authentic self.

So.
I have never really been a girls' girl.  And I've always tried so hard to be a girls' girl.  Why am I not a part of the sisterhood?  Why do women always feel so uncomfortable around me?  These questions are sort of rhetorical but also not.  I would actually like some insight into this so if you have any, please feel free to e-mail me at lindsayoquinn@gmail.com (but of course, you cannot comment on my blog because I don't want any anonymous comments anywhere in my life.  Anonymous people don't deserve to be heard.  That's why you can't comment... I know it hurts some of you, but you can blame the Anons of the world for this).
ANYWAY.
My struggle with the female race began very early on in life.  My best friend growing up was a girl named Jamie (who will love that I mentioned her, I'm sure).  And she was always a girls' girl.  She made friends so easily (still does) and I always got jealous and tried to convince her to just be mine.  She was loyal for a very long time but I just got exhausted constantly having to prove I could be everything to her so that she wouldn't want any other friends (much like how I ruined many relationships with men in my past, actually, come to think of it...).  It's not as if I never tried to have girlfriends.  But I could never do the hand-clappy games, I could never jump rope.  I was also kind of a dirty kid; like running around the neighbourhood in my bare feet kind of kid.  Girls always thought I was weird.  That really hurt my feelings.  And then in elementary school the most popular and pretty girl in the school saw me picking my nose and eating it in the library and that just completely blew my chances of having girlfriends for the next 5 years.  Don't judge me, I know you did it as a kid too.
Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned the booger-eating, but whatever.
So I was a lonely little girl, and I used to comb the hair of my troll dolls in a corner on the playground because I just didn't have friends, but wanted to look as if I was too busy to care (which I wasn't doing well at all).  And then I got into middle school and instead of bothering with girlfriends, I just started having boyfriends.  Everyone told me I shouldn't bother having boyfriends until I was all grown up, but I didn't listen and so I spent almost every day from the age of 12 to 22 having boyfriends.  I wonder why boyfriends always came so easy to me while girls remained aliens in my world.
High school proved to be every bit as difficult.  Try as I might, I just couldn't relate to most girls.  The most popular girls in my grade showed interest in letting me into their circle, and I blew that by trying too hard.  I knew I was trying too hard, and tried not to try so hard, ended up making myself look like a total retard and then that was a wash, not surprisingly.  I remember one particular time when I repeated something I read in a Cosmo magazine.  Something about having to shave your armpits in all directions to really get all the hair, and the beautiful girl with a million friends I told this to just looked at me like I was a 4 year old and said "yeah?"
yeah.
As much as all of this used to bother me, keep me up nights and dreading every monday morning, I think it was good for me.  I always had at least a couple of friends, and I've never really been good at nurturing my existing friendships as it was and really couldn't handle anything more, anyway.  But as I grew up I slowly developed a sense of self.  In between boyfriends and trying to be just like all the girls that I knew and admired most, of course.
But now, at the age of 24, I have finally become my unflinchingly authentic self.  I know who I am, who I want to be and who I want to be around.  I wish it hadn't taken so long.  But it did.

If I could just go back and change anything, I would have just not bothered with all the boyfriends.  Ew.

from this day on, i own my father's gun.

I only have a few memories of me and my father together when I was a little girl.

When of those memories takes place at a fair.  Just one of those little set-ups in the parking lot of a mall.  Dad and I didn't have a whole lot to talk about on the way there.  He bought me cotton candy.  While we were there, there wasn't a whole lot my dad was willing to do.  We played some games, and I think he won me some big stuffed animal.  Was it red?  Anyway, he had no choice; he was too chicken to go on any of the rides.  He wasn't much fun to go to the fair with.
But a little bit of harassment and harping throughout the evening finally got him on the "Berry-Go-Round" Please see photo below.

Yeah, that thing.  And believe me, I practically had to drag him kicking and screaming.  But he did it for his little girl.  And he pretended to have fun on it, but I could see in his eyes that he felt like a caged animal on the way to the vet's.  

We called that day Daddy Daughter Day (like on the Simpsons).  We were supposed to have a lot of them.  I don't think we did, though.

Another memory.  Around the same time.  Dad has a disgusting ingrown toe-nail that smells and changes colour according to his mood (this is my perception of things, anyway).  We are off to the hospital to get the rogue toenail removed.

Dad is on a slab.  There are a couple of nurses, they stick a needle in his big toe to freeze it.  Dad yelps, "GEE-zuss Chrise" and I start making fun of him for being such a baby.  Next, the most disgusting thing I have ever seen: the nurses literally lift up the toenail with a tiny crowbar (or this - again - is my perception of it) and snip, one by one, the little veins and strings of flesh that connect the toenail to the toe (this is still vivid in my mind).  Dad is crying.  Really crying!  It looked painful as shit, but I didn't let him forget the day he cried over a toenail.

I can only recall one time my dad ever gave me a bath.  And I'm not sure why he had to do it - I'm sure he didn't volunteer.  

I was in the tub that he had run for me, but it wasn't right at all.  There were no bubbles.  It was like dad had no idea how kids liked their bath.  How could this be?!  I wanted the bubbles.

So he poured in the pink Mr. Bubble. 

And nothing happened.

So he poured in more Mr. Bubble.

Still nothing.

He read the bottle. 

He then decided we needed to splash around to make the bubbles.

Have you ever done this?  Not easily done.  This is why you are meant to pour the Mr. Bubble under the tap while it is running.  But anyway.

Me and dad were splashing in this bath like crazy and although we never really achieved the desired bubble bath, we did turn the water pink and I had the best bath ever, just splashing around like crazy.  I wonder if he remembers this...

And the time we went to Illinois and discovered how many cornfields there are in that state.  So many.  Days of driving through corn fields.  We bonded over a week, drinking marshmallow Dairy Queen Blizzards (since discontinued) and missing civilization among the corn...

When we walked in the front door the night we got back fron Illinois, everyone was sitting in the livingroom watching Children of the Corn.

He who walks behind the rows...

Dad and I have had our off days, too.  Especially now that I'm grown up.  He likes to criticize my life, he likes to tell me that my husband will leave me someday because I spend too much money, he likes to tell me how much it broke his heart when I dropped out of University.  He likes to remind me of all of my failures and he likes to make me cry when he drinks.

But I am his little girl.  And I know that he just didn't always know how to relate to me, but he tried every chance he got.  He really did.  He's a good father, no matter what he thinks of himself.

	Elton John - My Father's Gun .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine