Be Careful What You Wish For...

Hey there!  I wanted to include a page for those of you who are not interested in politics.  I thought it might be fun for me to include some of the many interesting situations I have gotten myself into through the years.

If you don't know me personally, let me give you a glimpse into my life.  I am apparently unique, according to everyone I meet, although I just think I am me.  I have always somewhat been in my own world, but I always thought everyone was like that.  I think I learned to block people out because of doing dang near every sport there is where people watch you closely: gymnastics, cheerleading, roller skating, ice skating, baseball, basketball, softball, volleyball, track and field, and football. 

I remember looking in the mirror one night during my middle school years, and all I saw was average everything: I have brown hair, brown eyes, about the average sized bra for my age, I was a little taller than other girls, but not too tall if I stopped growing that year (like my best friend did), and my skin is in the range between entirely too pale and really tan.  I didn’t think I was ugly or hate my appearance, but who wants to be average?  I wanted to be something special!  The worst thing I could become was average, or so I thought.  So I prayed.  I begged God to "Please just make me not average.  I don't want to just blend in with all of the other girls!  I want to be special.  I want people to notice me when I walk in a room!"  What I meant was that I wanted to be so beautiful that everyone was in awe of me when they saw me.  I wanted to look like Julia Roberts, be able to sing like Whitney Houston, dance like the Paula Abdul, and look as sexy in a swimsuit as the Baywatch girls.  I wanted Brenda Walsh’s life on 90210. 

I guess I should have been clearer in my pleas to the Lord above about what I meant when I said I wanted to be special, because I didn’t exactly get my wish.  Or maybe God just has a sense of humor, because he made me the FURTHEST thing from average.  I am content with my beauty, but I cannot carry a tune to save my life, I can actually kinda dance, and I am far from a Baywatch girl in a bathing suit.  

I hit a growth spurt in 7^th grade and grew to the point where I am almost six feet tall, I have a larger bone structure than most men in the world, I have crazy broad shoulders, I have the largest chest of most anyone I have ever met, I've always been a little overweight (varying through the years of a range of "fit" to fat), and I am naturally pretty strong as well.  But I made the best of it and went to college on a full athletic scholarship. 

I am not trying to make you pity me or anything like that-I am just giving you information that will help you visualize me.  I actually have a pretty healthy self-esteem, and I like to think of myself like a Super-Sized French Fry from McDonald's.  A Super-Sized Fry looks like the other fries but it is a lot bigger, and it certainly seem appealing, but Super-Sized is just too much for some people to handle.  Just keep all of this in the back of your mind as you continue reading this.

My best friend and I were the exact same size in 7th grade.  We could borrow each other's shoes, bras, shirts, pants, etc.  In fact, she used to borrow my toothbrush and tell me hours later.  Gross.  But that story is for another day.  But seriously-we were the same EXACT size.  Only I weighed a LOT more than she did.  She stopped growing that year, but I didn’t; I grew...and grew...and grew...and grew...you get the point. 

Her parents had a lake house and the first time she invited me, I was so excited!  I already knew how to water ski, so I planned on having a great weekend!  On the way to the lake house, my best friend and her family were telling me about Jeffro Bodean, a floating island type of thing my friend’s dad built with leftover huge chunks of styrofoam and wooden planks going across them so it floated.  They said they named it this because it looked like something Jeffro Bodean, from the Beverly Hillbillies, would have created.  They kept saying how fun it was to jump off it in the middle of the lake. 

When we got to the lake, they showed me Jeffro Bodean.  I understood why they called it that, because it certainly DID look like something from the Beverly Hillbillies!  The wood was cracked, the blocks of styrofoam were covered in mildew, and it really did not look very stable.  When my friend and her brother told me to climb up, I declined.  I thought I probably weighed more than any of the people in the family, and I did not want to be responsible for taking their dear Jeffro Bodean from them.  I also did not want the embarrassment that would come when, not if, Jeffro caved.  But my best friend, her brother, and her dad all encouraged me, saying “Oh, come on, Mando (my  nickname growing up)…you’re not THAT big.  You can do it!”  I think they thought I was scared and making an excuse, but scared I was not; I was being honest telling them that thing looked like it would crumble beneath my weight!  I stood firm with my “No…I’m ok…” for a while, but it started getting old.  They were not going to let me off the hook. 

After a lot of back and forth, I succumbed to peer pressure.  I thought heck, they said their dad jumps off it, and I probably weigh around what he weighs.  Maybe it is stronger than it looks.  It is wood, after all.  Wood comes from trees that sway but don’t easily break, right?  So I climbed aboard Jeffro, stood in the middle, and reminded them that I did not think this thing was strong enough to hold me.  “Just JUMP, Mando.  Stop saying that and JUMP!” they said. 

So…I jumped.  Well, kinda.  As soon as I bent my legs to give a powerful jump off this moving island, I heard CRAAAAACCCCCKKKKKKK.  Yeah.  I broke Jeffro Bodean.  Immediately, my best friend started yelling at me “You broke Jeffro Bodean!   You weren’t supposed to JUMP….you were supposed to just kinda fall off while diving!  You killed him!”  They obviously were very concerned about my legs that were scratched up from the broken wood scraping them on my floundering plunge into the lake.  But what could I say?  Jeffro was a part of their family that I had just killed!

I continued going to the lake for years with them with no big incidents like my murder of Jeffro Bodean, although we all discussed that tragedy when we were there.  A few years later, we went to a different part of the lake where someone had hung a rope swing.  Now, remember I said I continued growing, so now I was probably 20 or more pounds and at least 2 inches taller than when I slaughtered Jeffro Bodean.  My first glimpse at the rope swing immediately brought on symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and I told them I would just wait in the boat.  Once again “Come on, Mando!  Don’t be scared!”   And my friend’s dad insisting, once again, that “You’re not that big, Mando!  Come on!”  I insisted I would just guard the boat instead.

Then, once again, I succumbed to their cajoling and I climbed up the big hill, barefoot, in my bathing suit, to where you mount the rope swing.  They all insisted that there was nothing to be scared of and told me how they always come here and how sturdy the rope was.  I opted to go last, just “so I could see how to do it”, which really meant just in case there was another Jeffro incident.  And so it was my turn.  A group of about 5 people had already gone on it, and no one broke the rope, so surely I was wrong and the rope was strong enough to hold me.  I grabbed the rope, jumped, and mid-air, was pleasantly surprised that I was still holding on!  The rope had not broken!  Then, without meaning to exit the swing, I began plunging towards the water…but the rope was still in my hand. I broke the daggum rope swing.  I am pretty sure I will never hear the end of it.

Needless to say, now days, when I feel like I weigh too much for something or that I am too big for something, I am a little firmer in my rejections.  And luckily, people actually believe me now.