41 – 14

As I mentioned when examining my geekiness, I have been looking back more.

Some of that comes from my month of thankful posts, when I realized that one thing I was very grateful for is that I was not picked on that much. The times it did happen left really deep scars, but based on what I was like it seems like it could have been a lot worse.

I kind of thought the post might bring some affirmations about why I did not get picked on much, like maybe people would tell me I was not really that unattractive and nerdy. I did get responses, but it was more people mentioning being bullied themselves, or dealing with it with their children now, and it just reminds me of how hard growing up can be, and yes, somehow I was inordinately lucky, and I am grateful for that.

The other part though, is with those unexpected followers on Twitter, a lot of them seem to be teenage girls who like the same bands I like. I think I have picked up more All American Rejects fans than My Chemical Romance fans, but I haven’t really been keeping score. I don’t think they overlap.

Initially, I held off on following back. I wanted this nice and orderly feed where it was not spiraling out of control all of the time, with text-speak and parental angst and passive aggression and little hearts and symbols that I don’t even know how you get, and exclamation points. So many exclamation points. Still, it felt wrong not to follow them, so I did.

I do not generally know much about them, including ages and locations. I saw one conversation where one apparently had just turned 13 and another is a few months away from 16. Some of them are older. Two I think are not even teenagers. I think of them all as being around 14, because that was kind of the key age for me, and then we have a mirror image thing going on, because I am rapidly approaching 41.

I was trying to think why 14 seemd like such a key age. I turned 14 in 1986. I guess the 80’s were in full swing already, so it wasn’t that. Somehow, by 1986 maybe I was a part of it.

Turning 14 meant I could go to church dances, and that was such a huge part of my life. Maybe a church dance doesn’t sound that cool, but they happened monthly where school dances were rare, having a boyfriend did not matter, and even though there were some dress standards, we still had a guy there who looked just like Terry Bozzio, and another who looked like John Taylor, and I danced with both of them.

Also, I started going to concerts that year. A-ha and Charlie Sexton were my two favorites at that time, and I saw both of them, about a month apart, kind of like how I just saw two bands I have really wanted to see in the last month. 

Of course, 14 was also when an unfortunate combination of teasing and sexual harassment convinced me that no guy could ever be seriously attracted to me, that as a girl, I was a joke, and I gave up on drama and plays, and I discovered that I was hopeless at guitar.

That’s what 14 is like though. Your emotions are not on an even keel yet, because maturity takes a while, so things are exhilarating and devastating, and maybe the only thing in between is boring. You’re learning what your gifts are, and how the world is, and how you are, so a bad message received then is a lot worse than one received a few years later. It’s a roller coaster, and I care about the current riders. I like them. And, I keep remembering ways in which I resemble that tweet, or at least I used to.

There are two separate things going on. One is that I try to be organized and orderly, and that doesn’t work. My following list tripled, and now there are times when I know that someone is mad at someone else over something, with no context, and often with language that I do not appreciate, though, hey, I follow musicians so it was going to happen anyway. It is not orderly.

Talking about my birthday party, I said I was experimenting with chaos. This is part of it. I have spent many years learning that things do not go as planned, and there are many elements of my life outside of my control. I seem to be moving from accepting to embracing, Maybe this means that the future will also hold times when I blog about comics, music, writing, and politics all in the same week, rather than going through themes. Maybe it means I will start dating again. I don’t know.

What I do know, and this is the other thing going on, is that the other issue is that I care. I feel drawn towards mentoring, or doing something helpful. I feel the vulnerability of teenage girls more, but the truth is, it’s everyone. So even though I have clearly decided and said that Twitter is not good for the personal, I’m starting to use it more that way now.

Often, I have no idea what to do, and I will say something encouraging but trite, and I don’t know that it does much. Sometimes I send music videos. Mainly, if I get a thought, I send it. I do this with the musicians and writers too. I will send “thank yous” a lot, because I am grateful for good reading or listening experiences. Those have a positive effect on my life. I know that often it won’t be seen, and maybe it won’t matter, but I don’t want to get in the habit of deciding who needs affirmation and who doesn’t. You’re too good-looking; you don’t need me to tell you that. You have more than 5000 followers, so anything I say will be pointles. Yes, sometimes they don’t need you to tell them, but sometimes people seem so shocked by compliments that maybe it doesn’t happen enough.

It’s not always about that. When I “like” and “favorite” dog pictures, that’s not even necessarily for the person who posted it; I’m just a sucker for dog pictures. Well, pretty much any kind of animal picture actually, and nature shots, and film quotes, and really, I am kind of easy in some ways. I don’t know how much people care about seeing “likes” and “favorites”, but it does not require that much effort to do it.

I do think there is something important, though, about remembering that Tara and Matt love otters, and that Ben is into Bob Mould, and Nick is addicted to Rooster Sauce. If you see something that you know they will like, share it. I have a better than average memory, which helps, but you can build that up if you will pay attention to others, and look at them, and just care. And those are all real people and likes, that involve interactions on Twitter and Facebook and even in real life, but I am the same person across all media. Some people do adopt personae, but I can’t.

So, I’m going to tell a story that is kind of emotional for me, relating to the ancient medium of snail mail. In Aloha 1^st ward I was called to do the Relief Society newsletter, and when I was going through the birthday list, I noticed that some of the women were marked that you could only contact by mail or phone. It occurred to me that I should send the letter to them, so for all of the time I was editing the letter, I would also mail it to those five.

There was not much to it. The first time I wrote notes explaining what I was doing. When it was their birthday month I would send it in a birthday card, and I did some Christmas cards, and then when I was going to be in Cooper Mountain ward, so not doing it any longer, I wrote a note explaining. Maybe the next newsletter person would carry on the tradition, but if not, there would not be this sudden drop. I had given them my contact information in the first note, and I enclosed it again this time.

I never heard from any of these women, or knew anything about them, except one was kind of special to me, because I went to school with her son, and I had mentioned that when I first wrote. A few days after I sent her letter, my phone rang, and it was another son of hers telling me that she had died, but that he wanted to let me know because she thought of me as a friend she never saw, and she looked forward to them.

I offered my sympathies, and thanked him for letting me know, and then when the phone call was done I just wept. There were so many emotions going on there, with this deep feeling of loss and confusion, because should I have done more? Was that really enough? But there was also relief, because if I hadn’t sent that last note with the contact information, I wouldn’t have known. Or if I had given up after a while, because obviously none of them cared, I would have been wrong.

So, as is typical, I don’t know what I’m doing here, or where it’s going. Embrace it. I am turning into a big mush who gets teary-eyed a lot. Embrace it. I do keep reaching out, which brings up all my fears about being annoying and unwanted and irritating. Sometimes I might be, but it seems more important that I stay loving. I embrace that too.