Bends-Inducing       01.08.05 * 20:39

The more things change, the more it means you're getting older.

As an aside, when I started writing this (as a passing fancy) it hit me like a metric ton of feathers that when I was 15, that was almost 10 years ago. It feels like yesterday. Everything in between seems so strange and distorted. Like looking back in time through a broken kaleidoscope. I guess my 24 year old self identifies with my 15 year old self the most. Or something.

I, at 15, was:

Attracted mostly to men who were dark-haired and -eyed, tall, and a ludicrous number of years older than I.

I don't know if this is true anymore or not. I seem to be attracted more to large, older, clumsy, gallumping men with shy smiles and flashing eyes these days.

Preoccupied to the point of obsession with the profile of my face and convinced that I looked like a hideous best with a hook nose and a bumpy forehead.

I only permit myself to look at my profile when I absolutely have to because I have no doubt that I would let it take over my mind again.

Certain that I was dying of cancer, scabies, Huntington's disease, heart disease, or something worse.

See above. I occasionally break into panics over lumps, coughs, and spots, but they last days instead of months now.

Unable to speak in public (which mostly meant in a class at school or during orchestra practice) - results included hyperventilation, stuttering, red-facedness, heart palpitations, nausea, muscle tremors, and other bends-like symptoms.

This is mostly done with, although as recently as 2004 my throat closed up and I stopped breathing while addressing a group of 7 employees.

Not overly fond of bathing on a daily basis, but I finally started doing it anyway (before now it had been three times a week). I blame my mother's chronic twice-a-day shower habit for a subsequent act of rebellion on my part, as this was one way in which I could consciously be unlike her (and the more ways, the better).

I guess the tables have turned - I cannot go more than 24 hours without a shower, while my mother has pared her showers down to once a day or so.

Literally not willing to listen to more than 30 seconds of any piece of music that did not entail a performance by a classical, symphonic, chamber, woodwind, orchestral, or jazz ensemble of some kind playing an oeuvre by someone who had been dead for at least 50 years (in some cases, 40 year allowances were made). Additionally, I fiercely amassed and hoarded cheap CDs by labels such as Naxos, Lydian, DDD, and Vox Allegretto and listened to each disc repeatedly until I was driven to the point of madness, at which time I would listen to WBJC late into the night. The result of this being that to this day you can probably choose any classical CD in my collection and I will be able to sing along with it to you (you can even pick out the instrument you'd like me to mimic), start to finish, without missing a note or a beat.

I have very eclectic taste and I like to think I'm somewhat enterprising in my choices - more so than most people with whom I have contact.

Not into doing homework at home, so I would concoct fabulous reasons for myself why I couldn't and shouldn't do so (for instance, perhaps I urgently needed to stare at the ridges on my toenails for up to an hour while trying to remember theme songs to kid game shows from the 80s). My homework got done the next day during homeroom or lunch... and I don't think I ever turned in any assignments late.

Just the other day, I realised that this may have paved the way for spectacular failure in college, but I also remember certain professors trying to get me to reenroll in their classes because I had somehow come across as the most intelligent member of the class - I also might note that I make lots of money and when I go home at night I can do whatever I want, which is a very good feeling.

Certain that I would one day be either a polished executive businesswoman walking around wearing tight silk skirt suits, patent leather pumps, and upswept hair in a fantasy office with plush mauve carpets and sparkling blonde wood furniture - or, an author writing under the pen name of Nicodemus Applewhite.

I believe I still have time to decide between these careers, although I've certainly leaked my intended nom de plume, haven't I?