Yeah, I Was Always Like This

I don’t really think I’m a complicated person, but when it comes right down to it, I think I am a hard person to get to know, and part of me likes it that way. The reason I became such a cyber-junkie from the day I got my first computer is undoubtedly because I’m much better at written interaction than actual human social activity. I’m a writer by nature, and always have been. I was the kid who wrote to Big Blue Marble and collected pen pals, and who wrote to all my cousins. When we’d go on a family vacation and stop at a Stuckey’s, renowned for the tourist gift shop attached to its family restaurants, the only thing I ever wanted was stationery.

I think that my husband is the only person in the world who really understands who I am. I don’t know how he figured me out, or why he felt it was worth the effort. I can’t figure myself out most of the time, yet somehow he has managed. He can’t really explain how he did it, though. Through the years, I’ve often asked him why he loves me, and he can’t put it into words. He just does. And although he can’t give me reasons, I believe him. There aren’t many women who can say they know, absolutely, that their husbands love them totally, unconditionally, and would never, ever think of being with anybody else. I can, and I’m so grateful. I’m a giant idiot a lot of the time (Just ask him; he’ll tell you.), but what always pulls me through it is his strength, his belief in me, and I can’t imagine life without him.

OK, that got a little sappy. The point of this edition of Fermented Fur is to tell you about some of my quirks and weirdisms. Fortunately, I was thinking it through earlier today and realized that this will have to be a multi-part blog. I just have way too many idiosyncrasies to fit into one post. So today’s segment will look at the earliest days of my life as a misfit.

I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in a very rural county in northern West Virginia. I was pathologically shy, a bookworm (I learned to read when I was four, and could read from the newspaper before I started kindergarten), a brainiac (see comments following “bookworm”), a bit obsessive about certain things, spent a lot of my youth finding some very rural forms of entertainment, and was an odd blend of over-confident (in my comfort zone) and horribly insecure (everywhere else). An awful lot of that hasn’t changed.

When I say I was shy, I don’t mean I’d duck my head and blush, or hang onto my mother’s hand when strangers were about. I was far more squirrelly than that. When people came to the house, I would hide behind the furniture. I wanted to know what was going on, but I didn’t want anyone looking at me. When my older sister brought a date home one night in 1969, I hid behind a recliner. At one point in the evening, I whispered to her, and she came over to my hiding place. I informed her that he was the marrying kind. They were married a month later. (See, shy but incredibly perceptive! Amazing what you can learn hiding behind an old tan easy chair. Sometimes people forget you’re there.)

My older brother had a girlfriend who taught at a small dance school. For some reason (and I can’t imagine I was much involved in the decision, because I’m sure I’d have voted “no.”) I was enrolled in tap, toe, baton, and acrobat classes. The only thing I liked about it was getting a bottle of pop from the chest-style machine after class. I loved putting the coin in and sliding the bottle along its metal track to the opening where you could pull it out. Well, OK, the ribbons on my ballet shoes were kind of cool, too. They were pink. The rest of the time I hid behind the long, heavy velvet curtains. To this day, I can neither tap, toe, nor baton. I did, however, pick up the “acrobat” part later in life, mainly by watching gymnastics on TV, and used to devise complex routines out in the front yard. When we actually had gymnastics in phys. ed. in junior high, I was way ahead of the curve for once. (Usually, me + sports = BAD.)

(Me, age 4, in front of the trailer. Cute as heck, huh? Apparently neuroses don't photograph well.)

We once had to go to Fairmont, WV, for the funeral of a great uncle. We stayed at my Great Aunt Ollie’s house, and there were some cousins about my age who lived next door. With the jackal-like instincts of rotten (possibly evil) kids everywhere, they picked up on my introverted nature and decided to tease me. I was far too serious a child to respond well to teasing. I was so angry, and so hurt, but had no idea how to manage the situation. So I sat on a porch swing crying, with my off-white fake fur hat over my face till they lost interest and went away. This took awhile, because first they had to get tired of teasing me for having a hat on my face.

Another time, I went to visit a cousin in Cincinnati. That branch of the family was very outgoing and social, and they couldn’t understand why I was mortified at the thought of participating in the “Charge!” yell at a Reds game. Far too participatory for me. People might look at me. And we won’t even talk about the time they tried to get me to take part in a greased-pig contest.

Get the idea? Well, this part is even worse.

