Cha Cha Hannukah

Surrounded by questions of whether or not I had a Christmas tree growing up, I started remembering Hannukah once again.  

I remember the same things I've told you all before...

And I noticed something else.

First, let's talk about the fact that eight gifts typically happen.  

It's one a night, and parents will generally pick which to give their child each night.  

Sometimes the gifts get a little silly by the end, and sometimes they get better and better.

My parents?

They showed us all the gifts at once. 

In a pile...

Mine would be one wrapping paper and my sister's would be another. 

They were in a pile and it was our choice which present we'd pick first, second, and so on each night. 

This was terrible.

We'd spend every night thinking about what the other shapes contained and whether we chose right, even though we'd obviously be getting the others open eventually. 

Sometimes it would be a miss, like a thing we didn't really care for or something decidedly useless...

Sometimes it would be something completely ridiculous on the other side of the spectrum, and I'd become a little concerned about who my parents had to kill in order to afford it...

Either way, having that pile to choose from and that interesting semi-roulette of Hannukah ended with conditioning me to realize that anything I'm waiting for will eventually come, whether I guess or obsess about it or not. 

It also did something else that is fairly important.

It made me no longer have a crushing sense of curiosity.  

I don't mean that it took the magic out of my imagination or made me want to know how things worked a little less.  

Not at all.  

What I'm saying is that situations that were labeled as dangerous in some way were no longer particularly interesting to me.  

Things that did not affect my life and that would not have anything potentially awesome for me or my loved ones were empty boxes which did not need to be opened. 

When friends saw a door saying, "Do Not Enter," it filled them with a NEED to open that door.  

I was freed from this need.

I no longer cared. 

I'm telling you...  This was freeing.  

A beautiful thing.  

The closed door was now nothing more than a door I did not need to open, so that I could spend more energy opening the doors which needed opening.  

Take this both literally and figuratively.  

On a completely separate note, I actually DID have Christmas this year.  

We had a tree in the apartment and everything.  

It was about four feet tall and we didn't actually have much to work with.

The only real ornaments on it are, oddly enough, mine. 

Oswald, the Lucky Rabbit...

Plenty of candy canes,
Batman...

The ribbon is Halloween ribbon. 

There were lips on there somewhere...

The topper was Trickster #1 from the Broadway show of the Lion King. 

And a bat. 

My Knight's family has taken me in as one of their own. 

I feel a little like a tiny kitten being taken in by a pack of wolves.  

They are very caring and were terrifying before I learned the ways of their people. 

...Like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.  

This freaking movie.

I don't understand what the Hell I watched. 

My eyes themselves were confused and pained, yet entertained. 

Like watching an empty car explode.  

The movie was so charming and nice to look at that I somehow got through the implications of ...everything bad that could possibly happen to a woman.  

Like the main character himself, all was forgiven with a dance number and a song. 

In any case, we were given many gifts that evening and much joy was had.  

I felt like I was really a part of the family, and that was nice. 

Yay!

 

 

Pandas Make Me Feel Guilty

Pandas make me feel super guilty. 

It isn't because they desperately need to reproduce in order to keep the species going.  That would be a semi-reasonable thing.  
Nope.

Pandas make me feel guilty because I was once a child, and now I can't let that go.

I'm the kind of person who remembers the worst things, generally blown out of any reasonable proportion, and has trouble with the recall of pleasant things, or positive things I may have done.

My sister is almost eight years older than I am.  Given that this incident took place at her Bat Mitzvah, we'll assume I was maybe five.

I was five.

I was five and yet I can't seem to shrug this off.

Pandas will always make me feel like an asshole.

See, there were these stuffed animals in balloons.  It was a cool concept, and most of them were filled with these hideous monkey things.  

 
They were probably not that scary, but they freaked me out pretty hardcore as a kid.

One of the balloons contained a panda.  

This was specifically meant to be my cousin's panda, as she was moving into a black and white apartment.  None of this is particularly relevant to her life now, yet I still want to send her a panda every time I see one.

I don't…

But I want to, like some crazed stalker.

I feel guilty, to this day, because over twenty years ago, a small child version of myself wanted a panda instead of a monkey.

I think I probably cried.  People felt bad for me.  Instead of going, "That dumb brat is having a hissy fit, don't give in!"  They gave me the panda.

