The Math Guy

Much of my life has been developed around the fact that I am good at math. As early as elementary school I was won various awards and received praise for my abilities. I continued this trend all the way through the end of high school. I always stood out as a "math guy." I never did anything in particular to excel at it, I just "got it." As high school came to an end and it was time to pick a major, it seemed to be a no-brainer to me (and I'm sure everyone around me) that I would go into engineering because that's what math guys do.

Now, as I near graduation from the U and look back on my decision, I realize that even though I'm good at math, I don't necessarily enjoy doing it all the time. It's not that I hate it but it's not exactly exhilarating either. I much prefer to learn about ideas and concepts rather than equations. I could have instead picked a major in one of my many other interests that I may have enjoyed more, enabling me to probably graduate sooner with better grades. However, here I am, living the grand narrative of a "math guy." I never even for a second considered anything but an engineering degree. I don't necessarily regret my choice but I do wish I would have at least considered my options more fully.

I am who we are

As you can see, this is not an old picture. But people who are in this picture were my best classmates in my middle school years and we are like a family now. Nobody can tell how we changed as time passed, from appearance to the individual inner world. Still we are together no matter how things go differently around us. Just like the saying: United we stand, divided we fall.
It all started from the fall in 2000 when we were 12 or 13 years old. I can hardly remember how we got to know each other that well. We were always the few students who performed great in all kinds of exams. Four of us worked together in mathematics. Two of us was a couple once a time. We quarreled for small stuffs, we cried for feelings, and of course that we had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun.
And when it comes to the year we are in now, two of us are studying abroad in America, three of us are taking their graduate lives in China and the last two work their lives. It is hard to say that how we interact each other's life. We can only say that we are grateful that there is something which guide us together, being friends and existing as a family. I do know that they are the ones who will always stand in my back supporting me whenever I need them and they are the reason why I can survive all the negative feelings when I am alone here in a foreign country. Sometimes I wonder if I could get any chance to meet someone like them. Or maybe it is such a long dream that I do not notice it's reality.
Even if this is a dream, we still stand in the front of our school gate. We smile, under the sunlight, among the breeze, like the endless summer.

There's a place we used to be
There's a face I used to see
There's a picture with you by my side
There's a moment that I want to find.

I don’t know where to start
Or how to begin
But I know I love you still.

What's more important?

Some of my most cherish memories from high school will always be those of football. In this picture I'm suit up for a JV game on a chilly fall saturday. I'm the one on the far right, yes the short one, all 5 foot 2, 120 lbs of me. The summer prior to my senior year, I was fully expecting to start at corner back for the varsity squad. The coaches all hinted that I would. I got all the first string reps and was a vocal leader to many lower class-men. However when the first game finally came around, it turns out that I wasn't going to start. The coaches chose to start another corner, my friend who at the time was a junior. He was 5'7, 135lb. I was devastated, I spent the whole junior year thinking about how much fun my senior year would be with all of my other varsity friends, and how we were going to win everything. The coaches all told me that I had tremendous talent and the they would find a way to get me on the field. The moto my head coach always used was, "if you dominate JV games and practiced at 100% all the time, then they will find a place for you, wether it be on special teams or in the lineup". That I did but I never saw the field, only in garbage time. As the season was winding down, I wanted it, more and more to end. We went undefeated in the regular season and everyone wanted to go all the way to the state championship, however everyday I always thought about how much I hated practice, the hypocritical coaches, who yet to explain that not only do you need talent, you also need to be big, and game days where all I did was freeze on the side lines. Even dominating JV games in attempt to release my stress was not sufficient in boosting my moral because it just reminded me of how much I hated football. I remember once when I had 17 tackles, 0 passes caught on me and 6 deflections, I just felt like crying on the sidelines. Football meant that much to me. So when we lost in the semi-finals of the playoffs to Mounds View, I thought I'd happy, but it turns out I just cried and cried with all my other senior friends. Sometimes in life it isn't the things you do that makes you happy, but the people you do it with. This horrible experience changed me in a way where I no longer look at my life through the perspective of enjoying what I do, but enjoying the people I do it with. If someone was to ask me if I wanted to go to a party, with people I don't know and probably would have a great time, or if I wanted to go hangout with my buddies while sitting around playing yugioh cards, I'd rather do that because some ordinary hangout means a lot more that some ordinary party.

