So I’m A Little Left of Center

I’ve always been a little off kilter. (Okay, I fully admit that it WAY more than a little. Shut your traps, you in the peanut gallery!) I’ve always done most things abnormally. To me now, abnormal is normal.

I’d rather watch football than shop for anything.

I fancy playing games over finding shoes.

Cooking is a creative outlet and a show of love for me. I don’t understand how others want to eat out all the time. (Recently, one of my friends stated that she hasn’t found the will to walk in the kitchen for two months so she hasn’t made a meal for that long. This does not compute in my puny brain.)

I love my kids, but I don’t want to be with them all the time. I like that my kids go to a public school and I have break.

I very much dislike being bound to a computer, yet I sit in front of one all day.

I don’t want a cell phone, but I like the security of having it… as long as I don’t have to talk on it for long. By the way, that includes conversing with the love of my life. Mr. Right understands that after a few minutes, I’m ready to ditch him too. (Nothing personal, honey!)

The Girl wants to do girly things and I break out in hives. Make a necklace, try new hairstyles, learn to sew with a needle, make a throw – I need a paper bag just thinking of these things!

I love to be center stage, yet I develop stage fright amongst friends.

I don’t watch much tv (unless I’m watching football), and I feel completely out of it when conversations revolve around them. I’ve never seen “The Office”. There I said it. You all may want to stand back. I’m sure lightning will be striking me soon.

Most of my girl friends either have kids years younger than mine or none at all. I usually lose focus during conversations surrounding babies and toddlers or staying at home. (Think Charlie Brown when the adults talk. Wah wah wah wah… I understand it, but it doesn’t always come in clearly. I love knowing what is going on with them, but I don’t always appreciate what life is like on their daily schedule.)

I get along with males better than females, but always want to be accepted into the Girl’s Only group.

I’m very confident and appreciative of who I am – until I get into an all girl group. Then I find that although I like myself, I’m just not like the other girls. Then I feel like the ultimate dork.

Take last Saturday for example. We had some wonderfully dear friends over for an “adults only” dinner and games. All kids were left with sitters, well except ours, but I made ours eat dinner in the kitchen alone (gasp!) and then sent them upstairs to watch a movie they hadn’t seen. In other words, they were completely preoccupied and out of our hair… and quite satisfied with it, if I might add.

Did I mention that these are dear friends, that I actually love being with all of them? Yet as we girls were standing in the kitchen talking about anything and everything, it wasn’t until the guys came in to talk and to snag some appetizers that I felt my shoulders relax a bit. Why? Why am I still uncomfortable around those sweet, accepting, down-to-earth ladies who understand that we have such difference but still like me despite them?

We had dinner and great conversations that ran the gauntlet from children to church to football to work, with a myriad of things between and a lot of laughter. Again, I felt on more solid ground when we were in the “masculine” subjects rather than “feminine” ones. I felt that I had more to contribute at those times. (But why? I’m a girl. I’m a mom. I understand these things. I just don’t always know how to get them from my mind to my mouth.)

After playing two fantastically brilliant games of Apples to Apples (in which I won both games without cheating one bit, thank you very much Jenny! How can I cheat when the judges change every turn?! They’ve already threatened to play Yatzee next time – a game I never win. Fine, I’ll play it and I’ll have a great attitude, dadgumit. Just you wait and see…), we did the standard “boys go watch the game and the girls sit and talk” thing. I stayed to talk with the ladies; I even contributed marginally to the varying dialogues, but all the while my heart was begging to go be with the guys, to see the game. I was thinking these things as I was enjoying the conversations with my friends. If that’s not abnormal, then I don’t know what is.

Later we wound up with the guys, watching KU triumph over OSU. That pull could only be ignored for so long. It was there in that setting that I was able to talk the most with the other girls – about kids, about work, about life – all the things that had been discussed in the other room. It was as if the comfort of being around the men gave me the confidence to say what I thought to the women. I felt much more at ease and comfortable just having that testosterone around me.

And I don’t know why.

The next day at our church small group, I was reminded again how consistent I am at being weird. While all the ladies where sitting at the table, I was in the living room cheering on some football team. Later when they teased me about trying to be one of the guys, I just smiled and kept my seat.

So yeah, I’m abnormal. I accept it. Thankfully my friends accept it as well. I just thought you in Bloggityville should be aware that although I may seem normal on screen, let me assure you, you’ll probably think differently if and when we meet in real life.

Just giving you fair warning should you ever want to MIRL. I probably should have reminded these sweet girls before we met up last time. Well, now they know should we continue the tradition as the years progress.

And I really should have given the warning to Mr. Right. That man just didn’t know what kind of mess he was getting himself into…