In the end, that turned out to be it's own punishment.

Almost immediately, I felt like an ass.  I couldn't even have that childish satisfaction of "HAH!  I got what I wanted!" because I was too busy feeling like a jackass, but being too embarrassed to take it all back.

I was FIVE.

So, we took the panda home.

We had a Jack Russell Terrier at the time.  These dogs are hunters.  They'll tear anything apart.  

 
I was not particularly fond of this dog.

He was not particularly fond of the panda, and so the panda lost it's face.

 
My thoughts of, "Well, I could send the panda to my cousin anonymously" were destroyed.  Instead, I sat staring at the mutilated toy, feeling even worse.

Guilt became disgust and then wrapped back around to feeling guilty all over again.

It took a very long time, possibly years, before we threw the damn thing away.

So, well over twenty years later, my mother gave me something for my toothbrush.

Not only do I find pandas still make me feel like an asshole, the fact that the toothbrush goes up the ass of this panda made things worse.  Here is an actual photo of the thing: 

Adorable, right?  I used him and he was cute, but beyond the guilt, I was reminded every day of Memphis.

Mom and I were visiting Memphis Tennessee back in 2003 or 2004, looking at a college there.  We barely saw the school, but I loved the area.  The zoo was particularly interesting with all of it's Egyptian themed decor and animals that looked well taken care of and happy, which is rare for a zoo.

Thing was, there was this panda.

…

Come on, you knew the poop was coming eventually.

It was adorable.

And then it turned around.

PANDAS! 

Thankful for Alcoves

The temple I grew up with is very different now, 

yet eerie and comforting in how little it has changed.  
Entire wings have been added, but some areas remain the same.  

Since I grew up there, even though I had hardly ever attended services, 

I still get a bit defensive when people who have been hired since my leaving 

make jokes about me invading “their temple”...  

It's my temple.  After all, I know all the best hiding spots.  

I even found a new one.  It's an alcove. 

I thought it had an IOU plaque which basically stated that it will be... 

something, but apparently it's just a giant hole for the plaque itself.

It states the new name of the Hebrew school. 

People had spent a lot of money to have random things named after their family 

(and to help the temple)...
I thought it would be a display case, maybe?  Nope.

Well, it displayed a rare, rowdy Rowyn.

I even ignored my own thoughts!

I adjusted early on when someone passed me. 

He was questioning why I was hiding, 

but I assume my “possibly about to take a dump” pose didn't help. 

Thankfully, I've learned that smiling pleasantly tends to make people just smile back

and go away. 

Even as a kid, I was generally avoiding services to go make out with girls in the classrooms,

but I would sometimes sit just outside of the sanctuary, 

or on the stage in the room just across from it all, 

in order to listen to my father sing. 

The room itself, 

the expectations I felt, 

and the “community” environment that I never felt fully a part of 

kept me from wanting to participate. 

I thought “cult” whenever the congregation said things together, 

and I thought “fake” when a person I didn't know would hug me because of who I was. 

I had a lot of trust issues even then, 

and I knew that I was supposed to keep anything I was going through or living with a secret. 

These people weren't going to be my friends, 

even if some may have genuinely cared about me if I had given them half a chance. 

I didn't want a Bat Mitzvah. 

It didn't feel right to have one. 

Going up in front of everyone was horrifying to begin with, 

but add the idea of them all listening to me speak and chant 

when I couldn't even stand to hear myself, KNOWING how strange I sounded... 

How mumbled, quiet and awkward... 

And on top of all this, 

morally, I could not bring myself to lead a service for believers 

when I didn't really have faith myself. 

This is not to say that I didn't believe in things. 

I did. 

I had a lot of beliefs. 

They were just really negative 

and involved the idea of believing in the Devil more than a caring God, 

which is ssoooooo not a Jew thing. 

To this day, whenever I write a story about the Devil, 

he is mostly a victim of circumstance. 

Cocky, but was once a loved angel. 

The fact that I interpreted this character in such a way may say something. 

One day, if I remember, I may write a whole entry for this. 

In any case, “faith” implies something more positive and hopeful. 

It's that feeling of “I KNOW this going to be okay” and I didn't have that. 

