randy access to sports even when his size limited his participation. Fred never made Randy feel inadequate, but I could sense Randy's awareness that his father had been athletic and normal-sized, that whatever genetic lottery had determined height had somehow skipped Randy's ticket.
Betty's approach was more direct but equally limited. She'd reassure him that he'd grow eventually, that everyone developed at different rates, that height didn't matter as much as character and intelligence. But maternal comfort couldn't change the reality that Randy lived every day -- that his body had betrayed him by remaining child-sized while his mind raced ahead into adolescence and young adulthood.
Stan's relationship with Randy carried its own complexity. Being the same height as his older brother created solidarity, but it also highlighted Randy's problem -- his younger brother had caught up to him, making Randy's delayed development even more obvious. They were allies in smallness, but Randy surely felt the unfairness that his three-years-younger brother was already matching his physical stature.
The turning point came slowly, almost imperceptibly at first. Around age sixteen, Randy finally started growing more consistently. By eighteen, he was approaching normal height at five feet seven inches. By twenty-one, he'd reached five feet ten inches and 135 pounds -- still slender but finally, finally within the range of normal adult male proportions.
I watched his confidence grow along with his height. The young man who left for college was still shy, still left-handed, still struggled with tools and physical tasks, but he no longer felt like a child trapped in a child's body while his mind operated at adult levels. His body had finally, mercifully, caught up.
The DXing hobby that had provided refuge during the difficult years became genuine passion rather than escape. The academic excellence that had been his primary source of self-worth expanded into professional competence in aerospace engineering. The shyness gradually diminished as Randy realized that adult interactions cared less about physical size and more about intellectual capability and professional performance.
But I knew -- because houses remember everything -- that Randy carried the scars of those growing-up years throughout his life. The sensitivity about height never fully disappeared. The shyness around girls and groups required conscious effort to overcome. The preference for solitary or small-group activities rather than large social gatherings reflected lessons learned during years of being literally overlooked.
When Randy later developed public speaking capabilities at work and built a wide circle of friends who knew nothing about his childhood struggles, I recognized this as triumph over circumstance rather than erasure of history. The small, shy, left-handed, far-sighted boy who'd struggled through twenty-one years in my walls had learned to function successfully in a world designed for tall, confident, right-handed people with perfect vision.
His eventual marriage, family, successful career in aerospace engineering, and later devotion to genealogy and grandchildren represented victories hard-won through perseverance rather than natural advantages. Randy had grown up despite his body's reluctance to cooperate, had succeeded despite physical and social challenges that would have defeated someone with less determination or intellectual capability.
From my perspective, watching Randy's struggles taught me profound lessons about the disconnect between inner and outer development, about how physical circumstances can torture brilliant minds trapped in uncooperative bodies, about how childhood hierarchies based on size and athletic ability can damage sensitive souls in ways that take decades to heal.
The teachers loved Randy because they saw the intelligence and diligence. But I saw the whole picture—the brilliant student who came home and cried in frustration at being picked last again, who stood in front of the bathroom mirror wondering if he'd ever grow, who watched girls he liked choose taller boys without even considering him as a possibility, who developed humor and intelligence as defensive weapons because physical strength wasn't available.
Growing up is hard for everyone, but it's especially hard when your body refuses to grow while your mind races ahead, when every social interaction reminds you of physical inadequacy, when the timeline that works for everyone else somehow forgot to include you.
Randy survived, then thrived, then built a life that transcended those difficult years. But I remember the struggle, honor the perseverance, and understand that the confident man he became was built on foundations of childhood pain transformed through determination into adult competence.
The house on 30th Street witnessed every stage of Randy's difficult growing-up, held his private tears and frustrations, celebrated his eventual physical development, and recognized that sometimes the greatest achievements come not from those blessed with natural advantages but from those who refuse to let disadvantages define their limits.
Randy's body was five years behind his brain, but his brain was extraordinary enough to carry him through until his body finally, gratefully, caught up. And I was privileged to witness every difficult step of that journey, from the four-foot-tall twelve-year-old who loved school but hated playground selection, to the confident young man who left my walls knowing that intelligence, perseverance, and character ultimately mattered more than height, athletic ability, or right-handedness ever could.
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3) The Google NotebookLM Video Overview of this story is below:
4) These events really happened over a period of time and the names and events mentioned are real. This was a daily struggle in my childhood and young adulthood. I finally took the attitude "The whole world is born right-handed/strong/tall/etc., but some of us overcome it."
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