Oh God its my parents.

My own history is something that is hard for me to completely address because there is just so much I could say, and thousands of stories that I feel play a huge impact on the "story of me". But to really get to the root of things, it comes down to Katherine and Michael, a.k.a. my mother and father. Out of every story, event, relationship, and daily decision I've faced, the choices I've made and history I've created for myself tie back to the relationship I have with my mom and dad, whether I liked it or not. I come from a family of four; my father, mother, older sister, and me. From an outside perspective, we look like the typical white, Northern Minnesotan, go to Catholic mass every Sunday, eat at the dinner table, "achieve in school or else!", boring family. When in reality I don't know anyone else that was raised in anyway remotely close to how my sister and I were. Part of that ties back to the unique history of my own parents. My mother's parents were both European, and only moved to the United States in about their 30's, partially due to her father being a Jew living in Germany during the War. Her father passed away when she was 10 years old, and she spent the rest of her young life growing up in Minneapolis with her Danish mother, and younger sister. My father on the other hand grew up with his mother, father, and 8 other siblings, him being the eldest. He grew up in the suburbs in a 3 bedroom house, causing tons of trouble well into his 20's. Now that I am old enough to really see how differently they were raised, compared to how they chose to raise a family, I am able to see the unique combination of their idea of what they wanted for us unavoidably mixed with their own personal history.

They married in their 30's, moved to the middle of nowhere Northern Minnesota (population 702)and I was born when my mother was 37, and father 42. My older sister is three years older than me, and as people and personalities go we couldn't be more different, but because of our upbringing are in many ways alike. We grew up outside. With both parents working for the Department of Natural Resources, there was rarely a day we weren't outside fishing, camping, hiking, or just not allowed to go inside the house. Material things were never really a factor in our lives, and I was very content living in my sand box until I was about 10. But as I grew older I started to realize that most people I met were much different then me in the things they valued, and the way their families interacted. For the first time I questioned my parents, and this led to some resentment as I headed into high school. Then I started realizing how much like them I really was, the extreme anxiety and awkward conversation skills of my mother, the introverted personality of my father, and the annoying fact that my sister seemed to somehow twist all of our inherited "weirdness" in her favor. It was like I couldn't not be like them, even if I tried.

Only in the past couple of years have I come to truly appreciate my history, and the way my parents have influenced me as a person. I now look back on the hand made bunny costume my mother made me (as opposed to all my friends who had the cool Target flower headbands), the long hiking trips with my family, and the countless other events in my life that have shaped my personal history, as something to be greatly appreciated.

"Riley, shut up!"

I am the third child out of four, but don't worry, this post isn't going to be about me whining about the struggles of being a middle child. There have been times when me and my older sister, the middle two, had our own experiences with "the middle child syndrome", but for our entire lives my siblings and I have been sick with the "Anderson family syndrome". We are all loud.

I have an older brother, an older sister, and a younger sister. We are all relatively close in age; we are two years apart repsectively. My dad worked as a construction worker, and his work wasn't very constant when I was growing up. My mom's job as a nurse, however, was. This being the case, we spent a lot of time with my dad when we were growing up. My dad was and still is a kid at heart. We would always run around and be crazy with him. When my parents split up and my dad moved out, the craziness that he taught us still remained. When it was just us and my mom, not only did she have to deal with four crazy kids; she had to deal with four crazy kids that all wanted her attention. If you wanted to get Mom's attention, you had to be louder than the others. In order to be heard, my mom had to be louder than all of us. My cousins had a very similar situation thus making them just as loud as us. My family and our cousins spent a lot of our time at our grandparent's house while our moms were at work. My grandma, all four feet and nine inches of her, had to look after eight crazy and obnoxious little kids. If you were to go to any family gathering, you will notice that we will all be yelling, or talking very loudly at the least.

