Temporary? Insanity

I’m going to pause for a moment and give you time to stop cracking up over the photo. Yes, that’s me. Yes, I was a bit of a priss as a kid. Well, at times anyway. I was also a mud pie making, snake catching, tree climbing rabble rouser as well. That aspect of my pre-puberty self isn’t why I’m diving into the deep end of nostalgia though. What’s on my mind is what a self-righteous person I used to be, even in those days when I would spin in my crinolined dress and watch the walls and ceiling of our high-ceilinged house whirl around me till I collapsed in a giggling heap. I was pretty innocent yes, but that didn’t stop me from being a complete and utter twit at times (please refrain from making sardonic remarks about how not much has changed – thanks muchly).

I was raised as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I developed faith at a very young age and while being raised with specific moral standards has blessed me in innumerable ways, it made for some interesting and embarrassing experiences during my childhood (not because of my faith, but because of my limited understanding). Before I hit my shy stage I was a bossy little thing. I would tell people off if they took the Lord’s name in vain. I remember peering over the backyard fence and telling our neighbours who were holding a BBQ, “Is that alkeehol? Hebbenly Fodder doesn’t want us to drink alkeehol!”

As I grew older and a few upleasant experiences helped me transition to the shy, introspective gal who I would be for a solid two decades, my critcisms of others took place mostly in the confines of my own head. Having been taught that coffee and tea aren’t good for our bodies, even a pretend tea party would make me shudder, and later in life places like Starbucks seemed like Dens of Iniquity to me. I felt naughty when I read books wherein the characters did things I didn’t approve of, and had similar feelings watching certain TV shows and movies. Don’t get me started on the subject of music. Even some of the songs played at church dances disturbed me. Suffice it to say that my view of the world was a painfully narrow one.

Shorly after I turned eighteen I began attending a local university. The required reading in my English classes was graphic and shocking to my tender sensibilities (and likely would be to some with more liberal tastes – they were fairly extreme). I was repulsed and disgusted and began reconsidering my plan to major in English. It was a confused time in my life and just two months in I discovered the internet in the school computer lab. There I “met” David Cobb. He was four years older and was attending a university in Norwich, England. He was intelligent, witty, given to interchangeable fits of ridiculousness and ridicule, and I seem to recall being smitten within a week. Dave treated me like a kid sister and lived to tease me. As months and eventually years passed, he shared with me his love of music and film, his favourite books (it was Dave who introduced me to Terry Pratchett – to this day my all time favourite author), and with varying degrees of amusement Dave would help me through my struggles.

Without either of us realizing it, Dave gradually helped me change from the stringently conservative young girl I was and opened the way for me to become who I am today. I owe him my sense of humour, my expanded tastes in music and literature (I never did adopt his taste in films – Apocalypse Now, Dave? Really?), and my ability to love people for who they are and not what they do <--this is the point of the post, right here. Dave embodied a lot of the things I'd grown up disapproving of but my smitten-ness gradually morphed into a sort of love (as much as a girl can love a boy she's never met, anyway).

And today, I was thinking about a lot of the people I love, and how they don't fit into the neat little set of parameters I used to live my life by. I love people who smoke and drink. I love people who cuss like sailors and tell dirty jokes I only understand half of. I love people who are so hurt and broken inside that they live their lives in ways completely strange to me. I even love people who have hurt me, because I've learned to love the person and not the hurt. Simply that. Just the person.

And there are people in this world who love me despite so, so much. Despite my insecurity and neediness. Despite my tendency towards know-it-all-ness (when really I know SO little). Neil loves me even though I've been stuck in a culinary rut for about seven years now. He loves me despite my sulks and pouting, or my fits of silliness and giggling. He tolerates so much, humours so much, and while I'm sure he doesn't love the way I sometimes get so absorbed in a project that everything else falls into ruin, he loves ME. Dave set me on the path, but Neil is the one traveling it with me.

And thank you, Dave. A country and an ocean were always between us but you taught me one of the most poignant, life altering lessons of my life. It may have been accidental on your part, but I'll always be grateful.

I sent a thank you note to another old friend today. Even a decade later the gratitude lingers. Who are you grateful to?