Life is a Highway and So I Cut Across the Median and Four Wheeled.

WARNING: This blog is unsure of its point.It may be a waste of time. It meant really well though, but unfortunately, somehow couldn't keep track of where it was going. If this blog entry was a road trip, the driver missed the exit but then got a text on the iphone and subsequently ran over a drunk midget who was pissing on the side of the road. Turns out the midget left a suicide note, and had jumped into the road on purpose so the blog driver went shoe shopping to feel better. We all process grief differently. Oh, the midget is now in stable condition!! Let's send him flowers. I hear those help a hangover.

I'm right here with you shaking my head. Whatever, here's the blog...

I don't like being told what to do. I never have. I don't think anyone really does, but I really have this deep seated issue with following rules. Following the crowd. Minding like a good puppet. I don't know why I push so hard against the flow, but I don't feel like myself if I feel like everyone else.

So of course, that made my life journey a little bumpier than everyone else's. My parents paid obscene amounts of money for me to go high school and then on to college. I use the word "attend" super loosely because I, um, ditched a lot. All the time. More often than not.

I operated on my infallible bullshitting skills and above average intelligence to maintain the GPA I needed to keep my scholarship. It worked out just fine for me, until I realized I freaking hated school.

I hated it. I (loved)hated the fact that I could dart into a lecture hall and sign the attendance sheet, grab the photocopy of notes off the lectern and bolt before the teacher ever got there. I hated the fact that those tests were taken directly from the notes, and they were so stupidly easy that I only had to study an hour before to pass.

I hated the stupid questions and the long lectures. Any time I had something I felt added "something extra" to a research paper, I'd get blasted for going outside the format and I'd have to redo it.

I hated the fact that I actually had to show up for any math class at all. Math is the same, it never changes, it has a formula, you learn it, you execute it, you ask for help once or twice if you don't get it. Why do I have to listen to 10 different people's repetitive questions on a formula that hasn't changed since the last 10 times we went over it. I'd get in trouble for falling asleep. I'd get into trouble for not being there, and I'd piss people off for falling asleep and then when the teacher would wake me up to do a problem, I'd walk up to the board, do it and then nod back off.

Even when I was in kindergarten, I acted this way. My teacher actually tried to put me in special ed because she thought I couldn't write my name and wasn't filling out my phonics books. My mom brought me in, and the teacher demonstrated by asking me to read that word. My mom cut in and had me read an entire paragraph. Then, I wrote it. My teacher was amazed. My mom told me that I said "Why do I have to write my name a bunch of times in a row I already know how to write it once."

So in class, I flat out refused to participate in that bullshit. I knew it was bullshit before I knew what bullshit was.

The teacher decided that I needed to go to gifted instead of special ed. I'd say that was a pretty successful and unique meeting.

Here's my problem...I'm really smart. Really smart. I tend to lack in the common sense department sometimes. I'm very ADD, and I have horrible organization skills and I can't make a decision to save my life.

I'm impulsive and passionate and I have a longer list of personal screwups than almost anyone I know.

I also have lived more than anyone I know. I had the coolest job. I have done the coolest things! I know what it's like to be a cheerleader all the way to college. I know what it's like to be on the radio, I worked for a station for a long time. I also have flown first class more times than the average bear through my experience at the airline.

I was even one of those pageant girls very briefly, except my pageants were of the Little Miss Rodeo Girl Variety,and in addition to all the other components of a beauty pageant, you had to compete on horseback as well. My tiara sat on top of a cowboy hat. And I was too embarrassed to tell anyone I went to school with because I thought myself a preppy. Not a cowgirl. No one ever know that I was in these pageants/competitions until I started showing up in the local papers. In hindsight, I should have been proud I was pageant and horse show royalty, but I was too concerned with cheerleading, boys, and hiding that part of me.

I didn't belong to a certain "group" at school, I wanted to be friends with everyone. Except the wrangler wearing group. They just dressed that way and I never saw anyone of them on the competition circuit, so I never quite figured that one out. I had crushes on the smart boys, not the jocks. I was a nerd-liker.


So where is this blog going, really, I don't know. I think if I were about to head off to college right now, I'd be really freaked out because these kids are of the generation where parents started engineering kids for success. Sometimes that works but what about those black sheep out there like me?

I turned out fine. I had some crazy, scary bumps in the road, but I have more life experience than most people twice my age. However, I think I am one of the last people that was able to scrape by on brains and bullshit.

I really admire the people who had the focus to work hard and get those high paying jobs. I really, really do, and I'm not knocking or judging them. Im envious because focus is something that has always escaped me. I'm fickle. I wanted to do it all. So I did.

These high powered people who "made" it get to travel the world in first class. Check. They live in a gorgeous home with gorgeous kids. Check, I got that too. True love? Oh, my goodness, check. check. check!

I don't know, I'm pretty sure I lost my focus on this blog...you see that's just how I roll, but I hope that the world can embrace the people like me who didn't fit the mold and don't want to. I have learned a lot and I have learned to cope with disaster. Do these perfectly engineered lives have disaster? Does a Harvard education teach distress tolerance? What if your perfectly planned life doesn't work out that way?

I think we're all human and we can all be triggerd to fall apart by something. There are weaknesses in everyone. The ones who had to constantly readjust and roll with punches probably adapt better to crisis though...and in this economy, I think it's really important to teach kids how to cope with all that planning doesn't work out.

I'm just worried about a generation with an instant-gratification and control-freak parent upbringing coping as the economy continues to worsen. These are the kids of the hand sanitizer, politically correct, plastic slide, no more God in school generation. Not only are they going to have to deal with their mistakes later on but the cumulative screwups of generations previous to them. These are the kids that played soccer on teams where everyone got a trophy. Everyone's a winner!

In the real world, everyone is not a winner. And sometimes the winners didn't really follow the proper channels to get there. It's not what you know sometimes, it's who you know. Did school teach me those things? No, they didn't. I was smart enough as a 4 year old kindergartener to realize that putting me in a box was bullshit.

Everyone is not a winner. And if you don't get first, or even a pat in the back at all, you better learn how to put your big kid panties on and deal with it.

Whatever, kids, that's the closest I get to being political and I'm not sure that's even making sense anymore, so I'm gonna hasta la pasta for now and get some rest. I'm still pretty bronchitis-y and I have a big night on Thursday. Love you all the way to the moon!

disclaimer: I would like to apologize for possibly offending drunks, midgets, and the economy. Kind of. Toodles!