What first started as a survival technique eventually developed into our everyday way of interacting. Our lack of volume control continued on into our lives. For some of us such as my older sister and one of my cousins, they were completely different people inside and outside of school. They were very shy at school, but once they got home they were loud and crazy and they could drink anyone under the table. On the other hand, my older brother and I acted the same inside and outside of school, but our outgoing nature was channeled into different areas. I was very sociable and involved in student activities such as pep fests and student council. My brother had a love/hate relationship with every staff member in the school and set records for the most referrals given to a student in a school year.

For the love of swimming

When I was eight, I took up swimming lessons. Plunging myself into the blue, rippling water every Saturday in the summer for the next three years, I learned the correct knee positions in the elementary back stroke and the precise arm movements for the front crawl. At that age, swimming lessons were a chore, something that I didn’t want to waste my precious Saturday mornings on….and I made it very clear to my swim instructor. I thought that maybe by being stubborn I just might get out of going to lessons. It soon became routine: getting up early, sitting in the car while my parents drove me to yet another lesson, and standing in the freezing cold pool trying to do ‘red-light-green-light’ and ‘underwater bobs’. However, after a while I learned to love swimming. And what better way to continue with it than become a swim instructor? At least this is how I thought my grand narrative wanted me to proceed.

So at the age of fifteen I went through the classes and the certification process, and ended up back where I had started…Saturday morning swimming lessons. I donned my black swimsuit and jumped into the pool in order to teach other eight year olds the joys of swimming. Yet, I soon noticed that every class I taught had at least one ‘stubborn’ child. One who couldn’t…didn’t want to participate in ‘soldier, monkey, tree’ or do the scissors kick. These kids reminded me of myself…and I made it my goal to get them just as involved as the rest. Even though I wasn’t successful every time, I am happy that I tried to help.

Long story short, I am who I am today because of not just swimming, but also teaching it. My history led me to act and think the way I do now. Even though according to Hegel, history is only ‘important’ if it is of World-Historical individuals (great men), I feel my history is still important to me, and it is not done yet. It’s still going somewhere; it still needs to find its ideal structure. And now that I think about it, some people may think that my history may never have a telos…but to me it already will.

Best Friends Forever...... or not.

I absolutely love this photo. It just epitomizes my childhood. If you were to ask the other girls in the photo they would probably say the same. It was probably the happiest time of my life.

This picture was taken on my back porch. I can still remember when my dad and my grandpa built that porch. That porch in a way is a symbol for all my dad and grandpa have done for my family. We used to have nothing, yet they worked and worked to have our family be where it is today. They built our family from the ground up. If it weren't for all their hard work, I would never of had the childhood that I had.

In this picture I am the girl with the ridiculous smile (third from left) and these were my best friends; Michelle, Kelsie, Lindsay, Katie, and Ali. We all lived in the same culdesac which pretty much meant that we did everything together. We were inseparable.

A few years after this photo was taken, I moved to Indiana. At the time I thought that me moving wouldn't make any difference in the dynamic of our group. However, I was wrong. For the most part, each of us went our separate ways. It was as if I was the glue of the whole group. I didn't realize that I played such a huge role in "shaping" the group until I moved back to Minnesota just last year. Michelle and Lindsay are the only ones to still live in the culdesac and from what I hear they don't ever hang out together or even talk to each other anymore. Kelsie and Ali are sisters so they obviously see each other and talk to each other but for the most part they don't talk or hang out with any of the other girls and haven't since I moved away. Before she passed away a year ago, Katie had stayed somewhat in contact with Ali but not like when we were kids.

As for me, I am still friends with all of them. When I moved back it was as if nothing had changed between me and all of them individually but almost everything had changed between them collectively. I look back and wonder if I had never moved if we would all be best friends. If me not moving away would have changed the course of history; Michelle and Lindsay would still just walk across the street to hang out, Katie would still be alive. Or would everything still be what it is today. I don't know. It is crazy to think about.

