Getting to know me (Part I)

A while back, I created one of those “How well do you know me?” quizzes on Facebook, and was dismayed to see that no one scored above about 40% or so. Dude, I have a blog! And I talk about myself constantly! How could people not know me? I stop paying attention when the conversation doesn’t revolve around me! So I have a great excuse for doing poorly on other people’s quizzes, but can’t fathom people not knowing me. But since then, I’ve thought about it a bit more. And I can see how it can happen. And really, if one person scores poorly that’s her fault. But if everyone does, it must be me and/or the quiz. In this case, I think its both.

The quiz definitely had something to do it. It was pretty obscure, I’ll grant you that. I’m not even sure G would have done that well on it. Though I’ll never know since he was stubbornly resistant (or lazy) about taking it (just like he is about reading this blog, even though he signed up as a follower just to seem like a loving, supportive husband to the outside world; he’s quite devious that way). Anyway, the quiz was hard. And I guess I don’t actually have a lot of friends who know everything about every aspect of my life. I’m certainly not one of those people who have had the same friends from the time that I was 6 or anything like that. My friends seem to fall in discrete categories: high school friends, college friends, current friends, family, etc. So it’d be pretty impossible to create a quiz that even a couple people would kick ass on. Also, I do a lot of talking about nothing. And I guess my quiz questions didn’t revolve around things like that time G and I demonstrated our incompetence with a kayak. Even among the vast majority of my friends who don’t read my blog, I’m not a really big sharer of other things.

So I thought that it might be a good time to do a few “getting to know me” posts. Probably kick it off today and continue during the rest of the week. Not sure how many exactly. I guess we’ll see how it goes as I go along. If there’s ever another quiz, you guys will have the inside track. You can come back to these entries and use them to cheat on the answers. J

Anyway, in no particular order, here are some random bits and pieces of my oh-so exciting life:

• I come from an immigrant family. I, myself, was born in India also and moved to the US when I was 6 years old. To this day, my parents – aside from the relatively new addition of Italian food and wine into their lives – live in an Indian household. This made for some confusing times for me growing up. From packing my lunch with sandwiches made of orange marmalade and American cheese to sending me to birthday parties in dresses and tennis shoes (bright blue with Velcro because that was what was on sale), my parents struggled with the nuances of American life. Often, the very characteristics that helped them to come to and succeed in the US were the ones that embarrassed me the most – their frugality, their total commitment to the Indian culture, education, and hard work, their stubbornness. It was hard to fully appreciate their qualities when it resulted in me having the same Sesame Street comforter up until the end of high school ("Why get rid of it? It's not in tatters yet." If anyone’s interested in seeing it, come on up for a visit to my folks sometime. They do occasionally bring it out for guest use). Or when we were all sitting in the Disney Land parking lot eating our Indian picnic lunch before going back in for more rides. Or when my brother and I would be stuck inside on summer days, reviewing the next year’s math curriculum so that we could get ahead. Those were all some wonderful times.
• To this day, I’m convinced that I will be permanently scarred by my parents for reasons I can’t even begin to describe. But on the other hand, I can’t imagine anything more amazing or difficult than traveling across the ocean and starting your life in a completely different world. I think of my dad working at 2 casinos in Reno (while on summer break from grad school) so that he could save up enough $ to bring his family to US, or I think of my mom coming out - speaking no English, coming only for my dad - and I'm pretty impressed. I don't think any of travel stories can compete.
• Two of my favorite people in the world are my 2 younger brothers. One shoplifted when he was young. And tried to lie his way out of everything and anything. One of them checked out porn on the family computer (we still don't know who that was, probably both, I imagine). I take my role as big sister very seriously, though these days, they don't seem to need me as much as they used to.