I knew that I prayed and I followed the rules and did everything I was supposed to,

but nothing got better. 

In my little child brain, there was no future, 

and so if nothing got better RIGHT NOW, it was never going to. 

(The allergy incident in Israel probably didn't help, 

though the fact that I survived it should mean something.)

My love for temple then meandered to only a love for the camaraderie of my friends

and one for the building itself and all its hiding places. 

Somewhere in there, I did grow a kind of faith. 

It's small and strangely shaped, 

but it has helped me when I needed assistance, 

which means it has done the job just fine.   

Birthdays!

Again, being back at my parent's house is odd on many levels.

For one, I forgot about what my mother does for birthdays.

...My mother keeps things. Like... Everything. I'm not sure if it's a security thing or what, but it means that she'll reuse decorations like a really environmentally aware crazy person, rather than just a regular crazy person.

As such, I get bombarded by every birthday I ever had upon walking into my old room.

So, I had a troll birthday once.

I really, reeaaalllly liked trolls. I had hundreds of them, but they've since all been given away. Well, not all. I kept a couple really neat ones, like my Egyptian guy.

I'm awesome.

Shut up.

So the birthday party... How old was I? I don't even remember.

I had a troll birthday ice cream cake, troll plates, decorations... Oh yeah. I was trolled up, and apparently, this one fragment survived to say hello today.

Next up was a balloon attached to the inside of my door. Meaning, a deflated balloon. My door is kind of disgusting because I used to have a lot of stuff all over it, then tore it all down when I moved, aaaaannnd it still has gunk from all that crap.

So this is what that looked like:

Real classy.

My window is now sporting a bikini, 

and there was also a banner on the stairs.

What I'm not showing you is this foldable thing that involves a cupcake with eyes. Not only was this particular item kinda creepy as a kid, but as a now 27 year old adult, it was a little funky having it at the head of my bed... lookin' at me.

I asked my mother if she minded it's removal.

She thought about it.

She got me a couple tops and an action figure of Otho to add to my Beetlejuice collection.

Otho is kind of a big deal in my brain, just as Mayor Maynot of Nightmare Before Christmas. They were both played by Glenn Shadix, who has passed on.

In any case, the figure was wrapped in metallic silvery paper. I opened it up and realized that it was the inside of another wrapping paper made for Hannukah. I thought that was a smart way to re-purpose the wrapping paper.

Actual quotes below:

My mother is actually a very intelligent woman.  

She is also a nursery school teacher and I think somewhat in denial of the entire world.  So...  There is that. 

In any case, my father gave me a cold for my birthday, and I started my morning with a nose bleed. 

As I told my friend and my mother, it was like my face was trying to participate in the festivities.

“HERE! HAVE A NOSE BLEED! LOOK! I MADE IT MYSELF!”

My mother was looking on the bright side, as always...

My eighteenth birthday was a fun one. It was a Bruce Campbell party. I had all my friends dress up as various characters of his, while I was the man himself. This meant I wore a Hawaiian shirt and glasses.

I quickly questioned my assignment of Ash to a friend of mine when she said “Oh, that costume will be easy! I'll just go to my father's workshed, get the chainsaw and-”

We even had a cake with Bruce Campbell's face printed on it. ...Yep.

Most of my cakes over the years were either ice cream cakes or actually pumpkin pies.  I have no use for normal cakes. 

By the way, I actually sort of met Bruce Campbell in person once. 

I'd say he was solidly unimpressed by me. 

Nice enough guy though, so it didn't help my fangirlness. If anything, it just made it worse, because then I could say “ZOH MUH GUH HE LOOKED AT ME FOR A MINUTE!!”

I'm sure I'll try to relate that whole story sometime. For now, back to birthdays.

Lesse...

OH!

So my 21^st birthday was a hoot. I had a vampire masquerade. We rented out a space in the firehouse for it, and my friends acted as a live band. I invited everyone I could sort of call a friend at the time. It was like Facebook but in person.

“I vaguely know you! You don't know this person... but you should! BE FRIENDS NOW.”

I still have my giant blow up grim reaper. The decorations over all were pretty freaking awesome.

My birthday last year was actually a lot of fun for me, even if it ended kind of horribly.

See Birthday Bashing

Now, there is one special birthday I should mention here.

My 19^th.

It never happened.

I'm not saying it was bad. Not at all. It was a very peaceful day. So peaceful, in fact, that I totally missed that it was my birthday.

...as did everyone else.

It was my first time really away from home, off at art school three or so hours away (depending on who was driving). I had a cellphone for the first time in my life and I didn't really know what to do with it, I had my computer... I had ways to tell the date.

I did.

But I didn't have any clue that it was November 17^th.

And neither did any of my friends or family.

I had been in a minor car accident (this seems to be a theme?) with my mother, and being over 18, the insurance guy called me to hear my side of things.

What else? Ah. My 16^th.

I called it my “Sour Sixteen” because I was a creepy goth kid even then.

A costume party, as most of mine are, I told everyone to come dead. If they didn't come in a ghost/ghoul/zombie type costume, we'd “kill” them. ... With makeup.

We had people drown, be slapped to death, strangled... It was a lot of fun.

I was thinking of not posting this right away and saving it all till tonight, because tonight is glow golf... but I'll just add an edit after the fact. 

TO BE CONTINUED 

...
EDIT: 
 Here is an image of one of my friends, to give you an idea of how the rest of the night went.  

The glow golf is at the mall around here, and we had about ten people playing.  Mom stayed for a bit and then fled... Which was fine because a couple of my buddies came home with me.  We played a couple ridiculously long games of Batman UNO, because I'm an adult and I do what I want.  

In any case, glow golf itself was a ton of fun, and I wasn't the only birthday-haver present.  A gaggle of children were seated in the little party corner, and when they started singing "Happy Birthday", I decided that they were very nice.  Well, clearly, they were totally singing for me.  

After all, I am the Empress and it was my birthday. 

The whole place is divided into two sets of golf, but it doesn't make any sense since there isn't another entrance.  You can't actually play the other one unless you've gone past the first... so the fact that it starts over at "One" is stupid. 

We all behaved rather well until that second "One" showed up.  Then it was chaos.  

It was a good chaos though.

The music was hilariously awful.  A friend (who I call Xena for probably obvious reasons) described the people in charge of the music as "a bro and three *giggles like a valley girl*"  Another friend decided later on that this made them "sises"...  

They didn't know who Queen was.  We all felt a bit old, but...  Really?  Really you don't know Queen?  

I wanted to slap their parents. 

Xena described "Under Pressure" and got it played in honor of the fact that the band played that at my 21st birthday.  Nostalgia for the win!

Even sitting on a bench afterwards and hanging out while mini Christmas trees were fisted was fun.  

Yes, you read that correctly, and no, I'm not going to elaborate. 

Of Foodstuffs and Other Terrors

I'm going to finally respond to “Wrote a Blog-Like Thing” and tell you what led to my recent eating issues, by telling you a little bit of my history with food.

We've never gotten along terribly well.

From age one there was an issue.
There is a chance that I was reacting poorly to soy in the formula, since I do have an intolerance to soy which was at one point a full blown allergy. However, soy wasn't quite as common in EVERY GODDAMN THING when I was an infant.
 

~~Before anyone chimes in with “all your problems are because your mom didn't breastfeed you” I'm going to go ahead and say A. No. and B. she actually tried to breastfeed and just couldn't. 

It's like telling someone who has no feet that by not running, they are purposefully trying to get fat.
By telling my mother that she did something wrong by not doing something she really physically couldn't do, you are a bad, hateful person.

...Quite frankly, it's right up there with people explaining to me that I'm unhealthy because I don't eat the things I'm seriously allergic to.  It's backwards, stupid logic. 

So, moving on.~~~

I was diagnosed with a “failure to thrive” and often this is an emotional thing. Babies sometimes get this when they just don't have a will to live, as well as possible physical reasons. So, it could have been a lot of different things.  "Failure to Thrive" is kind of a catch all in this respect.  

Regardless of the reason, the doctors didn't have much faith that I would survive, because food and I were already on bad terms.

 

It was like getting in the middle of a gang war. What doctor wants to do that?

Luckily, interns are used to being thrown into the middle of gang wars, so an intern put some cereal in milk, which I guess flavored it or something? I'm not really sure what went down, actually. One way or another though, this guy got me to eat.

