Sometimes you don’t realize your flaws until your friends and family point them out to you. I recently realized how many things I suck at because people have told me. If I didn’t have my loving family and friends, I’d probably have this warped sense of self.
Things I’m no good at:
-Colors. I am kind of color blind, but in more of a “nobody ever taught me colors so I suck at telling them apart” kind of way. Basically I had been wearing a brown belt with black outfits for 3 years. Hello, I would never do this on purpose. One day, my friend asked why I was wearing it. I didn’t understand. I finally believed them when several friends told me the same thing. “Ugh,” I said to my then-boyfriend, “can you believe I’ve been wearing this without even knowing it?” “Umm, yeah” he said, “I’ve been trying to tell you that for the past year.” Oops. I still really think it’s black. I also have A LOT of trouble telling the difference between blue and green and I’m having a really difficult time coming to terms with it. I swear on my life something is green when others tell me it’s blue. Similar problems with pink and red. It’s really frustrating.
-Rhythm. I have the worst rhythm in the world. My first piano teacher gave me the award for “best rhythm” one year probably because I sucked at everything and she felt bad for me. I was quite proud of my award and decided I should learn to play the drums. My mom didn’t let me. Years later, my new piano teacher looked at me and said “You have the worst rhythm of anyone I have ever met in my life.” He told me I was hopeless and it was too late to un-learn my bad habits. Dreams were crushed. A couple months ago, my friends and I were at singalong and I was clapping along to a song. All the sudden I noticed all my friends staring at me. “What?” I questioned. “Whattt are you doing?” they laughed at me. Apparently, I cannot even clap along to a song. That’s how bad it is.
-Pointing. I’m a pointer. Supposedly I point a lot. Who knew? I didn’t, until a friend pointed (haha) it out and everyone agreed. I think I have a quiet voice and point for emphasis. Now I am extremely self conscious about my pointing and work really hard not to point. This results in a lot of half-points.
-Eating. Basically I make a lot of noise when I’m eating something that’s really really good. I seriously can’t help it and just make “mmmmmmm” sounds the whole time I’m eating. Until my friends or family tell me to shut up. I feel like you should just take it as a compliment if I’m mmmm’ing while I’m eating food you made and deal with it. I clearly can’t control it.
Lately I’ve realized that I laugh a lot when writing e-mails. You know, I type “haha” a lot. To the point where sometimes when I go back and read over the e-mail, I have to delete “hahas” because there are wayy too many. A lot of times I don’t even know why they’re there; what I’m writing isn’t even funny and “hahas” definitely aren’t necessary. It’s not like I use “haha” as an awkward filler, because the e-mails I’m writing are usually to my close friends (I try my best not to haha in business e-mails). But it’s making me wonder if I do a lot of awkward haha’ing in real life. Seriously, I’ve been laughing at the lamest things lately. Like non-stop, can’t hold it in no matter what laughter. My friends look at me like “What? Did we miss the joke?” Maybe this is just translating over into my e-mail communications…or vice versa. Hmmm.
I used to work with a 39-year-old man who would write me e-mails and constantly use LOL. The first time he wrote to me I called him out on it, and he totally did not get why I thought it was so hilarious. Now when he writes to me, he makes it a point to say LOL at least 10 times, and if he fails to, he always ends with a P.S. LOL. There’s something about a 39-year-old man writing LOL that makes me LOL.
I’m going to try my best to stop e-mailing “hahas” so much. And I need to control my real-life laughter as well. Especially when I’m by myself. I think I’m a pretty emotional person, and I just calculated that I haven’t actually cried for 3 months, which may be a record for me. Therefore though, I think my body is finding other ways to exhibit emotion and laughing must be it. Well, I suppose “hahas” are better than “wahh wahhs.”
It’s funny how no matter what, your parents are your parents, and when you hear about their pasts it kind of creeps you out. My mom basically made me feel like the biggest loser in the world the other day. We were talking about when she met my dad, which was coincidentally a few blocks down the street from where I live, at a bar that no longer exists. She said, “I think it was a Friday…no, maybe Wednesday…Tuesday? Saturday night was date night so it couldn’t have been that…I don’t remember…we used to go out every night of the week when we were your age.” Um, really Mom? “Well maybe not Sunday; actually no, Sunday had the best happy hours, so we were always out…I guess Monday nights we had to do laundry.”