All I know is that this picture and everything it represents has made me who I am today and I am so grateful for it. They "shaped" me at the same I was "shaping" them.

GuacaMOLE face

This is me and my brother nick. As you can see we are very similar and a lot of ways, must being visual because we are identical twins. We have the same DNA, same height, weight and tone of voice. which is funny because we haven't worn the same clothes since our little sailor outfits when we were 10 months old. We often get asked questions like "can you feel it when i hit your brother?" or "can you two communicate with each other in your heads?". My favorite one is when people ask how they can tell us apart, which than i usually start to laugh, because if you can't see i have a HUGE brown thing on the right side of my face. My mole. It almost makes me ask how they usually tell people apart if they dont look at their facial features. This is just one of the many things that differ between us. I however, didn't always have this love for this hairy invader on my upper lip, a actually hated it. It may have been something that was different, and created a distinction between me and brother im not sure, but i wanted to cut it off. If fact, before i knew Enrique Iglasias was a famous singer who made out with Anna Kournikova, i knew he had a mole. Some ridicule followed my mole, but not much. It was more of a internal hatred during my 4th and 5th grade years. During these years i also belonged to a aftercare center called "Kenwood Rec-center". Here most of my friends we involved too. The so-called "care-leader" Will, sort of ran everything. A young up-beat guy, who was really good with kids. He was awesome and not only me but everyone else wanted to be like him. He's also what someone would call a stereotypical "Bro". I had explained to him about my loathing discussed i had for my mole.Will brought me back down to reason when he said "Why cut it off? chicks are gunna dig it when you get older." From this moment on i saw my mole differently. I actually liked it and believed that i was lucky to have this thing on my face. It's a built in chick magnet, is what he later described it as.

This almost meaningless conversation to most had a big impact on me and how i perceive my mole, but more generally myself. i guess it just made me comfortable with a difference and distinction. To tie this to a grand narrative, me and my brother aren't really that similar, we look the same but thats about it. Most twins have troubles separating and being away from each other. I just see this as a moment of our beginnings of breaking that grand narrative.

Not So Clueless

As Alicia Silverstone portrays so well in this 90's classic the spoiled only child routine, gets whatever she wants. This is quite wrong in my case however. When I was very young my parents got a divorce and I was split between them to spend most of my time with my mother. I am also an only child so I was given a lot of attention, but that was about it. I never and still haven't to this day gotten everything that I wanted. I was taught that I had to work hard and have a reason to deserve those items that I wanted that were unnecessary. Another thing to add into my story, was that when my mom and I went off to go start our lives alone, we moved in with her three brothers and one of their friends. Most of my life I was surrounded by men but none of them being my dad but yet this taught me a lot of lessons. The lessons I believed I learned from them were that you trust only who you want to trust and never live life for anyone else. This may come off badly for some people but I am quite glad that my parents got divorced when they did because I don't think that I would be the person I am today and I also wouldn't have learned the lessons I did from having a tough childhood.

Adoption

     I have 16 grandparents. Four times the average person. My family has separated and expanded in so many different directions that it would be impossible to sum up in one blog post. However, I would like to go in depth about one very important aspect of my family which played a significant role in shaping who I am today, that my brother and I are adopted.

     This interesting fact has dumbfounded many people. They simply do not believe me when I tell them, my friends just assume I am pulling their leg. I am caucasian, with blonde hair and blue eyes, and somewhat resemble my adoptive father. My brother, who is five years younger, was adopted from a different set of birthparents. He has brown hair, brown eyes, he is caucasian with a darker complexion, and closely resembles my adoptive mother. I think this disbelief stems from the social and racial class construct of adoption. White, healthy children aren't adopted, and middle class American's are not the most common to adopt. In our culture it is 'normal' for older upper class, white Americans to adopt children from third world countries, that are usually not of their same race. This is not my case at all, and makes my story unbelievable to many at first. 