My thought, as depressing as it may be, is that with all my other medical ailments putting me in incubators and making it most likely pretty uncomfortable to do anything, even as an infant... Having someone just be with me and spend that time with me may have done a lot.

My parents absolutely tried and they are wonderful people. However, when you've got one daughter who is loudly mentally unstable and then a much younger one who is physically funky, something has to give. I could never cry as loud as my older sister could. That is a simple fact.

By four years old, I had the rest of my hearing back.

Lemme explain that one. 

I had been mostly deaf due to a common fluid problem, but it took two surgeries to fix instead of one because my inner ear, like the rest of me, is kind of wonky looking. This made it so my speech was also funky. I spoke the way I had always heard things, which was reeeeaaaalllly quiet and kinda mumbled. I still speak this way if I get nervous.

Anyhoo, I had my hearing but I couldn't really communicate well. I could understand everyone around me, but only my sister (of all freaking people) could ever understand what the Hell I was saying.

Around this time, I fell down.

Hard.

In my memory, there was a push involved and a traumatic moment attached, but we seem to have chosen to pretend it didn't happen.

...Kay.

So, my parents took me to the doctor and because we were having a bit of a disagreement as to how it happened, and any verbal argument from me wasn't entirely audible, it was decided that my S shape of a septum was just yet another deformity.

The problem here is that having a deformity from birth isn't something so easily fixed when you are a little kid, as it could just grow back as you age.

...So I didn't get my nose fixed. He took out my adenoids instead. 

It didn't help.

Not being able to breathe meant I couldn't really taste anything either.

More than that, I had to breathe out of my mouth. This meant that I couldn't scarf food and I had to be extra particular about drinking, because I wouldn't be able to breathe.

Beyond that, I had come in contact with a number of things over the years that had made me itchy. We understood that I had food allergies, but we had no idea what that meant other than a lot of food seemed to make me really uncomfortable.

We didn't even really look into what the foods were, besides nuts. This made for a vague sense of ALL food being potentially unpleasant.

This was made much worse when I was thirteen.

We went to Israel.

As a Jew-type person, this should have been a wonderful experience.

It was not.

The main reason?

Turns out, I'm allergic to chickpeas. Hummus is kinda big there.  Kind of a big freaking deal.  

At the time, we had no idea that anything, even nuts could do what this thing did.

I blew up like a balloon, broke out in hives all over my body, my eyes swelled shut and blinded me...

And still, I was the calmest person in the whole damn room.

My parents were in a frenzy, unsure of what to do “What the fuck is an epi-pen??”

There were doctors on the phone telling them I may need something injected into my heart...

But, no one said to take me to a hospital either.  The phone-doctor just said to watch me.  ...Having no epi-pen, what would have happened if I had keeled over?

But I didn't.

I threw up. Waited for it all to get worse or better, and then calmly stated that I should eat something I know I'm not allergic to, like pizza.

This is hilarious in retrospect, because it turned out at the time that I was also allergic to wheat and tomato, but to a more mild degree. I've since grown out of them for the most part. Somewhat experimental allergy drops have helped.

By the way, ordering pizza on the Sabbath in Israel?  Amazing freaking feat.

Either way, after all that...

It left me, every now and then, like this:

I was pretty good for many years at hiding this. People could eat things I was allergic to, and I'd just quietly panic and tell them it was fine. I'd only seriously panic if a boyfriend ate these things, because then kissing him could be potentially dangerous.

I felt like a giant asshole.

“How dare I expect a man who loves me to not eat something that could kill me? I'm ruining his life!”

Talking to anyone else, I'd think they were being unreasonable. They can't help what could hurt them. But me? No no. Ever accommodating I am. Even if it actually does, in the end, kill me.

This is part of what led to the Fishbone incident.

Part one and two are here:

How a Fishbone is Slowly Driving Me Mad

Okay, So It Wasn't the Fishbone

At fifteen, we went to a crackpot quack of a surgeon to fix my nose. He was purely a cosmetic doctor, which was upsetting. He wanted to shave my jaw down because I looked too “masculine” and give me my sister's nose. He wanted to make me look like a different person.

Being a fifteen year old girl with a speech impediment, a slouch from boobs that were too big, gnarly hair... My self esteem was already garbage.

I did not need that shit.

