Day 11 (music: Odd Hours)

Day 11: Something people seem to compliment me the most on.

Most of my compliments tend to be on specific abilities - I'm a good writer, a rock star in the kitchen, good with my kids, etc. More general compliments range from my hair and eyes to my tattoos to my creativity at coming up with insults to my taste in music. My cousin Ross suggested writing this entry about my vocabulary and knowing when to use it. I think I'm going to generalize that a little more and go with intelligence.

My dad gets a lot of credit for me being smart. He had me reading the newspaper by the time I was three. He let me read every book I could get my hands on - I read Lonesome Dove in third grade, in its entirety, only pausing once to ask Dad what a whore was (wish I could remember his answer, lol) - and thoroughly encouraged my love of reading. I read the encyclopedias we had at home. I read the backs of cereal boxes. I'd read the labels on soaps and shampoos and shaving creams while I was using the toilet.

Sadly, I didn't manage to apply what I knew about protective coloration, and thus helped make life hell for myself during grade school, like I blogged about before. As a result, by the time I hit puberty (early, which really didn't help me any), I hated being smart. I hated that I got A's without even trying at that school. I just wanted to be like everyone else, just another anonymous face in the crowd.

Concord helped me lighten up on myself a little bit. It was okay to be smart there, and my love of reading and writing was definitely encouraged. Something else too - none of my standard public school teachers had understood why I had such a hard time with math when I was so good at English. Math was the only subject I struggled with. At Concord, they didn't question it or imply that I was faking it like they did at HSMS. They just helped. Of course, I had to take beginner's algebra four years in a row to finally pass it, but I passed it, and passed geometry on my first try. That school was great for me. It let me shine, any way that I wanted to. I did drama and loved it. I wrote papers so long that a maximum word limit was actually imposed for me at one point. They let me be a smart ass and use all my vocabulary words (twenty) in two or three very long but grammatically correct compound sentences. When I hit high school, got moody and depressed, and decided to be a dark star rather than a bright one, they let me do that too. The phrase "expressing him/herself" gets a bad rap a lot of the time, because of crappy parents that use it as an excuse not to discipline their children. I'm saying it needs to be taken back. Concord let me - indeed, it let every student - express myself/ourselves in whatever way we could.

Now that I'm pushing 30, I've developed protective coloring. I can adapt my vocabulary to my surroundings quite easily, and I will admit to taking a devilish glee in allowing people to underestimate me at first, then smoking them with my intelligence, just for the reaction.

So yeah, that's all I've got.