     My mother was unable to have children of her own, so my parents decided to begin the process of adoption. My birthmother became pregnant while in college, and decided it would be best for the both of us to put me up for adoption. When I was five years old, at the time of my brother's adoption, we were given permission to make my adoption open. My open adoption has been nothing but a wonderful experience. My birth family and my adoptive family put in a lot of effort to get together at least once a year. I know my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and half-sisters on my birthmothers side. I was in my birthmother's wedding, they have visited me at our lake home, and I recently flew to Arizona to stay with my birthmother and half sisters for a week. We have a wonderful connection, and I have never experienced any of the negative affects that are speculated to occur in adopted children. 

     I was unaware of this until recent research, but there are many stereotypes of adopted children. They are supposedly criminally predisposed, develop behavioral problems, experience emotional disturbance, and have psychiatric difficulties. I have not come across any data that represents or proves these ideas, and they have certainly not affected me. However, the decision that my birthmother made definitely changed my life, and shaped me into the person I have become today. 

Happier by the Dozen

This is my annual family Christmas picture from 2010 (Mom says I can’t share this year’s picture yet, so this will have to do). Count us up, 12 people total! For as long as I can remember, I have been introduced as “the girl with, like, 30 siblings.” Although there is only 10 of us children, being one of so many defined much of my life thus far.

My parents constantly reminded us that we are all family, and family is always going to be the number one priority for everyone, and all intra-family activities are encouraged.

Our friends never understood. They thought my parents were terrible for rarely letting us have friends over or go to parties! Our friends must have never known that frankly, we preferred hanging out with ourselves…

The easiest way to explain why we were always told to play together is by describing a typical day in October of 4^th grade. The routine was set practically in stone: the four high schoolers were up and ready to go on their own by 7:15 am (there was no bus despite being 5 miles from the school, so dad was the driver); the three grade schoolers up, fed, cleaned, clothed, and sent out the door by mom to walk to the bus stop; the lone preschooler was up since roughly 5:00 am and just waiting to be dropped off at 10:00 am; and the toddler and infant were lugged around with my mom the rest of the morning and early afternoon.

School would end; high schoolers were in between sport seasons and would be driven home by mom (two babies in back), and the bus dropped us grade schoolers off soon after.

Once we were all back at home, we could do homework, read, get ready for swim practice, pet the dog, watch a little TV, pretty much anything to stay out of mom’s way in the kitchen. Then, usually at around 5:00 pm, was family dinner. Sometimes dinner seemed very early, but my mom was not about to drop nightly family dinners, and 5:00 was a time we were all around. After dinner my mom would rush the middle 6 of us off to swim practice and the oldest two boys would watch the youngest two babies.

We were with each other basically as much as possible. And, because of that, we were all the best of friends. By Friday and Saturday, we had worn each other out that the idea of having a friend over wasn’t even desirable. Besides, we saw so little of our school friends compared to our family that they didn’t seem to understand our jokes, or know what motivated us, or remember the things we liked and didn’t like. In other words, having our big family filled every need we ever had. Want to have fun? Find one of your sisters. Need to talk to someone? There are 9 siblings and 2 parents. Can’t do your homework? Someone’s had that assignment before.

I believe that for the most part, family was all any of us needed. Now, my history is my family. It's all I remember.

Family is all we’ve had, all we need, and all we want.

Growing Up in the Neighborhood

I don’t have a very big family. I only have one brother, and a few cousins, who I’m not very close to. Growing up, the other kids in my neighborhood were my family. We did everything together. We went to each other’s houses before and after school, depending on whose parents would be home. We played together at recess. We went to the park and played in the farm fields together. We played on the same sports teams and did our homework together. We had neighborhood parties in the summer. Our families got together to watch football games. We all would go to baseball games together. We were all the best of friends, and our parents were the best of friends. Through the years we became one big family.

