Only in the last year or so have I started to accept “cynic” as a label; I always told people it was wrong when they called me that in high school. Of course, I’m not the same person I was at that point, and I’m a lot of other things.
I thought of myself as a person without any real issues - everybody has their hangups, but I didn’t think I had anything too serious - and after my long college relationship ended, I realized I obviously did have some sort of a self-esteem problem. We both agreed that I behaved in some ways I didn’t like (clingy, kind of possessive) because I felt I didn’t deserve her. I hated figuring that out, but a couple of years later I feel like I’ve dealt with it pretty well.
My hair must have turned curly when I hit puberty. I have toddler pictures with curls, but from about age four to thirteen it was straight/mildly wavy. Then it became this horrible bush that I hated until age twenty when I read “Curly Girl.” Now I have beautiful ringlets!
Also, I had no idea other people had teeth dreams! The worst part is that I can’t spit them out or swallow them, so I start crunching them up trying not to choke.
I wish I knew why I had the dreams, because I don’t grind my teeth or have other tooth problems.
I’ll second this, only for my hands and feet. I have the smallest hands of any man I know, and they’re smaller than most women’s hands to boot. My feet are also tiny. (Make your jokes, if you must.*) Other than that, I have quite average proportions.
My cousin, who has smallish feet has told me that he doesn’t mind the small feet = small penis jokes. He simply says “But focus on the big picture: girls are thinking about your penis. And if they think about it enough, they’ll eventually get kind of curious.” There’s wisdom there, although I’ll be damned if I can explain it.
When I was 35 I found out that my high school grades were actually very good. I remembered them as “lousy”, but they would have gotten me into any school in Spain.
Perfectionist parents are a pain in the self-esteem.
I realized in the last year or so that the problem isn’t that hat manufacturers for some reason only make really small sized hats. The problem is that my head is freakishly large and misshapen.
I also have the teeth dream. I don’t find anything unusual about it, though, as my parents gave me quite the complex about losing even one, and everyone on my mother’s side got false teeth very early. I am now convinced it’s as much genetics as it is taking care of them.
If there’s one thing my deadbeat dad did for me it was give me good teeth.
Add me to the teeth dreamers/grinders. I never thought the two were related, but I did think that my teeth dreams had to do with the fact that I take really good care of my teeth and get cavities anyway… I’m terrified of losing teeth. It’s crossed over into real life, too. I hate running outside where I may trip and bash my teeth in. I hate running upstairs for the same reason. I’ll start to run and get a quick vision of falling and breaking my teeth and I’ll shudder and have to stop.
And Dervish Jones, I was coming in here to post the same thing. I was born with straight, blonde hair. It gradually became a dark golden-blonde and became lightly wavy. I got perms in the 5th and 6th grades, but then I got sick of curly hair and started blow-drying it straight. By 8th grade, my hair was dark brown and I got sick of blow-drying it, so I left it alone. BAM: ringlets. And not because of the perms, either, those were long-gone. Natural, loose ringlets. I had been blow-drying my hair so long that I didn’t realise it had become curly.
I still have curly hair now, and I’m 26. It’s not dark brown, though, as I change the colour a lot.
I didn’t realise until a couple of years ago that I have really freakishly-shaped feet. Wide at the front, thin at the heel. Buy shoes to fit the back of my feet, and the front gets squished. Buy shoes to fit the FRONT of my feet, and the back flips out of the shoe as I walk. I cannot win. Also, many (if not most) shoe styles will never fit me anyway due to my freakishly long second toe, which is permanently bent slightly and still bumps the fronts of shoes. I also pretty much have no arch at all.
I didn’t realise until I moved to Vancouver that I have pretty average-sized breasts. All my friends back home are so well-endowed that I am by far the smallest at a 36b. I thought I was boobless in comparison to my friends.
That the shrink in seventh grade was right, I am bi-polar, but no I still don’t like the medication. I am fully aware that I am crazy and I deal with it in my own way. (Not saying that bi-polar people are crazy, they aren’t but I am)
That I can like women, and not have to be with a woman, men are better for me.
That I am my mother and that is okay, 'cause she is kinda cool.
