please don't be mad at me
I am the way I am because of how my parents influenced me, but also because of how my friends influenced me. Or how I allowed them to influence me. My parents tried their hardest to bring up a bright, religious, saintly young lady and I tried my hardest
to not be that girl.
Religion. I was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. I was baptized shortly after my birth and made my first Holy Communion and first confession sometime around second grade. I went to a private Catholic school from kindergarten through third grade. My parents couldnrquote t afford the constantly increasing tuition and I was sent to a public school in fourth grade. All my friends from St. Marys stayed at St. Mary's, and I was left to fend for myself and make new friends. I was shy, painfully shy. I had a gap between my two front teeth big enough to blow bubbles through with my gum. I wore glasses. Thick, clear-rimmed, ugly eyeglasses. I had a uni-brow. Needless to say, I had absolutely no self-confidence. My mother was still dressing me the way she wanted to dress me and I didn't know any better because I had been wearing a navy blue uniform to school every day for the past four years. I don't think I ever believed all the things I was supposed to believe as a catholic child. I believed in God. I used to say my prayers every night before going to sleep. My mom would usually say them with me. I always said "The Lord's Prayer", which I called The Our Father. A "Hail Mary" always followed this prayer. Sometimes we would
ask God to bless certain people in our lives. On nights when my mother must have had buckets of patience or thought I was especially amusing, I used to try and name all the people I knew in the whole world and ask God to bless them. I don'
t think I could name all the people I now know in the whole world. And honestly, I'm not sure if I would want God to bless them all anyway.
I grew up in one of those neighborhoods where all of the houses looked the same. My parents did their best to reassure me that just because they all looked the same on the outside, the residents within were often extremely different from our family. Across the street lived a family by the last name of Rice. Their family consisted of a mom, dad, and three daughters that were roughly 8-10 years older than me. Not that our family was wealthy, but the Rice's obviously had less dough than my parents did. Either that or they spent it in different ways. Bad ways, according to my parents. Mr. and Mrs. Rice smoked cigarettes nonstop. The rumor around the neighborhood was that Mr. Rice was a "drinker". Besides ALL this, the girls were severely misbehaved and seldom disciplined. I remember one day, vaguely, the Rice girls had somehow climbed onto the roof of their house and managed to
drop a bowling ball through the ceiling of their parents bedroom, apparently in an effort to keep their father from sleeping, or perhaps from falling into an even deeper drunken coma. Anyway, point is, these girls were "bad"
and I was never to speak to them or associate with them. The father passed away while I was in middle school. The Rice's still live in that house. Mrs. Rice is still alive, going to her first shift job at the only factory in town and chain smoking all the way there. At least one of
the daughters lives in the house with her children. On my most recent trip home, I observed the Rice's house to be in the same unkempt condition as always. At least 3 dogs, not big dogs, just unidentified mixed breeds, patrol the front steps and yard, occasionally chasing each other across the driveway and sometimes into the road. Random cats stroll through the yard and lounge on the front steps. I think they have the only unpaved driveway in the whole neighborhood . . .