So yeah, maybe times were different, but for some reason, it annoys me that my mom was such a party animal, while I go out like 2 nights a week. She also claimed that the night she met my dad, she walked with him to his car, and when she saw it was a convertible she then decided she’d go on a date with him. I said “Um did you guys drive drunk?” And she says, “I never drove, my roommate did.” So basically yeah. Are you even supposed to tell your children that, ever?
Lately my mom says the randomest things that absolutely shock me. I can’t even bring myself to talk about what she said about guys and girls having “sleepovers.” Growing up, I always figured my mom and dad must have been totally boring 20-somethings who never did a bad thing in their lives. My mom is such a mom and I would argue my dad to be bordering nerdy (OK, not bordering; he’s really nerdy, but in a super cute dad kind of way). They somehow raised me to be what I think is probably too much of a good girl, even though I now have the feeling my mom was anything but good. I was deceived for so long. I guess that’s some good parenting right there.
The sketchiest, worst time in Boston ever is leaving the bars at 2:00 a.m. In Faneuil Hall. As a female. All alone. In the pouring rain. Probably my mother would come and pick me up and lock me in my childhood room at Rasmussen Circle forever if she knew I was wandering the streets at this hour alone. My dad would probably be crying to himself, wondering how he raised such an ignorant daughter.
I’m sure I was a sad, sad pathetic water-logged sight. In fact, I know I was, as a cab driver stopped to pick me up though he had 2 other people in the cab already. He determined I was going in their direction so he could take me too. Sweet. Normally, I’d be sketched out, but after waiting 45 minutes for a cab, I figured beggars can’t be choosers, so I risked my life. Obviously the guys in the cab were super sketch and kept asking me why I was alone. One put his arm around me…ewww please stop. They suddenly realized they wanted to go to the North End so the cabbie dropped them off and they tried to take me with them. Ummm no. Luckily, I jumped back in the cab and they continued on.
Alone finally, until the cabbie decided he needed to pick up more people. He would give me a $2 discount. Wow, just what I want at 2:45 a.m. I would have frigging paid the man $1,000 to get me home in one piece at this point. Obviously he picked up more passengers…luckily they were quite nice. They probably thought I was the sketchiest person in the world for being in that cab with the crazy driver, but I made it very clear I had nooo idea what the cab driver was doing. He tried to pick more people up too until one guy in the cab yelled “Please keep driving! I’ll pay you extra money NOT to pick up more people” Thank God he listened. In any event, I’m home. Only after the cab driver told me how he picks up lots of people all the time and sometimes “love connections” are made. Thanks but no thanks.
I love you dear friends, but please never ever leave me in the middle of Faneuil Hall all alone in the pouring rain, part drunk at 2:00 a.m. again. I know I’m 24 and a perfectly capable girl, but somehow I just can’t seem to manage Faneuil Hall at 2:00 a.m., ever. Going to dry my clothes out and go to bed.
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I was doing laundry yesterday and opened up a brand new box of Bounce fabric sheets (or “smellies” as we called them in my fam when I was little…weird family I guess). There was a really nice little envelope inside with a cute little Bounce seal. I opened it up thinking I had won some amazing prize or something, and there was a little card with this message:
Dear Friend,
At Bounce, we believe even the little things should brighten your day. So on our 35th US and 31st Canadian anniversaries, we’d simply like to thank you for choosing Bounce.
Thank you!
Everyone at Bounce.
Really? I’m still not certain if this note brightened my day a tiny little bit or it just annoyed me that the people at Bounce think a piece of card stock in a cute little envelope is going to make my day better. I’m just really confused and wonder if they did some sort of intensive marketing study that showed doing this would increase sales and brand loyalty. Who knows. I think it’s weird, though. And I don’t get why they didn’t just say 35th anniversary, but instead had to specify the Canadian anniversary too. The same message was in French on the other side. I think I’m mainly annoyed they didn’t even take the time to make separate cards for the U.S. and Canada. Thanks for nothing.
I’ll probably still use Bounce for the rest of my life. That and Tide are two household products I have life-long brand loyalty to. Card or no card.