Growing up, I took this ‘family’ for granted. I didn’t realize that not every neighborhood was like this. As I grew up and made new friends, I was shocked to learn that some people didn’t even know their neighbor’s names! I didn’t appreciate what I had growing up, and now I regret it. Things in the neighborhood have changed now. We aren’t as close as we used to be. Half of us are at college. The farm fields have been replaced with new houses and we definitely don’t get to play together at recess anymore. Now, I cherish every backyard barbeque and every Packers game we get to spend together. I would not be the same person that I am today without living in my neighborhood. It gave me a sense of community and an instant set of friends growing up. We learned from each other and to this day we will always have each other’s backs. We drifted into our own separate groups of friends as we grew up, but we will always have a bond that will never go away. In high school, people didn’t understand why we all were so close, and I really don’t think anyone ever will. As I grow up and start a family some day, I hope that I can live in a neighborhood like the one I grew up in, so they can be just as fortunate as I was. I just hope that they realize it before I did.

(The picture is of some of the kids from the neighborhood, waiting for the bus, about 8 or 9 years ago. From the left: Dominic, Michael, Zach, Nicole, Me, Jen, Leanne, Deanna, Laura, and Kate)

A Penny Really Does Make All the Difference

Most people today no longer value a penny. They see one on the ground and they don’t even pick it up, it is left to be stepped on and get dirtier every second. However, for me pennies are extremely important. Growing up I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s house and while I was there I could almost always find a penny. I didn’t realize until about four years ago though why I was always finding pennies at my grandparent’s home. My father four years ago told me that my grandpa was always leaving pennies around the house for my grandma who loved to play the penny slots at the casino. Four years ago my grandfather passed away from cancer. On the day of my grandpa’s funeral though a crazy thing happened, everyone in my family found a penny in the craziest place. I personally found my penny on the stairs in my house. Now to someone who isn’t in my family this wouldn’t seem that abnormal but mom is someone who loves to have a clean house and she had just vacuumed earlier that morning so finding this penny there was pretty crazy. Now fast forward four years and I don’t think you could find anyone who values a penny more than I do. Since being at college I have found four pennies, all in some pretty weird places and every time I found one I know my grandpa is there with me, making sure I am safe

Now because I value these pennies so much and think of them as my grandfather, I have become sort of a believer you could say. These pennies are a part of who I am,. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t hope to find a penny and be reminded of my grandfather. And when I do find a penny I can’t help but smile and think of my grandpa. My faith in these pennies has shaped a lot of things about my life and made me believe that even though someone is gone they still are there with you in some way. I don’t think I will ever stop valuing pennies as much as I do or will ever let them stop reminding me of my grandpa.

My inner jungle gym

When I was young both my parents worked full time. I went to daycare for most of the day, but I was o.k. with that. I loved daycare. I got to play with friends and have a good time. My favorite part about daycare was the jungle gym that took up the entire back yard. There are no good pictures to accurately represent the incredibleness of this playground, but the picture on the left will get your imagination started. Anyways, this daycare with its intense playground had its rules. And I followed these rules to the T. The daycare was well organized and was very efficient in handling 20+ kids at a time, thanks to the rules set in place. The rules and organization that I was a part of when I was a kid and having two working parents are two shaping factors of who I am today.

Having both my parents working full time, I was brought up to be an independent child. I was able to be productive by myself. Then with the enforced rules at daycare my life was very structural. Both attributes/ topics define my being today. I work well be myself but I also can function well in groups because of the exposure to daycare as a child. I am very organized and usually set up lists for the week/day of what needs to be accomplish, the structural side of me. And I find that my morals are based more on rules of what I think is or is not the correct and/ or right way for things to happen. A grand narrative that was hiding under the surface of my conscious, placed there way back when I was young. This historical archive I have depicts my inner mobility, my structural jungle gym of a system that guides me on the right path.