I have a very healthy respect of fire. I love candles and burn them often in my apartment, but I never leave a candle burning unattended. I am fearful that someday my residence will burn up, permanently destroying all of my photos, diaries, yearbooks and keepsakes.. I've never been in a fire and I'm not exactly sure where this fear came from. I used to make my family practice fire drills and I was convinced that our house would someday be struck by lightening and immediately ignite. I think I am so fearful of fire because when I wa
s in fourth or fifth grade, our neighbor's house caught on fire. They lived across the back yard from us, so the back of our house was facing the back of their house. Apparently, a short in the family's coffee maker started the fire. No one was injured;
in fact, nobody was in the house at the time of the blaze. I remember seeing flames coming out of the back kitchen door and dining room window. My mom, a friend of mine, and I watched off our back deck as the firemen put out the fire. I don't know how
long it was after the fire, but me and the girl who lived in that house were playing at my house one day. She was a year younger than I was. My mom asked Shannon if she would take me over to her house and show me the damage caused by the fire. And she
did. This was seriously traumatic for me. Because all of the houses looked the same, both inside and outside, all I could see when I was in their house, was our house. The walls were totally black in the kitchen and light brown in the living and dining
rooms. Shannon brought me down the hall to her bedroom, which was the same bedroom I had in our house. Even though the fire was mostly in the kitchen, her bedroom still had smoke damage. Her bed linens and toys were brown and full of soot. And the smell throughout the whole house was unbearable. I'm sure I didn't cry or act unusual in front of Shannon and her mother while "touring" their house, but once I got home I couldn't stop thinking about how awful it all was. I was sad for them, of course, but more than anything, I was fearful that the same could happen to our family. After being reassured by my mother that we did not own a Coffee machine, I still was scared. And that is when I became the fire marshal of the Grimmer house. Constantly vigilant of burning candles, not-currently-being-used appliances still plugged into an outlet, and any other electrical device, I lost sleep at night convinced that I needed a rope ladder in case I ever needed to escape through my bedroom window in the event
of a fire.
This was obviously a serious source of stress in my life.
Every time I drive in reverse, I am sure to look out my back window. My driver's education teacher taught me many things when I was sixteen, and why this is what stands out the most, I don't know. But I will always look in the direction I am driving, especially when driving in reverse.
Even though I went to a private school during kindergarten through third grade, I still relied on the public school system's bus route. There was one
girl on my bus from the public school, Jennifer Martian, who I was an occasion seatmate with. One day she was looking at my nails and exclaimed that they were misshaped and thin. I had never even noticed or cared about my nails before this comment, but
from that moment on, I knew that I had ugly fingernails. I wear fake nails today because of Jennifer Martian.
Eventually I got braces, which I thought looked cool and pretty on other people until they were actually attached to my own teeth. My mother sto
pped dressing me, and the gap between my teeth slowly, and I mean slowly, grew smaller. Unfortunately, there was little I could do about the thick glasses since my parents couldn't afford to buy me contact lenses. The uni-brow also continued to plague me
as my mother had not yet taught me how to use a pair of tweezers. Why did my ancestors give me so much hair? Lebanese and Italian are a great mix if hairy, ape-like children are the desired outcome.
Hairiness, however, is the only negative quality I've inherited from my relatives.. Thankfully, I was blessed with the typical easy-to-tan, Mediterranean skin, high cheekbones, dark hair and eyes and angular nose of my grandparents'
grandparents. As far as embracing the Lebanese or Italian culture, our family's focus is on the fine cuisine characteristic of these countries. Garlic, spaghetti, ravioli, meatballs, canolli, pizza, garlic, olive oil, tomato sauce, tiramisu, garlic and espresso are only some of the delicious foods I was brought up on. Did I
mention the garlic? Zata, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, kibbee, tabulie, koosa and pita bread include some of my most favorite dishes from the middle eastern side of my family. We love food.
I always make "hospital corners" with my sheets when putting a clean set on my bed. I learned this from my mother, who was employed as a nurse during most of my time living at home.
My mother gets a rose from me every year on my birthday and has ever since I was a baby. When I was old enough, my father explained that this is done to express gratitude toward my mother for carrying me inside her for nine months and giving me life. Until I was old enough to understand, my father would just hand me a rose, tell me to bring it to my mom and say "thank you".
Once I had my own vehicle, I began doing this on my own and even from way down here in Florida, I always remember to send my mom a bouquet of roses on my birthday. However, I'm starting to think that the card should also acknowledge my father. Although he did not physically carry me inside HIM for nine months, he had to put up with my mother during her pregnancy and that may have been harder than actually being pregnant.
\par
\par Jennifer Martin also pointed out, again on the school bus, that I had hairy legs. She was kind enough to also exclaim that they were so hairy she could still see the long dark hair even through the white tights I wore under my catholic school uniform.
