Epiphany and shopping

First up: news of the world, or, rather, the country.

I don't know the truth of what happened all those years ago. I will quote what I said to a college professor back in 1990 or so when he asked me what I thought of the Thomas/Hill proceedings: "One of the two isn't telling the full truth. I don't know which one. I am dismayed at humanity right now"

(Cripes. I felt that way back when I was like 21, when I should have been full of idealism and sureness-of-myself-and-my-beliefs).

But I *do* know something about that wealthy, preppy, WASP milieu, because I grew up in a Midwestern version of it.

And the party culture, it's totally a thing. I remember kids in seventh and eighth grade (so: 13 and 14) talking about parties, where those parties consisted of much drinking, some making out, and, perhaps even back then, sneaking pills from your parents' prescription bottles. I knew kids whose goal in life was to slope through school with enough Cs to graduate and they counted on getting into a decent school on "legacy"/their parents were donors, or going to a less-decent school but that their dads would hire them later.

I was the weird little swot with academic parents who cared about learning and cared about her grades.

My parents also had considerably less money than the "popular" kids' families. Maybe not THAT much less, really, but my parents were frugal and didn't believe in conspicuous consumption, so I felt much poorer than we probably were.

I was the weird kid with weird store-brand clothes, and even when I DID ask for more expensive brands, my parents told me (a) I was still growing (true: I didn't reach my full adult height until 16, and I developed fairly rapidly between 13 and 14) and (b) brands didn't reveal anything about the quality of the person wearing them. But I got harassed for it at school. ("Wrangler." I've talked about that before.

I didn't get invited to the parties. I didn't get invited to do anything much. I had friends, but a lot of them were kids who lived out of town (one, in a trailer home in the next town over; she was the first person I heard the epithet "Trailer trash" applied to, and I found that both exasperating and confusing because she was one of the kinder and least-trashy people at that school). I had other friends who came from fairly strict or very devout and rather conservative-theologically (Protestant) families, so they would not have been involved in party culture.

Anyway: I was the weird, somewhat-immature kid who cared a lot about learning and who spent her weekends hanging out with her family and a few friends (but just during the day, except for v. rare sleepovers and then only with well-trusted friend-families) or sewing doll clothes or working on her dollhouse (to an embarrassingly late age).

I didn't fit in. I SO didn't fit in. And that pained me a lot. At one point - I know I've talked about this before - I tried to listen to either the local "Top 40" station or to WMMS (the "bad kids" listened to 'MMS, the popular girls listened to Top 40) instead of WCLV, which was what I really liked and cared about. (But I still listened to "Adventures in Good Music" with my dad: we both liked it)

Anyway. I wanted to fit in more than anything. I wanted to feel like I was "normal," even if "normal" for my late-junior-high (and to a lesser extent, to high school*) was not something I really wanted to be....

(*Ironic, because high school was one of those now-much-maligned prep schools, but perhaps the fact that a lot of my friends there went home most weekends - and most of my friends there were people with a similar mindset to me, and how amazing it was to find a largish group (somewhere around 10) people with a similar mindset - that we didn't see the grosser aspects of what party culture existed at my school. Oh, there were rumors, but my friends were all "good girls" who didn't want to partake in a lot of that. A few of them dated, but it was more steady dating and "courtship" than anything)

So anyway. This is a longwinded way of saying all the gross stuff coming out in the news? Whether or not the parties in particular question were involved, I totally know that gross stuff happened in different places that had that kind of middle/upper-middle class milieu - the preppies. I heard rumors. I heard boasting. I saw the hungover people and heard the stories of people who wound up in hospital with alcohol poisoning.

And I had an enormous epiphany this morning:

My not-fitting-in may have saved me, in a way.

Because I was the weird kid who didn't get invited to parties, who felt like the popular kids didn't want her around, I didn't get exposed to that stuff directly. (And I could mostly roll my eyes and laugh off some of the rumors as exaggeration, though I think there may have been less exaggeration than 15 year old me wanted to believe)

My parents were strict, but in a good way: they watched out for my brother and me, but they didn't do weird unreasonable things (e.g., their rule that if you didn't like the main dish at dinner, you could go and make a peanut butter sandwich or something. Oh, you had to eat with the family, but you were not required to eat cod if everyone else was having cod. (Some of my friends, they were given the choice of "eat or go hungry," or were forced to eat, and I remember a friend talking about how she vomited all over the table after being forced to eat...I forget what it was, but it turned out later it was something she had a food intolerance to).

