Bohemian

This picture cracks me up. The only thing missing is me shooting the finger, which I usually do when I catch someone trying to take my picture. It is a sterling example of my attitude towards society in general. I think I am probably the strangest person I know, and you know what? I like me. If you don't like me, it's ok. Really. I can be kind of hard to take :)

I inherited this attitude from my mother (well, not the shooting the bird part). Had she lived in New York, I believe she would have become a true bohemian. After my father died, she really became totally involved with her artistic side. Her house was full of art supplies and craft stuff. Her greenhouse was full of the beautiful, the odd, and the oddly beautiful. She had always done artsy things. She painted, threw pottery, glued, scratched, cut, compiled, and every other art form known to man. Mom understood me. I think it made her smile knowing that I was sort of an oddball. She told me that if she had been younger, we could have gotten matching tattoos. What a hoot!

My father on the other hand....My father was a saint, as I have said previously, but he was a bit of a prig. I know after going through their papers that he led a very hard life in his formative years, so his rather stiff social code was understandable. He died when I was about 22. He would have been properly horrified by my tattoos. He adored me. He did not understand me. It was ok that he didn't.

I did not inherit mother's gift to create art, but I did get the couldn't care less attitude, and the ability to see things from a different perspective. I consider the work we do as a sort of art. It takes some creativity to turn sand, cement, rocks and water into a slab that will pass for Pennsylvania blue stone but, to me, it is not the same as making a painting that is actually pleasing to the eyes.

I was born in the early '60's. Really too late to make a good hippy, but I sure gave it all I had. I was that weird kid in school that just never fit in. I used to let it bother me, but at about 13, I decided, - screw them. If they don't like me, it's their loss. It was all downhill from there. There is incredible freedom in just accepting the fact that what other people think about you really does not matter. Instead of trying to fit in, I could just continue to be weird and not try to change to conform to the accepted standards.

All in all, I am just me. I hadn't ever really thought about it, but this is pretty much a definition of who I am (mostly - I don't know that I am exotic or radical) -

Bohemian adjective 1. (often not cap.) unconventional, alternative, artistic, exotic, way-out (informal) eccentric, avant-garde, off-the-wall (slang) unorthodox, arty (informal) oddball (informal) offbeat, left bank, nonconformist, outré conventionalnoun 2. (often not cap.) nonconformist, rebel, radical, eccentric, maverick, hippy, dropout, individualist, beatnik, iconoclasthc_thes Collins Essential Thesaurus 2nd Edition 2006 © HarperCollins Publishers 2005, 2006

There is nothing "normal" about me... thank goodness.