My mother was the disciplinarian in my family. My dad was the "nice guy", according to my mother. She was whom we, as children, answered to. She dolled out the punishment and also controlled the rewards. It was her approval we were to meet first. My father\rquote s response to many requests for recreation and fun were, "Go ask your mother". This was a system that worked well in our house. Everyone knew their place and what was expected of them. Family members\rquote moods and outlooks depended on my mother\rquote
s emotional and mental state for that day, sometimes for that hour. When my mother was having an es
pecially unmanageable day, she would usually have either an angry tantrum around the house or a behind-locked-bedroom-door weeping spell. My father would pace nervously around the house in either case, quietly and sheepishly reminding us to do our chores
and to just stay away from our mother. She's getting her period,he'd say. Geez, I had
Especially after I went from St. Mary's to the public school, my parents began to ask me questions about my friends. When I would ask permission to spend the night at the house of a new girlfriend, my parents would approach me with
twenty questions. "Where do they live?" "What kind of grades does she get?" "Are her parents divorced?""Do they go to church?""Where?""Do they have a gun cabinet?""Is it locked?"
"Do they have a wood-burning stove?" "Do they have a cat?" "Is she an only child?". It slowly became a joke and something my whole family could laugh about now, but at some point, my parents were serious
about hearing the right answers to those questions.
As far as black people go, I developed a popular, yet distorted stereotype by growing up in our small town. The population has increased since, but until I was about halfway through college, I could pr
obably have counted the number of black families living in Bath on one hand. Unfortunately the only representatives of that race I observed were of low socio-economic status; drugs, crime and disgraceful behavior were automatic qualities I had assigned.
I was completely aware, as far back as I can remember, that it was unfair to judge others and everyone was created equal, but it was often a struggle to remember the black Bath-ites were only a small population and quite possibly a misrepresentation of bl
ack people.
Jen Martain was probably the one who told me I had a mustache, too.
Mary Lisa Grimmer, MHS6780, 7/17/2003, Philosophy of Life, Dr. Davis
to not be that girl.
Religion. I was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. I was baptized shortly after my birth and made my first Holy Communion and first confession sometime around second grade. I went to a private Catholic school from kindergarten through third grade. My parents couldnrquote t afford the constantly increasing tuition and I was sent to a public school in fourth grade. All my friends from St. Marys stayed at St. Mary's, and I was left to fend for myself and make new friends. I was shy, painfully shy. I had a gap between my two front teeth big enough to blow bubbles through with my gum. I wore glasses. Thick, clear-rimmed, ugly eyeglasses. I had a uni-brow. Needless to say, I had absolutely no self-confidence. My mother was still dressing me the way she wanted to dress me and I didn't know any better because I had been wearing a navy blue uniform to school every day for the past four years. I don't think I ever believed all the things I was supposed to believe as a catholic child. I believed in God. I used to say my prayers every night before going to sleep. My mom would usually say them with me. I always said "The Lord's Prayer", which I called The Our Father. A "Hail Mary" always followed this prayer. Sometimes we would
ask God to bless certain people in our lives. On nights when my mother must have had buckets of patience or thought I was especially amusing, I used to try and name all the people I knew in the whole world and ask God to bless them. I don'
t think I could name all the people I now know in the whole world. And honestly, I'm not sure if I would want God to bless them all anyway.
