Knitting in the North

I overheard a conversation the other day at work, between a girl and her friend. Working where I do, you can imagine I am almost completely surrounded by teenagers and young adults, and the dramas of young love, and how engrossing it all is. There are constantly people liking each other, dating each other, “hooking up”, breaking up, falling in love, falling out of love. It's entertaining in many ways, when it's not so irritating. However, in this conversation I heard, the Girl was sharing some weird thing that her new “Guy” did, and it creeped her out. I heard her say, “I mean, like, who does that?” This got me to wondering – I think I'm a pretty normal person, but then, we all do, right? It's not until we really get to know someone, “live in their skin”, that you see all the little eccentricities that make us, us. Someone told me the other day that they heard about someone they called “quirky”, and thought of me. What does that mean? Am I quirky? Is quirky the same as weird? Is there something wrong with being quirky? You may have guessed (and I've mentioned before), that while I live a very conventional life, underneath it all, there's this non-conformist, rebellious, hippy-like person. This person works very hard, I think, to keep me quirky, to keep shaking things up a bit. At the same time, I've been reading these memes, and thinking to myself, I couldn't possibly think of SIX weird things about me! Now I've been tagged THREE times, so I'll share Six Weird Things About Charity. 1) I spent part of my growing up years living in a school bus that was converted to a camper. My family traveled down to the southern States in it, and I believe that this was where my deep love for the ocean took root. I have a picture of myself as a very small child, building a sandcastle on the beach, and that picture has always been a sort of talisman for me. 2) If I can avoid it in any way possible, I will not drink out of plastic. (Yes, Shelley, even the hard plastic communion cups – give me a common cup any day, as long as it's not also made of plastic. Do you know how weird it looks to see someone throwing back their communion drink like a shot of tequila?) I have very strong memories of drinking weak Kool-Aid out of plastic cups at my grandmother's house, and the drink smelled like funny Winnipeg water. I just can't make myself do it, unless it would be blatantly rude not to. 3) I have a tattoo. Admittedly, this is not so weird, and I wouldn't even include it if it weren't for the strong reaction I get from every single person who discovers this about me. I guess I just don't seem like the tattoo type. Stuart & I went together on one of our anniversaries, and got the same tattoo (an Asian character symbolizing prosperity – he picked it, not me) in the same place (on the spine, just under the collar). 4) I chew everything I eat equally on both sides of my mouth, and have since I was a small child. I heard on the television when I was about 6 years old, that if you chew always on the same side of your mouth you will wear those teeth down, and the mental image that I had was so awful! I mentioned before that I sort my Smarties, but I also only eat them in pairs, one on each side of my mouth (and in the same order as the colours of the rainbow). This past summer, I had a root canal and crown put on one of my back teeth, and the worst part of the whole experience was not being able to (and forgetting and trying and then it hurt to) chew on that side of my mouth. 5) I am schooling to become an accountant, and numbers are very important to me. Dates, however, are completely unimportant to me, and when someone asks me what my kids' birthdays are, or when my wedding anniversary is, I almost always have to look it up. I have forgotten how old I am a time or two as well, and had to do the math to figure it out. One whole year I went around telling people I was a year older than I really was. Stuart & I tend to celebrate our anniversaries at different times, now, because I picked the September long weekend as our anniversary, when we really got married in November. So I give him a gift in September, and he gives me a gift in November. The bonus is that we get to go out for dinner twice. 6) Even though dates and ages are relatively unimportant to me, and I have spent my life telling people that age is just a number and forgetting how old I am, I can not forget this year. I'm turning 30, and it bothers me more than I can say. (I suppose Conventional Charity is coming out for air). Now, are you thinking to yourself, “I mean, like, who does that?” Quirky is as quirky does, I guess!