10 Honest Things

This is a meme I stole from Frank. No one has tagged me but I like memes, in case anyone hadn't guessed :) So here's 10 "confessions", mostly about stuff I'm not really ashamed of, but then I'm not ashamed of much.

1. Even though I was never conventionally parented and I unschooled as a teen, it wasn't until I found Sandra's website last year that I believed younger kids could live without school. I volunteered in an elementary school and was pretty wrapped up in school-think for awhile there, wanting to be a teacher because I cared about kids with special needs. In fact I worked in a school even after fully embracing unschooling, because the job was with autistic kids and I've always been passionate about autism. However, I was always troubled by how schools handled these kids, and it sometimes almost physically pained me to enforce the school rules when it was obviously doing more harm than good. Eventually I found the job so upsetting that I just had to quit.

2. After I finish drinking something with ice in it, I compulsively eat all the ice.

3. Sometimes I worry that I'm a bad example of an unschooler, somehow, because I'm 23 and still don't know what I want to do with my life. I feel like other unschoolers have super awesome talents and I don't - though that probably comes down, again, to the whole umeboshi thing.

4. I'm not as hippie-ish as I maybe sometimes like to think I am. I'm quite liberal politically, I believe in radical unschooling and unjobbing, and I embrace forms of alternative spirituality. But I also buy my vegetables at a damn grocery store, I love technology, and I really enjoy many (though by no means all) aspects of pop culture.

5. A real, shameful confession: I accidentally killed a kitten when I was four. I was putting it in a box with a heavy (but open) lid and carrying it around, while my mom was in the next room doing dishes or something. My grandma, who lived next door, came over and invited me to her house. I was so excited to see her that I dropped the box, the lid closed on the poor kitten, and since nobody had seen what I was doing they didn't know to rescue it. I think I was twelve or thirteen before I finally forgave myself, and I still feel some guilt even though I was really too little to know better.

6. Whenever everyone in my house doesn't feel well, my first thought is usually not the rational "we're probably coming down with something" but "oh god it's carbon monoxide we're all going to die." This is because I used to watch Rescue 911 with my grandma when I was a kid. I loved the show but it made me scared of carbon monoxide and escalators. (If you're ever with me on an escalator, watch the awkward, panicky hop I do when I step off. It's pretty funny.)

7. I really like that one Miley Cyrus song, "See You Again" or whatever it's called. I like most Britney Spears songs too, when they first come out, before the radio plays them 47,000 times.

8. I tend to pick up the speaking/typing habits of whoever I'm talking to at the time, which can be amusing when I'm with someone who is from another country or something and uses way different phrasing or slang than I normally would. I also suddenly get a thick Southern accent if I am around people who have one. Sometimes I worry that these shifts make me seem inauthentic somehow, but I really do them without trying to.

9. So far among my unschooling friends, who are new in my life, I've not done more than hint at this, but I'm queer. I use the word "queer" because it sounds better than "well I mostly like men, but only certain types of men, and sometimes I like women too, but not always", which I feel "bisexual" doesn't quite convey - particularly since it makes men assume I am attracted to all kinds of men. I'd rather use a vague, not-very-helpful term than one that is specific but misleading. I'm not one bit ashamed of who I am but living in a conservative area I've learned to be cautious about who I reveal this to.

10. Perhaps this is a corrolary to #4, but I don't give one tiny crap about "health food". I happily drink soda with corn syrup in it and I eat fast food with no shame. This is not to say that I eat nothing but crap all the time - I have a balanced diet and could probably live happily off nothing but chicken, broccoli, cheese, and rice. I just feel like I have way better things to do than worry about the purity of whatever I'm eating. If it doesn't have slime or bugs on it and it doesn't smell funny, it's not going to kill me, and I resent it when people get preachy about what "everyone" should or shouldn't eat.

Normally I don't tag people on these things but this time I'm going to tag Gail, just because she commented on Frank's and said she's thinking of doing it, and I feel like goading her :p Anyone else who feels like doing it is welcome, of course. I'm not the Dowager Empress of blog memes.