Earrings in both ears always indicated "girl." How could she not know this?

Second grade through fifth grade was undeniably the most awkward time in my adolescence. That sounds early for "the changes" to set in, but my awkwardness had less to do with with becoming a young woman and more to do with my severe case of TomBoy. This condition was most evident through my choice of clothing. For one thing, Looney Tunes apparrel had become a staple in my wardrobe, primarily manifesting itself as large t-shirts, oversized tank tops, and baseball hats featuring the Tasmanian Devil -- in addition to the usual selection of Umbro shorts, cut-off light wash denim shorts, and knee- to calf-length denim shorts. I would not wear pants even on the bitterest winter days. At this point, my older brother's cast-offs were the highlights of my clothing options and he was twice my size. It's for these reasons that I can't even so much as look at my class photos from those years.

I partially blame my mother for all of this, and for letting me cut my hair so short that it definitely no longer fit into the category she referred to as "a girl cut." But really, everything was my choice. She did, however, I believe in an attempt to squeeze out the last bit of hope that strangers would realize I was in fact a girl, encourage me to wear gold hoop earrings with hearts in the middle everyday. And that worked just fine until the mid-90's in which Beverly Hills 90210's Brian Austen Greene made it okay for boys to done an earring in both ears.

This trend culminated in a particularly traumatizing experience for 8 year-old me in our neighborhood dry cleaners one afternoon. I was running errands with my mother and we made our regular weekly stop at the dry cleaners (this was when people still wore suits to work, namely, my father). We walked in the door which jingled delightfully in celebration of our entrance. The lady who ran the register greeted us with a familiar smile, and began to talk to my mother about whatever casual acquaintances in the midst of monetary transactions talk about, while I eyed the strawberry candy -- the kind with the gooey insides -- and thought about whether that dry cleaners smell was toxic to my health.

I wandered back into their conversation right as the lady asked how I was and glanced at my mother and said "Wow, you let him have two earrings? My son wants two but I won't let him."

Instantly, my face flushed with red, my knobby knees got a little weak, and my eyes filled with some kind of moisture that wasn't exactly tears, a scenario I've come to realize is an inevitable side effect of severe TomBoy.

"She's a girl, actually," my mom replied. "Her earrings have hearts on them. I don't think a boy would wear those!"

"Oh I thought they were trucks or something," said the lady, grasping desperately for an excuse for her lack of perception.

Traumatized and too consumed with wanting to smash everything in the store and run away, I was unable to look at either of them to evaluate their own reactions. This was the first time that I had been directly confronted with the issue, and it filled me with an odd sensation that lied somewhere between embarrassment and shame. Sure, I had been taunted by opposing teams during softball -- "They have a boy pitching for them!" -- but that was mean-spirited and I was rubber. I had never before this encountered an adult who honestly could not tell what I was.

"Well I'm sorry... must be the hat, too. Have a nice day!" the lady finally said, so we were able to leave.

It felt like forever that I stood there, lollipop in hand, ingesting that toxic smell. But then we exited, heard that godforsaken jingle, and were back in the car, silent.

Then I could tell that my mother was annoyed by what had just happened.

"Why would she think you were a boy wearing TWO earrings? You don't look like a boy, you look cute. She is crazy."

It was true. That lady was crazy. And stupid. And earrings in both ears always indicated "girl." How could she not know this? Or at least that was the assumption I was operating under: No matter what I looked like or how I dressed, I was a girl as long as I wore my trusty earrings.

But I didn't say anything. I knew what I looked like. I liked what I looked like. And I would continue to look and dress the way I did for several years after. But, after that, I did it all with a newfound sense of self-consciousness that would plague my social interactions, hinder my ability to establish a sense of identity, and encumber my developing confidence.

I never went into that dry cleaners again.

Number One

So this is a new blog I decided to create, since it's so easy to make and maintain a million different blogs for a million different reasons. The purpose of this one is to give me a place to write about stuff from my life -- mostly the awkward stuff from my childhood and the stuff I remember that I've never really fit into regular conversations enough to talk about, but in my opinion are worth writing about. So this will be short stories and anecdotes, all written as truthfully, honestly, and vividly as I can. But it's not for your benefit! It's for mine! But you can read it if you want to, because I want to write and I want to publish things that I write.

And for kicks, let's count the web-logs that I currently have -- even the idle one:

1. LiveJournal: where I put my personal stuff. Weekend plans, family stuff, life rants, personal photos, just whenever I feel like writing something instead of working and I need a place to put it. I post a lot of "friends only" entries there, and only leave the posts that make me look awesome and confident for public viewing, because it comes up first if you google my name. I've also been writing in it since my freshman year of college, so it has some sentimental value to me and I have a nice little network of livejournal friends who read it.
2. Wordpress: where I put my more well-thought-out and well-researched writing about pop culture, things I'm into, stuff I have an opinion on, and other things I don't mind showing up in a search engine. I also link to a lot of popular and mainstream blogs which increases my page traffic. It also houses a backup of all my livejournal posts (made private, of course) because I got scared one day when all of my internet things (re: flickr, myspace, etc) were being deleted by some unknown life-terrorist (it was a pretty traumatic day).
3. Collaborating Siblings: Writings, Stories, and Other New Adventures: where my brother and I try to be creative in pursuit of our shared goal of writing young adult fiction. It's a private blog, so we don't feel self-conscious about our writing that needs a good amount of workshopping (at least in our own opinions). One day, we will write novels together, thanks to this blog.
4. PolaDroids: Collecting Our World, On Instant Film: which is one of the idle blogs right now. But, it is a project I dreamed up in which -- in a perfect world -- other people would care about stuff as much as I do. Namely, in this case, taking pictures of things with a polaroid camera and supporting it with some kind of story. It's about the nature of instant film and the things people choose to capture with it. I'm planning to revive this project soon, though, with some new faces and insight.
5. I also have a portfolio blog, but it's less of a blog and more of an easy way to put all of my work accessibly on the internet -- and no one's really interested in it anyway.

So that's that. And there will be more to come.