I grew up in one of those neighborhoods where all of the houses looked the same. My parents did their best to reassure me that just because they all looked the same on the outside, the residents within were often extremely different from our family. Across the street lived a family by the last name of Rice. Their family consisted of a mom, dad, and three daughters that were roughly 8-10 years older than me. Not that our family was wealthy, but the Rice's obviously had less dough than my parents did. Either that or they spent it in different ways. Bad ways, according to my parents. Mr. and Mrs. Rice smoked cigarettes nonstop. The rumor around the neighborhood was that Mr. Rice was a "drinker". Besides ALL this, the girls were severely misbehaved and seldom disciplined. I remember one day, vaguely, the Rice girls had somehow climbed onto the roof of their house and managed to
drop a bowling ball through the ceiling of their parents bedroom, apparently in an effort to keep their father from sleeping, or perhaps from falling into an even deeper drunken coma. Anyway, point is, these girls were "bad"
and I was never to speak to them or associate with them. The father passed away while I was in middle school. The Rice's still live in that house. Mrs. Rice is still alive, going to her first shift job at the only factory in town and chain smoking all the way there. At least one of
the daughters lives in the house with her children. On my most recent trip home, I observed the Rice's house to be in the same unkempt condition as always. At least 3 dogs, not big dogs, just unidentified mixed breeds, patrol the front steps and yard, occasionally chasing each other across the driveway and sometimes into the road. Random cats stroll through the yard and lounge on the front steps. I think they have the only unpaved driveway in the whole neighborhood . . .
I have a very healthy respect of fire. I love candles and burn them often in my apartment, but I never leave a candle burning unattended. I am fearful that someday my residence will burn up, permanently destroying all of my photos, diaries, yearbooks and keepsakes.. I've never been in a fire and I'm not exactly sure where this fear came from. I used to make my family practice fire drills and I was convinced that our house would someday be struck by lightening and immediately ignite. I think I am so fearful of fire because when I wa
s in fourth or fifth grade, our neighbor's house caught on fire. They lived across the back yard from us, so the back of our house was facing the back of their house. Apparently, a short in the family's coffee maker started the fire. No one was injured;
in fact, nobody was in the house at the time of the blaze. I remember seeing flames coming out of the back kitchen door and dining room window. My mom, a friend of mine, and I watched off our back deck as the firemen put out the fire. I don't know how
long it was after the fire, but me and the girl who lived in that house were playing at my house one day. She was a year younger than I was. My mom asked Shannon if she would take me over to her house and show me the damage caused by the fire. And she
did. This was seriously traumatic for me. Because all of the houses looked the same, both inside and outside, all I could see when I was in their house, was our house. The walls were totally black in the kitchen and light brown in the living and dining
rooms. Shannon brought me down the hall to her bedroom, which was the same bedroom I had in our house. Even though the fire was mostly in the kitchen, her bedroom still had smoke damage. Her bed linens and toys were brown and full of soot. And the smell throughout the whole house was unbearable. I'm sure I didn't cry or act unusual in front of Shannon and her mother while "touring" their house, but once I got home I couldn't stop thinking about how awful it all was. I was sad for them, of course, but more than anything, I was fearful that the same could happen to our family. After being reassured by my mother that we did not own a Coffee machine, I still was scared. And that is when I became the fire marshal of the Grimmer house. Constantly vigilant of burning candles, not-currently-being-used appliances still plugged into an outlet, and any other electrical device, I lost sleep at night convinced that I needed a rope ladder in case I ever needed to escape through my bedroom window in the event
of a fire.
This was obviously a serious source of stress in my life.
Every time I drive in reverse, I am sure to look out my back window. My driver's education teacher taught me many things when I was sixteen, and why this is what stands out the most, I don't know. But I will always look in the direction I am driving, especially when driving in reverse.
Even though I went to a private school during kindergarten through third grade, I still relied on the public school system's bus route. There was one
girl on my bus from the public school, Jennifer Martian, who I was an occasion seatmate with. One day she was looking at my nails and exclaimed that they were misshaped and thin. I had never even noticed or cared about my nails before this comment, but
from that moment on, I knew that I had ugly fingernails. I wear fake nails today because of Jennifer Martian.
Eventually I got braces, which I thought looked cool and pretty on other people until they were actually attached to my own teeth. My mother sto
pped dressing me, and the gap between my teeth slowly, and I mean slowly, grew smaller. Unfortunately, there was little I could do about the thick glasses since my parents couldn't afford to buy me contact lenses. The uni-brow also continued to plague me
as my mother had not yet taught me how to use a pair of tweezers. Why did my ancestors give me so much hair? Lebanese and Italian are a great mix if hairy, ape-like children are the desired outcome.