So I just cried a lot and for some reason they let him cut me open anyway, in hopes that he'd find my damaged Happy gland.

He sort of fixed one side a little.

I still couldn't really breathe, which led to another doctor giving me a nasal inhaler that I couldn't use. 

 It was not a lung issue, you freak.

Also, throughout my childhood, I would stand at the table or eat elsewhere. This was because of two things:

A. Pressure. The pressure to eat like a normal person made me feel like it was something I could fail at, and so I pretty much made myself fail.

When I'm upset, I don't eat, and my childhood wasn't exactly fantastic. This was not my parent's fault at all, by the way.

I want to make that clear.

B. I felt silly and too small. I had to sit on phone books in order to reach the table.

So, fine.

Back to the nose thing.

After a very unpleasant healing process, I could wheeze through my nose with a lot of struggle, but at least I looked the same. I guess he was afraid to even straighten the damn thing with the “fuss” I had made about him wanting to rearrange my face.

Not enough space to breathe, smell or taste, but there was just enough space to shoot food out of my nose by accident.

I can not express how incredibly painful and embarrassing this was.

Powered cheese product on macaroni should never exit through nostrils.

Five years after that, a reconstructive surgeon fixed my nose for real. I was very happy.

He also went out of his way to try to prevent me getting anything else done, realizing that I was also asking for things I didn't need. He worried that I had Body Dysmorphic Disorder, and... maybe? I may have had some variation of it. I figure I was just oogly and now I've accepted that I'm... a “unique” kind of pretty.

I felt so bad for my mother here. Her immediate instinct was to jump on “OH! Don't worry, you don't have BDD!” The problem with that was that if I didn't have it, that meant I was ACTUALLY as hideous as I thought I was, and that it wasn't just in my head.

It seems to have been a phase though, rather than the actual mental illness. It pops up every now and then when I'm already depressed. My brain goes to “you are deformed” and just kinda sits on that.

...

Back to food.

With all this nonsense, it isn't really that remarkable that I've spent most of my life underweight.

I don't really look like that. But, it is how I feel sometimes. I liked the year or so when I was a bit more filled out. I looked the same, just healthier.

After the Fishbone incident/Everything that was where I was living for ten or so months, I wound up like this:

So eating was just... Not something I ever associated with causing happiness.

And now, you know.

Me vs. Bike

I wrote this recently because many people have asked me why it is that I chose to not ride a bike.  I own one.  It is nice and shiny.  Well, it's not so much that I don't want to ride a bike...
I want to ride a bike in the same way that I want to be paid to draw forever, or I want to have a well known cartoon, or even in the way that I want to have a million college degrees in a million different things... I just don't want to do the work to get there.  I want it to be done and I want to never have to think about it again.  To have everything be magically natural without any practice or effort would avoid the fear aspect entirely.  Below, I shall explain further, knowing that it really doesn't explain anything.  However, it will make me feel better about myself.  Yay!

Here is a drawing I did for a friend, (who required it as a template for a gift for his mother) because the rest of this post gets wordy.  

 It's a birdie!

Okay.  So, it started out normal.  A lot of people assume that my parents must have been monsters who didn't allow me to ride a bike and instead did so in front of me like happy goons mocking the fact that I would never learn to be a real child.

This isn't how it went.  In reality, my parents didn't know how to ride a bike either.
As it turns out, there are two truths at play here.
1: That old saying that you never forget how to ride a bike is complete bullshit.  My mom forgot.  Entirely.  Can not do it.
2: It's pretty difficult to teach someone to do something when you can't even do it yourself.
Ah!  But I had TEACHERS!  Oh yes I did. 
Victoria was one.  She was one of my first best friends.  She was my second "best friend" but really my first because she actually liked me and stuck around for a while.


TANGENT TIME!
My first "best friend" was Dara.  ...Darah?  I don't know anymore.  I couldn't spell then, so I don't have much to base this off of.  In any case, Deddrie's (my webcomic) little sister is named for this girl.  She and I were inseparable. We had so much in common, like our love for purple!

...Okay so that was kind of it, but back in nursery school, color coordination between friends was like, a big deal and stuff.
We were so close that we at one point shared a toilet.

