My husband is always running team-building activities for his fellow teachers and the staff at the school where he works. He runs Survivor pools, and American Idol pools, and most recently he's decided to create a "Get To Know You" game. He sent out an email asking each person he works with to send him a little-known, interesting, unique, or funny fact about themselves. He's then going to compile the facts (anonomously) on one side of a sheet of paper, and list the names of all those who participated on the other. The object of the game is to match up each person with his or her corresponding fact. He's going to run the game at a staff meeting.

Some of the facts people have given him are pretty entertaining. One person said she taught 20 schizophrenics to do the Electric Slide (she worked at at group home). Another person said that for her high school prom, she and her friends and their dates put on their formal wear, pinned on flowers, posed for pictures their parents were snapping, then got into the limo, stripped off their gowns and tuxedos, changed into jeans and t-shirts, and went to an ACDC concert instead.

So this little exercise got me thinking of what I would contribute as my interesting, unique fact if I was participating. My tidbit isn't so much a fact, but more a funny story. Here goes.

If you're a frequent reader of this blog, you know that I was raised in a very tight-knit, conservative, Italian family. I spent 13 years attending Catholic schools (kindergarten through high school), and was basically what you'd call a square. I didn't drink or smoke. I did well in school. I was editor of my school newspaper, extremely bookish, and had a good group of friends who were into drama club, band, and other such wholesome activities. I dressed, when I wasn't in my school uniform, or completely ensconced in the head-to-toe wardrobe necessitated by my high school's dress code, in what you might call "early 90s preppy." My sweaters came from L.L. Bean. My shoes were Docksiders or penny loafers. My hair was long, about to my elbows, when I wasn't curling it with a curling iron (*shudder*). I was a good girl.

Then I went to college. Within the first month I was living away from home, I had my hair chopped into a stacked bob (shorter in the back, longer in the front). It reached only as far as my ears. Then I dyed it red, then purple, and then black. And I had a very well-tattooed man pierce my right eyebrow. I told my mom about none of this. And then I went home in October for fall break.

My mom was startled at my appearance, but she didn't seem overly alarmed. That first day I was home, she made me dinner. Talked to me about my classes. And I thought to myself, "Wow! She's handling this so well," (although I probably secretly hoped she wouldn't). That night, I went out with some of my friends. I came home late, after midnight, to find my mom, who usually goes to bed between 7 and 8pm, sitting in the dark at our kitchen table, head in her hands, crying her eyes out. I thought someone had died.

She looked up at me and sobbed, "Don't you want to be pretty???!!!!???" To this day, this story makes me laugh every time I think about it. For my mom, nothing could be worse than a daughter who went to school looking like the poster child for Future Librarians of America and who came home looking like a disciple of Marilyn Manson. My mom didn't realize I was the same person I always was on the inside (albeit more enlightened to the world outside the artifical one constructed by my upbringing), and that I had just done what many kids did upon leaving home for the first time.

My mom got over her shock eventually, once she realized that my new look hadn't meant that I'd joined a santanic cult. And I grew out of my goth phase slowly. But I still have a teeny, tiny scar where my eyebrow ring used to be, and each time I look at it, my mom's unintentionally hilarious one-liner* comes to mind, and that makes me smile.



*My sister Karrie asked, so here you are. My first audio post, comprised of my mom mourning my dyed hair and eyebrow ring.