amanda_lodden

Recently, friends have started posting a meme that involves asking for words, and getting five words that the person you asked thinks of when they think of you. Variations on the theme are giving that person five words (instead of getting the words from them), etc. You're then supposed to comment on the words that have been used to describe you.

That's all well and good, but it strikes me that I already HAVE a handful of words that have been used to describe me and have stuck with me over time. So instead of asking people for words to describe me so that I can comment on them, I think it's high time I commented on some of the things y'all have already said.

Classy

The night I met my father, my cousin John asked me if I planned to introduce myself. I responded that it would be rude not to. He nodded and said that he figured I wouldn't snub my father because I "had more class than that."

Sometimes I don't, but sometimes when I'm tempted to be overly bitchy, the phrase "I have more class than that" echos through my head, and tips the scales.

Cute
This came up in a conversation in which a friend was going to ask one of his friends about something on my behalf. The specific comment was "it doesn't hurt that you're cute", implying that the friend-of-a-friend would be more inclined to share information because of it.

I'm... I'm... I'm what now? I don't really know what to make of "cute", because it's just not a word I hear relative to myself. I have lots and lots of good qualities, some of which are even physical, but I've been "the fat kid" since I was three. This is the only instance I've ever been called cute without feeling like I was being buttered up for a favor. It made me feel extra-special because it wasn't intended to make me feel special at all.

Open-hearted
I don't save greeting cards as a rule. The exception to that is from when a friend was in a crafting phase and was making hand-made cards. I didn't save it because it was hand-made, but because of what she wrote inside of it: "Happy Birthday to two of the most open-hearted people I know." (It was a joint card for John and I.)



For the record, the point of this is not to beg people for words to describe myself, or to try to sidestep the meme (though, as fair warning, I probably will). It's this: I doubt very much that any of the three people who used those words remember doing so. To them, it was just an offhand comment. But it mattered to me, and continues to matter to me. Chances are, you've said something that touched another person without realizing it.

Words matter, but they matter most often when they don't really matter at all.

I'd managed to avoid the whole "post 25 random facts about you" thing largely by only having friends on LiveJournal who refuse to tag other people (and I love each and every one of you for it). Along came Facebook, where I got tagged by two different people.

For the most part, I hate the whole "random facts about me" (mind you, I'm fine with it if you want to post random facts about YOU, just leave me out of it). Do you really care what my favorite color is? It's hardly a defining part of my personality. Plus, it changes based on what the situation is-- colors I like for painting walls are quite different from colors I like to see in my garden, for example.

In a more general sense, I dislike the fake-knowledge that "random facts" feeds. I can rattle off trivial things about dozens of people, but I don't know what their deeply held beliefs are. In some cases, I don't even know what their real name is, because they are people who I interact with online and we both use aliases. (If your first reaction was "*Oh*, online gaming and aliases don't count", I'd like you to tell me what my last name is. If you said "Lodden" you're wrong, and I'd advise you to reconsider what qualifies as an alias.)

For exactly the same reason, I hate wearing nametags at functions. I'm perfectly fine with being called "Hey, you" because of it (and I've been known to write "Hey, you" on my nametag if there's no Nametag Nazi in charge of the tags and pens), but if you want to know what my name is, please come up to me and say "Hi, I'm Tom, and you are?" In other words, have a REAL conversation with me, instead of starting off as though we already know each other.

However, every so often I get one of those "answer these questions about yourself" memes at a time when I'm bored, and it has been known to spark a question from someone about one of my answers. So I opened a new entry in Google notebook and started jotting down things, trying to see if I could come up with 25 of them.

It took about 20 seconds to realize that I was going to have a problem, because of the first 12 things I wrote down, I immediately wanted to expound at length on 9 of them.

So, instead I'm going to 25 posts about things about me. In the interest of not flooding people's friends pages, I plan to spread them out over many days, and I may take week-long or month-long breaks in between. I may quit after getting to #3, if I get bored or sick of it or I run out of things to talk about (Hah! Unlikely) or I get slammed with other things to do.

I'm also going to flatly refuse to tag people and make them write anything, neither a single post of 25 one-line items nor 25 posts. If you think it's fabulous idea and want to do it yourself, do it. Blame me for it, even-- everyone can consider themselves tagged if they want to.