That I will never fit to norms of the supermodel body and my husband really does like that about me.
That I have this strange streak of lighter skin on my face that comes and goes, and no one ever really sees.
That I have insomnia and it may be time to look into some herbal sleep aides. I bought some Melatonin on the way home from work this morning. Wonder if it wil work.
That I actually have an hourglass figure. (Found that out when I was 23 and a friend pointed it out.) Mom always told me I was pear shaped and for some reason, I never questioned it. She just refuses to believe that she and I are different.
Huge head here too, though I think the shape is fine. (Maybe I’ll realize differently later.) I didn’t know until my 1 year old son was at a doctor’s visit and the doc noted taht his head was a little big. She wondered for a moment if that was a problem, then she looked at me and said “Oh, it’s okay. Your father’s got a huge head.” I was really surprised because I’d never thought that before. My first instinct was to be really offended, and I wanted to blurt out “Yeah? Well, you’ve got a really huge ass, doc!” Luckily for my wife, I didn’t.
I have a very large frame even though I’m a short girl. my bones are big.
I also just recently realized how freakishly huge my lips are. They’re way beyond “pouty” and even beyond “Angelina” and into “woah, who let the fish in?”
I denied for a long time when I was little that I had a big butt. My sisters used to make fun of me for it and I was like, “whatever. I’m skinny.” and honestly thought they were making it up until I started really obsessing over the size of my body parts and realized that yes, my butt is giant.
It wasn’t til my friends started getting braces that I realized I have perfectly spaced very straight teeth.
It wasn’t til seventh grade that I realized I’m actually not bad at math. I just hate doing it. And I really actually don’t hate math, I just hate churning out pages and pages of repetitive practice problems.
Completely off topic, are you a tea drinker? I have an aquaintance who mixes herbal teas. She’s got a great sleeper tea that’s valerian root, wood betony, camomile, catnip and kava kava, I think. It knocks me out in no time, flat.
It took me till I was a teen to realize that no, the shoes aren’t different sizes, my feet are. My left foot is a size 8, while my right is a 7 1/2.
It also took me a while to realize that not everyone else gets the heeby-jeebies when things aren’t even. Example: when I tap out a pattern on my left hand, I have to do it on my right or else it will bother me for HOURS. God forbid I forget what the pattern was, or else I’l have it bug me for the rest of the day. If I step on a crack with my left foot, I have to step on one in around the same place with my right. It usually doesn’t bother me much, but when Im driving and my right tire is on a line… not good. I usually have to hug the wall to avoid the crack, or change lanes so that both tires have hit the line.
I was well into my teens before I realized I had one of those "ends with an ‘i’ " names. Yes, I knew how to spell my name, but it was so automatic that it didn’t occur to me that I was like Candi or Suzi or Debi that everyone makes fun of.
It wasn’t until I saw Wedding Crashers that I realized there was such stigma attached to lower back tattoos, i.e. “tramp stamps”. I got mine many years ago, and not being in my teens or twenties, I had no idea that it is such a maligned trend.
Wow. It’s like I’ve been a bimbo all this time and never knew about it :smack:
My nephew’s pediatrician was a little concerned about hydrocephalus until he asked if large heads ran in the family. My sister, who has quite a melon herself, told the doctor about my ginormous noggin* and all was well. Although my nephew tends to fall a lot as his head throws off his balance, poor little guy.
*Not only huge but strangely elongated, kinda like the creatures in Alien. It’s a little worrisome.
A couple of years back I realized that I’m pretty good at math. Turns out that I always thought I was stupid to it because I found it so boring that I never even tried to understand it. Once I got into a job with actual applied math concepts, it all made perfect sense.
I was 23 before I realized that I was attracted to older women and only older women and that girls my age would eventually turn me off, no matter how pretty or smart they were.
I was 25 before I realized that I was an introvert by nature. I wasn’t a misfit by any stretch of the imagination, but I always seemed to find an excuse to ditch drinking and partying with my army buddies to curling up with my girlfriend with a good rental movie or book.
I was 33 before I realized that I was always going to be a Type A, and I could spend the rest of my life meditating inside a Buddhist monastery without ever waking up to find myself completely at ease with the world.