We were very small and in retrospect this creeped me out even at the time, but prevented me from falling in.
She understood me when I spoke and together we tormented boys and she protected me from nasty other people.
After nursery school, however, I was no longer allowed to play with her.  My family was apparently not religious enough (my father is CLERGY but, hey, direct line to the Big Guy is apparently not good enough) and so I was deemed to be a bad influence.

Given how I turned out, they may have been right, but that's not the point.

I wrote to her once.  I never got a response, but that may have been because I could not spell and so it probably read something like "gjioj ij ekj flije monkeybutt lafkj;fiej rackalaj flaggen."

/End Tanget

Anyhoo, back to Victoria.  She and I were fundamentally different people.

...Though she did once pull me out of a toilet into which I had fallen.  ...Toilets and I have a sordid history.

She'd deal with all my stupid games from "we're warrior princesses out to kill the goblins" to "we're scientist cat people trying to avoid being killed by vet aliens"...

And meanwhile she actually went outside sometimes, while I cursed the sunlight and sunk back into my little cave of bad movies and cartoons.
She could roller skate, ice skate, ride a bike and drive a car as soon as legally allowed.

I still can't do any of that.

So, since she was hyper active and I didn't like to speak and hated sunlight, obviously letting her teach me to ride a bike without any parental supervision at like 10 years old was a BRILLIANT plan.
Needless to say, I didn't get very far and then she got frustrated and then bored with me pretty damn quickly after my billionth tantrum.

SO!  My sister was chosen to teach me to ride a bike.  It's true, she's about eight years older, but she's also about eight shades crazier and lord only knows what she was high on at the time.  Somehow with training wheels on my pink bike (complete with white basket which sported plastic flowers) and while wearing my trusty Pee-Wee Herman-inspired helmet, (I had put stickers all over it, complete with a giant eye ball in the front) I still managed to flip the bike onto it's side and hit my head into the side of a (thankfully parked) car.
My dream of being like those girls in Now and Then was reduced to a pile of dog crap.  So much for growing up to be Janeane Garofalo.

Right.  So.  Flash forward about ten years.  I was dating a guy who also does not have a driver's license but claims to know how to ride a bike. This was possibly a lie. 
That, or he just wanted to avoid showing me how goofy he looked on a bike. 
Either way, it was me, my mom and this guy who I am no longer dating, (though we are still friends) all in the middle of a children's park parking lot, because that's obviously the best place for bloodshed.

I was told not to wear my awesome helmet because cool adults don't wear such things.
I was too afraid to go fast enough to stay up right lest I then not be able to stop. 
But then!  I did it!  I was going!  I was moving!  And then I screamed, went into a panic and fell over sideways.  ...And my head hit a car.  Without a helmet.

About oh... five years laterish?  I bought a bike.  It was orange.
A woman I refer to as my horse (which is, believe it or not, a compliment) was able to ride it effortlessly.  It looked fun!  I thought, "Well, my horse can do it.  Damn it, so can I!"  I pictured the two of us riding off into the sunset together.

Saying is easier than doing.  Also, in retrospect... the bike is too big.  Like woah now, too tall for tiny thing that is me.

I even bought myself a helmet.  It's awesome.

My current boyfriend who knows how to ride a bike and showed me that he could, in fact, ride MY bike, attempted to teach me.
For many days, he would go backwards and allow me to basically run right into him repeatedly as though this were not a metaphor for our entire relationship.
Metaphor or not, I did it.  I even got a few feet by myself and was able to stop with no issue.  I was proud!
And then we moved.
The moment we moved, the bike was put in the back and the helmet was put somewhere in the closet.
I came up with a thousand excuses not to ride the bike. 
"It's cold."
"We live in a scary neighborhood where someone may shoot me for my bike."
"We live on a street with many children and I may hit one with my bike and kill him or her."
"There are cats."
So ...I never rode again and after a while he got tired of desperately trying to drag me outside while I'm kicking and screaming about cats.

The end so far.

EDIT:  I still have no idea how to ride a bike.  ...And this boyfriend is no longer a boyfriend.  This is a very old post.  Shh.  Be thankful I added pictures.  You folks come from the internet, which is the land of short attention spans.

EDIT to my EDIT:  Also, I mention poop and toilets like four times or something.  The Hell is wrong with me?