Drop the Puck

I played hockey for ten years of my life, maybe more, as a goalie. Those were some of the best times of my life. Since then I have moved on from the sport, other than playing pond hockey each winter, but have not forgotten how it has shaped who I am today. When I used to take my position between the pipes, I would always have and overwhelming feeling of being perfect- - the shutout game that would lead my team to victory. While this was the case in certain circumstances, it would hardly be the reality in each game. To this day I can't say I've lost that motivation for perfection, and without it something seems to be missing for me. I grew up playing hockey with my friends, many of which I am still in contact with today; some even who play for the Minnesota Gophers, and even one in the NHL. These friends were my teammates who encouraged my perfection, obviously because they didn't want me to let in any goals and we could win the game. This encouragement led me to become a better player all around. I became obsessed with the sport. I practiced in my garage, in my basement, with my team in the off season, and even read up on different tactics to take on as a gaoltender. I wanted to be the best goalie for my team.

A few years later, as I started hitting my teenage, rebellious stage, my attitude became somewhat lackluster towards my duties as a goalie. I still played my best and wanted to do great, but didn't have the same driving attitude that my teammates felt. I eventually ended my hockey career at fifteen, thinking I was too young to make my entire life about hockey. There were different things I wanted to do, and time I didn't want to focus all on hockey. While it is now six years later and I sit here writing this, I feel as though that focus for perfection never left me, even in the years after hockey. Although I have grown up, matured some, and realized that perfection is one of lifes most unattainable goals, I can still have the motivation be great at whatever I do. I have witnessed some of those friends I grew up playing hockey with, grow into who they are now; some without a lack of motivation to do anything. I think that if it weren't for my years playing hockey, and a want for games of perfection, I wouldn't have gained a sense of motivation for work as strong as the one I have today. I miss playing hockey with a real team; the sense of comradery and achievement. These are things I once felt with my team, but now have to find in other aspects of life- - - Motivation for perfection.

The Story of an Accident Prone Child

In this post we're looking at stories, narratives, and where our opinions come from. I'd like to take a page out of my own past and see if I can construct something sensible. The first thing that immediately comes to mind when we start talking about where our opinions come from a little red light starts blinking in the back of my head and I think- PARENTS! UPBRINGING! And I think this is an important aspect to understand when looking at how we form our identities and shape our culture.

Last week, Robin shared his "first date" story and I have my own story that relates. This is a little different though because this is a story that is about me but has been told to me by my parents because I was too young to remember this. When I was just starting to walk I didn't really walk, I ran. So, here I am, this little toddler running like some kind of kamikaze all around the house. Well, as a toddler, my motor skills were not quite fully developed and apparently I fell down A LOT. All of this active clumsiness resulted once in not one, but two black eyes. One day, my dad, (who is a general contractor) had to run to the hardware store and had to bring me along. At the checkout, a concerned cashier took down my dad's information (this was when people still used checks I guess) and called the police. Later that day, a police officer came to our door to investigate. My dad was explaining himself to the officer when, at that moment, I come running out and in front of the officer I fall flat on my face. That was enough to convince that officer.

Now, fast forward a decade or so and drop me in gym class, or sports of any kind. I've been notorious for being clumsy in some of these situations. In fact, in high school gym class I kept a tally of how many times I got hit in the face in one semester (it was 20 by the way). I can't help but feel that there is a connection between the story I have always been told and my accident prone-ness later in life. My explanation for this is that we are taught to follow these narrative structures that are difficult to break out of. In my case, I was always told I was clumsy via the story of being a toddler with two black eyes, therefore I continued to follow that narrative because that is what has been expected of me. All that extra emphasis on helmets and pads as a child just equates to the message that "You are accident prone and you will get hurt." It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, don't you think? If you're told that you are something I think you are much more likely to follow the pre-constructed path. I think these are the sort of structures that perpetuate cyclical behavior, such as the cycle of poverty or domestic abuse.

If you grow up constantly being told one thing, it will always be a part of you even if you break away from it later in life. (I do feel like I'm not as clumsy, but then again I haven't been playing any kind of sport lately). I think it works the same way with politics, your parents raise you one way and once you get to a certain point you either continue on the path (like my brother) or you veer off in your own direction (like I did). I think that narratives have been so ingrained in our telling of history that we train ourselves to follow along in this same path, which makes it more difficult to break the cycle. The larger question this raises is, is it the people influencing the history, or is it the history influencing the people?