Am I weird now? Well yeah.

Am I [almost] normal in comparison to my former, younger self? Hell yeah!

Example #1: As an only child, I experienced a lot of spoiling and over-protection via my parents and grandmother-- who else would spoil an only child? They pampered me like nobody's business. (Except for the time when I was two [2] and my grandmother and mom were trying out their new vacuum. Read more about this in example #2.) They told me horror stories in an effort to get me to behave. They were first- [and only-] time parents. They didn't know that it would cause me to have recurrent nightmares in which my neighbor (they called him 'Bad Bob') would smash my second-story window with his bare fist, his face and eyes cherry-red with anger. They also didn't know what it would do to my self-confidence... [Sigh.] Because of their constant warnings that I would 'fall, hit my head, and become brain-damaged' if I played too hard (stemming from the incident described in example #2) I was a very cautious kid. Anytime I fell down, even on the soft, safe padding of freshly-grown grass, I would spell aloud the longest word I knew at the time-- butterfly-- just to make sure I wasn't brain-damaged from the three-foot fall. "B-U-T-T-E-R-F-L-Y!"

Example #2: For about a year, my grandmother lived with us. Some of my first and fondest memories took place during this year-- my 'terrible' twos. One day, I happily joined my mother and grandmother on an errand-- shopping. Not just grocery shopping, but vacuum cleaner shopping.

After vacuum-shopping, we returned home. While they were upstairs oogling over the vacuum of their dreams, I was downstairs marveling at the comfort of the sofa's arm. My marveling was cut short, however, when my uncoordinated little body fell, backwards, off the sofa. My head was gashed by the sharp, kid-unfriendly corner of a nearby shelf. Being the drama queen that I was, I yelped for help. My grandmother and mother instantly left Vacuum La La Land, and returned to Real Life. My bloody head and I were rushed to the hospital to receive stitches. (Five, to be exact.) Here's where my weirdness comes into play: In order to stitch me up, the doctors had to snip a bit of my hair to expose the wound. Thinking this information would calm me down, they told me about my soon-to-be-performed haircut. What they didn't know was that, to my former two-year-old self, the only difference between males and females was hair length. And even from the start, I was anti-male. To cut hair was to shorten hair, and to shorten hair was to abandon girlhood and enter [dundundun] boyhood. To their proposal, I angrily rebutted: "No! Don't make me into a boy!" To my rebuttal...they laughed.

Example #3: Were you really expecting three examples? Come on, I'm not that weird.