Baby, I'm Like the Red-Headed Stepchild!

my siblings & me

I have always known I’m some kind of mutant freak, but not a cool mutant like Heroes or X-Men. If my siblings & I didn’t bear some resemblance to each other, I could believe I was switched at birth. You see, I don’t fit in.

I am the only one who went to preschool. Of course, in those days, it was called Nursery school, & according to my mother, I begged to go. At this time, I was still the youngest, & apparently, had a hard time watching my older siblings & presumably my uncles (who lived very near us) trot off to school each morning leaving me home alone with no other kids, bored. Going to preschool was fun for me. I have a few fond memories & no bad ones.

I am the only one who wore glasses. I got them in 2nd grade. It seems I failed that little test at school. I can’t remember if I was supposed to be nearsighted or farsighted. My mom took me to 2 different optometrists & they said the opposite of each other. They did both agree that I had mild astigmatism too, but I outgrew my need. By 7th or 8th grade, I only had to wear them for reading & for viewing filmstrips at school. I am 41 now & I don’t have any need for corrective lenses of any type at a time when almost everyone has to start even if they never needed them before & no, I didn’t have lasik, nananabooboo…
 
I am the only one who got a widow’s peak. I have the ridiculous Dracula hairline that contributed to years & years of ridicule. I’ve learned to embrace it though. I don’t even wear bangs to camouflage it anymore.

I am the only one who had braces. I had the fangs to go with my vampire hairline. It was simply dreadful. I am ever so grateful for the braces. 3 years when at least ½ the kids had them was absolutely worth it for your smile, just for the vanity aspect. You need your smile.

I am the only one who can’t do basic Algebra. My siblings were all in Calculus & Trig & I took Algebra 1 twice in high school & twice in college. In my defense, I never actually failed Algebra. I just didn’t get a high enough grade to look good on my transcripts. I have an advanced Math phobia. It seems I have the necessary skills to solve mathematical problems when applied to subjects that make sense to me, like any formulas for my science courses or statistics for my psychology classes...I just didn't process math in abstract terms.

But as for Algebra, & really, anything beyond basic arithmetic, who needs it? Just like I told my math teachers, I don’t use it. (I believe it was Mark Twain who said, “Never learn to do anything for yourself because then you’ll always be able to get someone to do it for you.” I probably paraphrased it.) You know it’s true. That’s why the guy at the paint store is there- to do the math for you & tell you how many gallons you’ll need for an x-y-or z-sized room. It’s his job, & I say, let him do it.
Though really, the way I least fit in with my very own family is when it comes to sports.
Don’t like ‘em. Nope. Never have. Probably never will. I think I’ve made it clear how I feel about sweat in previous posts. Add to that the fact that I am woefully lacking in talent, skill, interest, & hand-eye coordination, as well as having immeasurable fear of objects hurtling toward my person, & there is your recipe for disaster.

I was a cheerleader & I was damn cute. I have, at times, been known to not-mind basketball, volleyball & swimming both as a participant & as a spectator. I do enjoy watching figure skating. I’ve seen hockey & baseball. I attempted tennis & downhill skiing. I exposed my children to these athletics. They have taken lessons in gymnastics, swimming, diving, skiing, tennis, golf, skating & the older one tried basketball…. They aren’t bad, & at swimming & skiing, they are both actually quite good. None of us has ever been interested in soccer. (I mean no offense to anyone who is.)

Have you spotted what’s missing? The humongous pink elephant? Yep, that’s right.
 
I don’t know why people say things like, “American as baseball & apple pie.” I beg to differ. Football is the American sport. And I don’t mean soccer.

I have actually heard the 4 seasons referred to as Winter, Spring, Summer & Football. I love the Fall!! (Please don't take that away from me.) I love all the scents & colors that go with the weather, but I really hate football. I hate listening to people yell at their TVs. I hate when they get mad that the coach didn’t hear them or the guy fumbled or whatever. It's just obnoxious to me. I'm not a fan of all the chest-thumping & manly-man antics that go with the beer commercial lifestyle of spectator football. Short of playing, I've seen football in all it's settings & it is not for me. (Actually, I was forced to play flag football in gym class. Ugh.)

There’s a long standing joke about the sports widows, but I was a football orphan. I still have nightmares. In the 70’s it was all about the Cowboys, Steelers & Vikings & the 80’s added the Browns, Bears & 49ers. Thank God TVs got cheaper & more houses had more than 1 & everyone had cable so there was something else to do on a Sunday afternoon when my family forgot that I existed.
I hate that the games are all televised & that they are allowed to go on indefinitely, disrupting the primetime schedules. I swear football killed Arrested Development & it sure didn’t help Malcolm in the Middle. It would be awfully nice (& I hear Uverse does this but I don’t know as we can’t get Uverse here) if I could program a show on the DVR & it would start & end with the show & not with it’s scheduled time that may or may not be accurate during football season. I mean really, if I have the DVR set to record Desperate Housewives, I don’t want 43 minutes of the game & I really, really don’t want only the first 17 minutes of the show…& I doubt there is a very high percentage of the audiences that overlap. Yes, I know some chicks who dig football & I know some guys that like soaps, BUT...
Here’s a question, while it is commonly known that not all women like football & there are even a few men, why is the only competition on TV against football a Lifetime movie? I’m not crazy about those. There’s a female stereotype I break. Why haven’t any TV execs tried putting on something good & tested whether there’s real competition from viewers who don’t watch football? Time Warner claims I have 400+ channels, but if I exclude the pay-per-view (which aren’t really channels) & ESPN & take out the duplicates for basic cable or basic cable in HD, really I only have about 30, & you’d think even that would be enough to find something….but it’s usually not.  Sometimes, I’m just too tired or antsy to read.

As for me, I married a man who doesn’t follow football & I couldn’t be happier about that fact. If he was anything like my brothers during football season, we’d never have made it to the altar. I love my siblings, but not their obsession with the NFL. I hate that Thanksgiving is interrupted by football. I know, there are many of you out there that think I’m absolutely blasphemous. At least now I can hang out with their wives.
 

And my kids get annoyed when the schools declare it to be a Browns day, because they don’t care about the Browns. The Browns are a joke.They don’t own or want to own any Browns paraphernalia, or Indians, or Cavaliers. We don’t even live in Cleveland. When my daughter’s class went to the Football Hall of Fame for a field trip last spring, she said she’d rather have had regular classes because it was so boring. I didn’t teach her this, it just is. So I’m a mutant, & now I’m raising oddballs with my misfit husband. Maybe Rudolph & Santa have some Charlies in the box waiting for us this Christmas.