I went to an elementary school that had an “open classroom” design. There were three classes each of grades 1-4 in one huge open space. The fourth graders were in a section that was elevated, and five or six carpeted steps ran the entire length of the room, separating them from the other grades. As a first-grader, I was scared of the “big kids.” How scared? Well, I once wet my pants because the fourth graders were having a reading class on the steps, and I was too afraid to walk by them to get to the bathroom.

See? Strange child.

I always had a couple of best friends in elementary school, and during the school year we occasionally visited each other’s homes on the weekends. The summers were a whole different story, though. In our rural area, neighborhoods were very spread out, so my friends didn’t just live on the next block. (We didn’t have blocks. We had ridges.) Sometimes entire summers would go by without my visiting any classmates, except at the community street fair in July. I had the whole rural hilltop to entertain me, and the library provided all the excitement I needed. I read fiction by the wheelbarrow full, and went through phases where I read everything I could find on dinosaurs, Helen Keller, Harriet Tubman, Old World fairy tales, and horses. I devoured the Little House books, as well as Trixie Belden and Hardy Boys mysteries. Oddly, I never liked Nancy Drew. But books were the only friends I wanted. I never felt strange with them.

The only kids in the immediate neighborhood near my age were three boys that lived at the end of the other fork of our dirt road. One was a year younger than I was, and I spent a lot of time running around the woods and fields with him. The middle brother was two years older than I was, and he was my first crush. With only boys to hang around with, I was never a “doll-type” girl. I had toy tanks, horses, cowboys and guns (we used to pull back the hammer and put pokeberries under it, then pull the triggers, turning our hands and clothes purple), and we ran barefoot races on the gravel roads, built forts in the woods, and climbed trees.

I was the Best Tree Climber Ever. I discovered I could climb as soon as I could reach the lowest branch of a little plum tree in our front yard. From then on, if Mom was looking for me, I was probably up a tree somewhere. There was no tree I couldn’t climb, and there was a pine tree in my Grandmother’s yard across the field from ours that had been pruned out at the top some years before. I found out that I could climb clear to the top of it and poke my head out. Just about gave Gram a heart attack! I had to give that tree up, though, when some of the branches started touching an electrical line. Got a few jolts in the ol’ bare feet, and decided there were fifty thousand other trees I could climb. Plus, Gram and Pap had a lot of fruit trees, so better to climb a cherry or peach tree anyway. My favorites were two apple trees down at the edge of the woods behind our trailer. I loved to take a book and go sit up in one of them for hours.

I’ve always been an “animal person.” Everyone had dogs, and nobody kept them inside. Only the hunting dogs didn’t get to run loose, tied instead to dog boxes in their yards. So I had an endless supply of neighborhood dogs to keep me company. My first dog was named Bummer, because (big surprise) he bummed. He was a Shepherd/Husky mix (we assume), but like many country dogs, one day he just didn’t come home. So we got Bummer 2. They were pretty much interchangeable in my young mind.

But my anti-human, pro-animal tendencies went beyond dogs. I felt awful for every little dead bird or mouse I found, and felt it was necessary to bury them (R.I.P. little birdy-friends!). I had quite the little Pet Sematary going under a tree in Gram’s yard. Pap used to shoot birds out of his cherry trees, and at one point I threw a total fit and didn’t talk to him for a week. I also had an aquarium, and when a fish turned “floater,” it basically had to start to decompose before I felt it was safe to bury it. I was scared to pieces that I’d take it out of the tank, and it wouldn’t be quite dead, and then I’d be guilty of fishicide.

(Me, fifth grade class picture 1975, age 10)

Has anything changed? I’d still rather be at home with a book than out and about. I’m still overly sensitive to all things relating to our animal friends. I still love trees and feel most at home when surrounded by them, but now I prefer to sit under them or lie in a hammock strung between them than sit way up in the branches (old bones). I wish I could still hide behind the furniture when people are at the house, but that’s harder to pull off when you’re 43 instead of 5.

So, that’s a glimpse into my early childhood and my anti-social tendencies. Next time, I’ll chat about the odd pastimes I came up with on the few occasions I did interact with others, and how I was a confused mass of knowing inside that I was smarter and prettier than most, yet always being “second banana” because of something lacking in my personality. (I suspect it was because of my complete lack of interest in forming any sort of close relationships… though in many ways I longed for just that.)

I bet you just can’t wait!