But anyway: the bizarre irony of it is that I may be the relatively-whole person I am today (as much as anyone can be "whole" in this world) because I was the weird kid who didn't fit in. Or at least, I have a different sort of "brokenness" than the brokenness that comes from being too "fast" too young.

That the thing I wanted the very most in the world would have likely been bad for me if I had gotten it.

I....don't quite know what to think of that. On the one hand, I hear Tom Servo from "Mystery Science Theater 3000" saying "This is Buddhist! You created us to suffer!" in the sense that had I got what I so desperately wanted might have ruined me and yet I spent so much of my life longing for it and wishing I had it. But on the other hand I'm struck a little silent and humble at a universe (or God) that works in such a way that the thing I desperately wanted was kept from me because....well, maybe there were reasons.

I dunno. In some ways I'm still the weird kid who doesn't fit in, and I probably always will be, and I know that won't change. And on some level I'm OK with that.

****

I got out to Sherman this afternoon after fieldwork (It didn't take us long, as I thought might be the case. We checked out the last site but part of it was under water so we are going to wait another week and see).

I went to all the places I wanted to go. Not much at JoAnn's; apparently they are having some issues with their magazine distributor because they had NO new magazines in and I was briefly worried that maybe Simply Knitting had stopped distributing to the US.

I did get a couple skeins of (feltable) Paton's wool because I wanted to make Bruce from the newest Knitty. But. I am going to make the shark with big, sparkly, anime-girl style applique eyes, and maybe figure out how to make "lipstick" with felt* and attach a little bow to her head, and make a tsundere shark

(*Heh: "like putting lipstick on a shark"?)

Because that's the kind of dumb, silly idea that I love, even if I'm the only one with thinks it's clever and funny.

I also went to Ulta, and bought a few refills of things I needed, and a new lipstick:

Clinique's "Sweetheart Pop" of their glossy liquid semi-lip-gloss ones. Maybe it's a little bright, I don't know, but I kind of like bright lipstick, especially for days when I feel like I'm fading into the background a little.

At the bookstore, I DID find the new Simply Knitting (YES!) and the new Quilty and the "Christmas Gifts" issue of Interweave, which I know some people think is a cheat because it does contain some recycled patterns but meh, it's nice to have pretty things to look at and to contemplate making gifts for people.

And I bought the 2019 Susan Branch calendar because I still like a real wall calendar, and I like a pretty, fun one to put up at home (I usually use either the Mercy Corps premium calendar, or the one my grad school sends out, over at work)

And I did indulge in a treat. They had a bunch of kawaii stuffed animals (the "Petto" line, which I've not heard of before) on a good sale, and I couldn't resist this panda:

I've tentatively named her Flora unless I come up with something I like better.

And I got to the yarn shop:



Sock yarn, because I'm a sucker for strong colors on a black background, and the other one was dyed in Youngstown, Ohio, not very far from where I grew up.

The green yarn is for Late Harvest. The pattern calls for sportweight and it is a dk, but I think I can make it work (I bought a good bit more yarn - the pattern calls for 737 yards and I have somewhere over 900). If it winds up a bit larger, all the better - I'm not a small woman and some shawls are a bit small on me.

I might start this, because it might be simple enough as an invigilating project.

And it's just NICE to have a yarn shop within a reasonable drive. I wish the owner continued success and I hope the shop keeps on going; it's nice to be able to pop in there once a month or so and buy yarn fancier than what the JoAnn's has.

I also got to the natural-foods store and stocked up on a few things I use but that can't be had elsewhere.

(I do still need to run out to Pruett's for fruit for the church lunch tomorrow)

But yeah. I'm still kind of a weird kid with weird interests but if I don't compare myself to other people and waste time wondering why I'm so weird, I can be pretty happy.