Hairiness, however, is the only negative quality I've inherited from my relatives.. Thankfully, I was blessed with the typical easy-to-tan, Mediterranean skin, high cheekbones, dark hair and eyes and angular nose of my grandparents'
grandparents. As far as embracing the Lebanese or Italian culture, our family's focus is on the fine cuisine characteristic of these countries. Garlic, spaghetti, ravioli, meatballs, canolli, pizza, garlic, olive oil, tomato sauce, tiramisu, garlic and espresso are only some of the delicious foods I was brought up on. Did I
mention the garlic? Zata, hummus, stuffed grape leaves, kibbee, tabulie, koosa and pita bread include some of my most favorite dishes from the middle eastern side of my family. We love food.
I always make "hospital corners" with my sheets when putting a clean set on my bed. I learned this from my mother, who was employed as a nurse during most of my time living at home.
My mother gets a rose from me every year on my birthday and has ever since I was a baby. When I was old enough, my father explained that this is done to express gratitude toward my mother for carrying me inside her for nine months and giving me life. Until I was old enough to understand, my father would just hand me a rose, tell me to bring it to my mom and say "thank you".
Once I had my own vehicle, I began doing this on my own and even from way down here in Florida, I always remember to send my mom a bouquet of roses on my birthday. However, I'm starting to think that the card should also acknowledge my father. Although he did not physically carry me inside HIM for nine months, he had to put up with my mother during her pregnancy and that may have been harder than actually being pregnant.
\par
\par Jennifer Martin also pointed out, again on the school bus, that I had hairy legs. She was kind enough to also exclaim that they were so hairy she could still see the long dark hair even through the white tights I wore under my catholic school uniform.
My mother was the disciplinarian in my family. My dad was the "nice guy", according to my mother. She was whom we, as children, answered to. She dolled out the punishment and also controlled the rewards. It was her approval we were to meet first. My father\rquote s response to many requests for recreation and fun were, "Go ask your mother". This was a system that worked well in our house. Everyone knew their place and what was expected of them. Family members\rquote moods and outlooks depended on my mother\rquote
s emotional and mental state for that day, sometimes for that hour. When my mother was having an es
pecially unmanageable day, she would usually have either an angry tantrum around the house or a behind-locked-bedroom-door weeping spell. My father would pace nervously around the house in either case, quietly and sheepishly reminding us to do our chores
and to just stay away from our mother. She's getting her period,he'd say. Geez, I had
Especially after I went from St. Mary's to the public school, my parents began to ask me questions about my friends. When I would ask permission to spend the night at the house of a new girlfriend, my parents would approach me with
twenty questions. "Where do they live?" "What kind of grades does she get?" "Are her parents divorced?""Do they go to church?""Where?""Do they have a gun cabinet?""Is it locked?"
"Do they have a wood-burning stove?" "Do they have a cat?" "Is she an only child?". It slowly became a joke and something my whole family could laugh about now, but at some point, my parents were serious
about hearing the right answers to those questions.
As far as black people go, I developed a popular, yet distorted stereotype by growing up in our small town. The population has increased since, but until I was about halfway through college, I could pr
obably have counted the number of black families living in Bath on one hand. Unfortunately the only representatives of that race I observed were of low socio-economic status; drugs, crime and disgraceful behavior were automatic qualities I had assigned.
I was completely aware, as far back as I can remember, that it was unfair to judge others and everyone was created equal, but it was often a struggle to remember the black Bath-ites were only a small population and quite possibly a misrepresentation of bl
ack people.
Jen Martain was probably the one who told me I had a mustache, too.
Mary Lisa Grimmer, MHS6780, 7/17/2003, Philosophy of Life, Dr. Davis