Sometimes I Google my name to see what pops up. I not only cyber stalk others, but myself as well! I actually do it to make sure there is enough misinformation so people who I do not want to find me won’t. I know I sound a bit paranoid, I am not really there are some freaky people from my past that I would prefer thought that I fell off the face of the earth or that I am living in seven different places with several different aliases. I pretend that I am a spy sometimes. Just kidding! I cyber stalked myself the other day and again the top link is a family ancestry with the wrong birthday.

I have told my great-aunt several times that it is the wrong birthday, but she has not changed it.

I don’t know what she did to the ancestry website. It used to be super cool and it dated back to year 1200 or something with lineage from Germany, England, and France. I really wanted to study it sometime, but she changed it and now I cannot find any of that information clearly. Sorry. So the usual links were up some were me some were not. I like looking at the “not” me’s too that can be fun. I clicked to the second page and noticed my name in the newspaper of my hometown. I had not seen this before or I didn’t notice, it was for a science fair. I clicked on it and discovered that in 8th grade my partner and I had won in a science fair.

Under the category “Medicine and Health”

The project was comparing what plants and medicine have in common. I was shocked when I read this. I had a vague memory of it and I also had some memories of other science fair projects that I had done. At first I thought that maybe it was a mistake. Then, I started to recall the memories. It was another time when the whole event was turned into a negative. I started to recall many memories regarding school. One of my biggest problems with school happened to be my mom. I really wish I could explain this in a more positive light, but I cannot. My mom showed no interest in my schooling, she hated school and projected that on me as well. All she wanted was for me not to bring home bad grades so she didn’t have to deal with it.

After school activities were an aggravation to her.

I remember in third or fourth grade I started to want to go to the basketball games on a regular basis. I could as long as I found my own ride home. She did not want to pick me up or she could not because she was at work. However, she still didn’t like me going. She didn’t like me going over to friend’s houses, but she would let me as long as the parents brought me home and I wasn’t late. I think it was in fifth grade that I wanted to do track and I talked her into letting me, but I had to find my own way home. With the pressures of having to constantly ask people to take me home and the fact that my mom had no interest in it, I stopped. There were other social reasons as well dealing with competition, but that is another part of the story.

I was able to participate in one event for track though.

They had several other options as well and one of them was the football throw. Yes, I did do the football throw, I was pretty good at throwing the ball a far distance. I had a friend who played basketball for a while too, she was considered a tomboy more so than myself and she was really good at basketball. I played with her at recess. My problem though is that I really like the sound of basketballs bouncing and I like the vibrations that I see when it does bounce, needless to say I got distracted a lot. I used to play with my basketball in our driveway all the time. I liked spinning it with my wrist into the air to see how high I could get it. I would practice spinning it on my finger (I cannot recall the correct terms) but I remember one of my favorite things to practice was the crossover dribble.

It reminded me of a “V” as I did it.

Also I like it because it made a balance move for me, I was using both hands and swayed my body, it could be kind of like a dance move. My mom hates sports and my dad was severely addicted at one point. Now it is running. When I lost that friend I didn’t really have anyone to practice with anymore. I could not with my dad because he would tell me all of the things I needed to work on and explain to me for hours how I had messed up. Do it perfect or don’t do it at all. Be number one or just forget it. He was an all-star athlete in school, he was unable to play basketball because it clashed with other sports schedules. As an adult it became an obsession and let’s just say the family reunions were not fun and someone always got hurt. I just wanted to “play” flippin’ basketball with my dad. My sister took the basketball reigns and was awesome! However, my dad was her coach and I am not too sure what all happened, but she quit and that was unfortunate. She was really good.

I got sidetracked I have a lot of sports stories.

I usually do not talk about any of them or I just say that I do not like sports so I don’t have to think about it. Back to the science fair, I remembered that I got yelled at because I had to stay after school and someone needed to pick me up. I remember that it was a major disruption for me to go over to my partners house. I remember that she was also frustrated with me because I could not spend the large amount of time that we needed to put the project together. I also remember that I really enjoyed it and was quite fascinated with our project. I think I blocked a lot of things like that out because I have so many negatives associated with it. I gave up on trying to keep my grade point average up by the end of 8th grade because the only reason why I wanted to was so I could stay on the dance team. BUT I had to be at every basketball game and special event, unless I could get someone to take me I got yelled at for needing my mom or step-dad to take me and pick me up.

It was really the only thing I loved at that time, dancing at being at the games. (remove social confusion that is)

I had one of those moments the other day where I got really angry. I feel like this was just plain wrong. I should have been able to go to events and participate in sports, science fairs and the dance team without being responsible for myself or feel guilty for wanting to participate. My mom didn’t understand it and she thought that it was stupid. It feels wrong that I could not share with my parents. I remembered that I didn’t even tell my dad about the science fair because the other ones that I was in he either took over about himself as a kid or he told me how great some other person did in their project. I am not trying to parent bash here I just really don’t get it. Well I do, my mom had no interest in the things that I was interested in and if she is not interested or she dislikes it, it doesn’t exist. My dad I have several things in common with, but I cannot talk to him about them and I definitely do not want to try them because then it becomes a competition between us.

If I did well he would have to try to beat me.

He does this with everyone and I do not know why. It makes me very thankful that he cannot dance or write the way that I do because there is no competition. Although it doesn’t get recognized. I think that is better actually, I would rather it be that way after thinking about it. All of this has got me thinking and challenging the negative thoughts that I have repeated to myself over the years about not being intelligent or not being good enough. It really got me thinking about my love for computers and how my brain naturally gravitates towards the way computers work. I have taken my interest and gone over to MITopencourseware and was intrigued by how much I understand about computer science. Yes, I am also learning a lot. It has triggered the desire more so to go to school. I am planning on trying one class and go from there. I am tired of the negative voices stopping me.

My blast from the past and win at the science fair stirred something in me and I am going for it.

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