blast from the past

social media. i'm not sure what i think. recently, my sister was lamenting her facebook, because a lot of random people that she knew had all met one another, via comments on her status updates, and were now planning a reunion next summer. i pointed out that it wasn't really a reunion since they'd never met in real life, but that's beside the point. the point being that social media is a bit worrying.

me, i've been on facebook for several years, but only recently opened myself up to being friends with people from this bloggy world. otherwise, my friends were mostly work colleagues and friends here in denmark, plus a few family members. i had intentionally hidden myself from searches and didn't want to be found by the old gang from school or even college. i'm friends with a couple of people from college, but they're people i'd kept in touch with anyway over the years. but this week, via my sister, an old classmate from high school (and grade school for that matter) found me and "friended" me. and i felt like it would be too mean to ignore it or turn it down. so i accepted. and then two more old classmates friended me right after. and i'll admit that i also sent a friend request to one, based on seeing her name on the first classmate's wall.

i admitted to the first classmate that i had intentionally hidden myself and we exchanged some chat about reunions and such. i haven't attended any (and this year is 25 years! how did we get so old?) and neither had she. i hadn't given much thought as to why i didn't want to reconnect with all those people, but i knew it had to do with one of them calling me "miss king bitch shit" to my face on the day of our senior tea. i think i'm still a little bit bitter about that, because it came so much from left field. you can accept such a thing if you can see it coming, but in all honesty, i didn't. to this day, i don't know what i did to deserve that, tho' i have had moments in the years since of trying to live up to that grand appellation.

what's interesting and nothing whatsoever to do with the woman who reconnected with me, is how i feel about this whole thing. i've been totally transported to that time--the awkwardness, the adolescent insecurities, cringing thoughts of an awful mullet and the truly vile mint green and lilac argyle sweater vest i wore in my senior pictures. you become in some sense that embarrassing person that you were then, with all your hickishness. and it's really quite painful and awkward all over again. and i guess i knew on some level it would be that way and that's why i wanted to stay hidden and why i didn't go to any of those reunions.

i've come a long way since then, but the fact that i can be pushed right back there with the press of the "send" button is worrying to say the least. i think i never went to the reunions because i didn't want to feel like an alien landing from another planet. the judgments of how i dress and speak now and what i do with my life (or don't do), my politics, my education, everything. subject to judgement once again, just like in that small town, with all the scrutiny. and don't even get me started on the religiousness. and the right wing politics.

nope, please keep me hidden, oh gods of social media, so i can continue to be who i am now and not who i was...miss king bitch shit or not....

on friendship or can't we just give peace a chance?

i had a discussion the other day with bee about friendship. you know how you have friends that bring out certain characteristics in you...humor, bitchiness, glamour (aside: why do we americans spell that with the "u" but not humour?), quirkiness, a desire to drink copious amounts of red wine, or coffee, being cheap, spending too much, being in the zone. and why do certain people rub you the wrong way or the right way, for that matter? what is it about all those Other People? and what is it especially with other WOMEN.

there must be something in the air, because spud just wrote about this too. i do regularly talk to spud and i know she'd been brewing the thoughts for awhile, but i have too. i loved reading hers, because they're like an appendix to the ones i've been having.  tho' they're the energy appendix..because what she describes both gives and, in some cases, takes away, energy. big time.

like spud, i've recently joined a group of women that gives me a great deal of energy. it's my weaving group. they're absolutely marvelous - supportive, interested, enthusiastic, at ease in themselves - exactly the kind of people you want to spend time with. i'm sure there's a sense of competition there somewhere, but i haven't felt it. it undoubtedly hasn't been directed at me as the newbie (who on top of it is a foreigner with a quasi-charming accent). they have been incredibly welcoming and it's been the first place in denmark where i've truly felt welcome. (hmm, and it only took a decade.)

i've been recently transported to those painful, awkward, embarrassing days of high school, where one is anything but supported by the women (or children) one is surrounded by. and it got me thinking about the aspects of oneself that one's friends bring out...inadvertently or consciously. apparently, unbeknownst to myself, i had some kind of "miss king bitch shit" vibe at the end of high school for the person who had been one of my best friends all the way through.  and in turn, when we went to the same college, albeit living in different dorms, she made me want to live up to that moniker, so on valentine's day, when my dorm was selling hershey's kisses with a valentine's message as a fundraiser, i sent her one that said, "dear j***, happy valentine's day! {lip print} love, miss king bitch shit." and in all honestly, to this day, i feel quite avenged of the whole thing. i never really learned her reaction, but i did talk about it to a (highly flatulent) guy from the class ahead of mine who went to the same college and once rode with me (3 hours with a stinky farter guy in a car, not cool, by the way), so i assume she eventually learned it was me.

there are some friends we have who make us super funny. some who we feel totally at ease with sharing our innermost evil and naughty thoughts. and some who make us feel more peaceful and understanding of the world. friends who make us think and those who cause us to turn off our brains completely. there's chemistry of all kinds. and it's very mysterious, but i'm glad it's there. because no matter what kind it is, it does represent some kind of connection and i think we never really can foresee what those will bring...(but spud is right, let's go a little bit easy on one another, eh?)

of bullying and dead squirrels

in the past month or so, we've been developing a new concept and some new projects in my little company. part of it has been to look a bit more deeply into bullying. there's a new program on television that is following an actor who is trying to make a difference on the atmosphere in an ordinary public school. his interest in bullying (which is called mobning in danish and seems to me to resonate so much more in danish than it does in english) arose when his own son was attacked twice inside of three weeks by a group of neighborhood boys. since then, he's had countless speaking engagements in schools, bringing attention to the problem of bullying.

of course, looking into this topic got me thinking about my own experiences bullying and being bullied (the whole miss king bitch shit incident). i imagine i did my share of making fun of particular people and of freezing others out of some or other group - i think we probably all did and to an extent, i think it's a natural part of the process of growing up and finding your position in the scheme of things. but i only very clearly remember one incident where i was just truly mean and horrible to someone (tho' i'll admit there were probably others).

there was a girl who was very dorky and unpopular. she had none of the right clothes, right glasses, right haircut. she wasn't smart or pretty or funny. tho' i don't think i realized it or thought about it at the time, i think her family didn't have much money (which probably explained the clothes/glasses/haircut thing). she was the butt of many jokes and probably doesn't look fondly back on her years in school.

i was driving one afternoon with a friend and although for some reason i didn't have my glasses on, i was behind the wheel. i must have been 14-15 and my eyes were pretty bad and i definitely needed glasses or contacts in order to drive. so basically, there i was, driving along a quiet city street in our little town, pretty much totally unable to see. suddenly my friend shouted, horrified, because i ran over a squirrel.  she looked at me incredulously, thinking i'd actually tried to hit it, but in truth i hadn't seen it at all, since i wasn't wearing glasses.

we stopped the car and jumped out to check on it. it was dead, but strangely unharmed - it wasn't flat or openly bleeding - possibly the car going over it had scared it death. well, the whole incident occurred in front of this dorky, unpopular girl's house. so we got it in our heads that we'd toss that dead squirrel into her bicycle basket, which was parked out front. it was done in a careless, thoughtless way - not at all premeditated - the idea arose just because we were stupid teenagers and happened to be in front of her house with a dead squirrel at our disposal. if it hadn't happened right there, we wouldn't have gone out of our way to drive by her house and put the dead squirrel in her basket, we actually had nothing against her per se, so there was really no ground for this rather shockingly malicious act.

i never knew how she felt about it, but can you imagine how horrified you'd be if you came out and found a dead squirrel in your bicycle basket? i think i'd be traumatized for life. you wouldn't be able to help wondering who hated you that much and would be so evil.

and yet, as horrible as it sounds, it wasn't really an evil act - more of a highly thoughtless, stupid one, brought on by a particular collusion of circumstances and not so much by ill will. it was just dumb kids, doing a dumb thing. and i wonder how much of bullying starts that way and ends up totally wrong.

i don't have an answer to that question, but i do feel a rather odd urge to look up that girl from back then and tell her i'm sorry about the dead squirrel in her bicycle basket.

recurring dreams

my dream posting from the other day prompted an email exchange with my cousin about all kinds of dreams. we got on the subject of recurring dreams.  as i said in the previous posting, i have more of a recurring location (that giant and partially abandoned mall) in my dreams, but there are a number of recurring dreams i've had over the years.

in high school, i played annie oakley in annie get your gun. for years afterwards (and now it's been 24 years), i have dreamed that i had to perform it again with no rehearsal...just jumping into costume and going directly onstage. it is always a bit rusty at first, but then i warm into it and do ok. "anything you can do, i can do better..." 

i've had some pageant-related dreams for years after my pageant phase as well--that as recently as in the past couple of months. they usually involve embarassment over suddenly having to wear a swimsuit and high heels in public.

apparently my recurring dreams are related to being onstage. that's a bit weird.

my cousin's dreams are work-related. she spends lots of time on cruise ships and has lots of dreams about them. like me, she also has flying-related dreams where the plane crashes (and she is as unworried about it as i am), but where she's usually in the cockpit. i'm never in the cockpit in my plane crash dreams.

she and i were both denied comic books as children on the grounds that they were a waste of time and money and had to illicitly read them at other people's houses. she still has dreams about that. i must have less guilt over it, as that topic doesn't show up in my dreams.

talking to her made me remember that i used to have a recurring dream of losing my teeth during college and usually i was somewhere with her father, my uncle red, at the time. he was a veterinarian, not a dentist, so i'm not sure what sense that made, but then, dreams don't always make sense.

the person who was my best friend through most of high school, but who turned on me at the end for some reason still unknown to me and called me "miss king bitch shit" while we decorated for our graduation, showed up as a recurring figure in my dreams for years. she was never a central figure in the dream, nor even someone i interacted with, she would just be there in every dream, standing somewhere on the sidelines. i got so i even looked for her. but she hasn't been there for years, so i must have gotten over it.

i have a lot of dreams where i'm precariously balancing beside some yucky water of some sort. i almost always fall into it and it's thick and sludgy and hard to trudge through, but strangely never as bad as i feared it would be. my cousin has a similar dream and thinks it's when she's not getting enough exercise. mine is no doubt that too and it simply never occurred to me! either that, or i feel i'm on the verge of a problem and that it won't be as bad as i fear.

in any case, it's fascinating thinking about dreams and what they mean. i'm still convinced i'm living a parallel life over there.