What parts of your personality are completely unexplained by your lineage and your upbringing?
Me? My parents both have Top Secret security clearances, and I can’t keep the most mundane secret for more than twenty minutes, tops. Knowing something that nobody else knows, eats away at me until I share it with someone. I am driven to divulge by every fiber in my being. I’m pretty sure I would go insane if someone told me something vitally important about national security and then said I couldn’t tell anyone.
My parents do not use credit cards. They have them, but they do not ever carry a balance and they rarely use them. In fact, until I urged them to get a “card with points” and start using plastic, they kept their credit card in a box in the closet.
Me, I use it and use it well. Sometimes I carry a balance, sometimes not. But I rarely have cash on me - that’s what plastic is for!
I was raised by two of the most practical and grounded people on this planet and I love fantasy and sci-fi. My dad banned MASH and my mom banned HAPPY DAYS from being viewed in our house because they were silly and not at all a realistic reflection of the times they represented. They’ve yet to see Star Wars. Or TLOTR.
I have maps of MiddleEarth on the walls of my livingroom.
am easy-going
am not vindictive
do not create and enforce arbitrary rules at whim
am not prone to scenes of temper or violence
am open to new ideas and experiences
am able to think of more reasons to do something than excuses why not to
can have a happy home and a successful marriage
seem like I’m obviously having a good time
it’s because I didn’t learn how to do or be any of these things from my parents or relatives. I don’t think I could be much more unlike them.
I remember whenever my mum was faced with something tech that she couldn’t understand on the first try – she’d leave it alone, completely. The microwave that was here (I’m onto the third incarnation now) was never to be used by her, and I really can’t see her using keyboards, understanding the basics about computers and being able to surf the 'Net. Me, I do have a bit of that technophobia – but if something beats me first time out, the next day I go back determined to nut out what makes it tick. I like tech stuff and think it’s cool.
Then again – it was my mum who encouraged me to get my first computer back in the early 1990s.
My mother can make friends with just about anyone she speaks with and she keeps those friends for years and years. They can live next door or across the country.
I have only two people I really consider friends.
My mother has the ability to remember where everything is in her apartment. Need a rubberband? Top drawer on the left behind the paperclips.
I can’t remember where I took my shoes off.
On the other hand she keeps everything. She has stacks of junk all over the place.
I’ve always been fascinated by issues of spirituality and philosophy. My parents, when I was growing up at least, had very little interest in such things–they considered these issues (along with poetry and literature) to be unpractical. Since as long as I can remember I’ve felt ancient, destined to move on a crooked but ever-depthening ( :dubious: ) spiritual journey. I went from just simply believing in God to fundamentalist Pentecostal to Baptist to atheist to existentialist to pantheist Buddhist, and it really wouldn’t surprise me at all if 5 years from now I’m moving some other direction. There is really no genetic or environmental explanation for the fact that I have always felt nothing mattered more than the spiritual path. Nobody in my family is really very religious.
Both my parents were quiet introverts. They were very bemused to find their singin,’ dancin’ daughter on stage in high school musicals. They wondered where such an extrovert had come from.
On the other hand, I look and sound just like my mother and love history and religion just as my father did. So, I only fell just a bit away from the tree.
My mother totally unconcerned about her appearance to the extent that many people think she looks like a man and call her sir. While I am not a freak with the hair and make-up, believe me, I do more than run a wet comb through my bed head in the morning and nobody would EVER think I was a man.
Musical talent. Neither of my parents can carry a tune in a bucket, and while they both like listening to music, our was not really a music-filled home. Yet, for some reason, the music bug really bit me. I wanted to learn to play instruments from an early age. These days, I play several instruments expertly, a handful more competently, and I tend to be quick to pick up new musical skills. All of my siblings are musical as well, and none of us have any idea why.
Ok, that’s a bit of a wide brush.
but I grew up with a mom who suffered-enjoyed panic attacks. )I refered to them as “Spasms” back then (this was before coming out of the closet for mental issues was hip.)
Watching a grown woman spaz out over little things didn’t phase me. I was always :dubious: and later :rolleyes: . I am rock solid, sharp as a tack when it comes to Defcon5 alerts of life.
I am also the only reader and knitter in my family. They were Star Trek and Evening News. I was cough Simon and Simon and The Dukes of Hazzard. cough
They are Catholic. I am a humanistic buddhist knitter. I started my own religion.
Mom had a Master’s Degree in Education, yet she used “ain’t” and “huh” regularly. Ain’t was the one that irked me the most. She would lecture her students that ain’t ain’t a word, but she used it at home and it grated on my ears every time she uttered it!
Dad was a steel worker, and he can count on one hand how many times he’s cursed in front of a lady.
With your rare exception, I consistently say Isn’t, and What or Pardon Me; Yes Sir or Yes Ma’am also very often throughout my day, even though I can’t recall my parents ever calling anyone sir or madam.
And I can curse like a sailor, but pretend I’m a lady around Dad.
I would say that I am a lot looser with money than my parents, but that’s with a caveat. My father is crazy-frugal and compulsive about every penny, and my mom has to act to go along with that to preserve peace. It’s hard to know what she would be like without his influence, but I do know that she has become more relaxed about splurging since she started bringing in Social Security.
And yeah, I’ve been known to carry a large credit card balance, which he never would.
Outdoorsiness. My parents are the citiest city people that ever lived. As far as my father’s concerned, if an activity isn’t listed in the New Yorker “About Town” section, it doesn’t exist. Both me and my brother enjoy hiking, camping, skiing and other physical outdoorsy pursuits. Its a mystery to all of us.
