It never occurred to me that the people I’d left along the way weren’t really gone. For the longest time I was such a black and white thinker that I’d written those relationships off as lost to me.

And then I found Facebook. Because I’m an introvert, social networking draws me like flies to honey. I can speak to people quickly and efficiently, which also hits my firstborn tendencies, and feel like I’m connecting without losing the energy that I lose in face-to-face interaction.

And then I started exploring.

And found the little girl from down the farm road that I used to play with often. I road my green bike with the banana seat to her house frequently. And not only did she remember me, but she was delighted to hear from me. We still had the connection that we had even then.

And I found the first friends I had when I finally started elementary school. And then those when I moved to a new town.

I found my first group of friends from middle school. We were so close for those four years. It was like we picked up where we left off. The best friendships are always like that, aren’t they?

I found my high school best friends and my college best friends. I found people who weren’t best friends, but that I like more as adults than I did as children. They have grown into amazing people that I love.

Through other social networking sites I have found people that I love more and more each day.

For me, I think it was just a reminder that, though there are times I feel alone and have certainly felt alone in the past, I never was. They were with me. They missed me. They were there.

And they still are.

When AJ had his Kentucky incident, I didn’t think. I smacked Leon to get his attention and then I ran. I haven’t ran in years, but I ran to him. I couldn’t help him or make him better, but he needed me and I needed to be with him.

When the people we love are in trouble, we react quickly and emotionally.

Recently, I was watching footage of the Dallas motorcade with JFK and Jackie and I reacted to it rather strongly. Warning: Graphic language coming.

I’ve probably watched the grainy footage from Dallas 100 times in my 30 years. I’ve noticed many things about it and have looked at it from various mental angles. However, this particular time, when I watched it, what kept coming back to me was that Jackie reacted quickly and instinctively to keep Jack safe. I have no idea what the state of their marriage was. By all accounts, it was not the most functional, but whose is? However, she recovers from shock quickly and scrambles to the back of a moving car to grab pieces of his brain matter and then pulls him down to keep him safe.

Brain matter isn’t like a finger or a toe. You can’t sew it back on. Once Jack was hit and it was exposed, it was gone. He was gone.

When the people we love are in trouble, we react quickly and emotionally.

It wasn’t rational to scramble across a moving vehicle when bullets were flying around her, but love motivates people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. It gives us strength to do things that we don’t know we can.

I’m in awe of its power. Always and completely.

I’m an introvert by nature. People that know me tend to forget that when they first met me, I likely didn’t say much at all to them. When I am in large gatherings of people, I tend to talk only to the 2-3 people sitting next to me, unless I know all of them well. I generally speak when spoken to if I don’t know the people sitting next to me.

Recently, I was at a huge gathering of people that are friends with Leon (and some I will reluctantly claim–you know who you are). I was sitting between a publisher that I’d never met and Leon, who was talking to a friend of his on the other side. I’d also never met several of the people at our table. I quietly munched on some bread when the publisher looked directly at me and said, “this side of the table is awfully quiet.”

I tried to swallow the bread, which promptly got stuck in my throat, and mumbled something about it definitely being less lively than other parts of our rather long table. At which point I did something I never do: I went into counselor mode and started using my interviewing skills to ask him questions, because, frankly, I had no idea what to say.

I didn’t probe his mind or do anything unethical. I simply asked him some “getting to know you questions,” but I was quite uncomfortable for the first 20 minutes or so. About the time I began to grow comfortable with his company, he left to do some other tasks for the get-together we were attending.

Such is my life.

What does this have to do with talking on the phone?

Without those visual social cues, I often have difficulty judging where the other person is heading with a conversation. I like non-verbal language. I can tell a lot about a person from that non-verbal language. I think my clients appreciate that about me because I can often learn just as much from their non-verbal language as I do from their verbal language.

When I’m on the phone, I lose that ability. I dislike it. I have to keenly focus on pitch and tone and “trying to keep up the conversation,” which, for an introvert, is exhausting.

Bottom line: Unless I know someone well or we have lots to talk about or you are ok holding the majority of the conversation, text or email is best.

I hate talking on the phone.

My mom reads this blog (everyone say hi!) so she’s going to read this. I have to let her know that it makes me giggle when she is flummoxed at the differences between myself and my sister, Livvy.

I’m a total type A, perfectionist, overachiever who will lay awake at night worrying if I remembered to turn off the computer at work. Keep in mind, once I’m home, there is NOTHING I can do about the computer at work. I’m an introvert who loves to read and a homebody who likes nothing more than to stay at home and relax.

Livvy’s a total type B, cool as a cucumber, it’ll get done when it gets done kind of girl. She’s smart as can be and she’s incredibly sociable and likable. She makes friends easy and doesn’t really hold a grudge. She’s sweet-natured and people gravitate towards her in ways that they never will in my direction. I envy her ability to just “let it go.” She gets good grades without putting forth the hours it would take me and lives her life with a smile.

I’m a responsible first born.

She’s the baby that came 16 years later.

She’s my only sibling.

I adore her, madly. She’s one of the coolest people I’ve ever met and I’ve met a lot of people. There isn’t sibling rivalry and I think she’s awesome.

So, when my mom calls and tells me about my sissy’s hijinks, it’s hard for me not to giggle, because my sister is a typical, effervescent baby of the family. This must be like a cool splash of water after her neurotic first-born. In many ways, it’s great. Livvy is really easy to love and does all of the outgoing, extroverted things that just weren’t me. In other ways, it’s pretty different. It means that mom has to be more sociable and do more parent driving and host more sleepovers, etc. In a lot of ways, mom got the best of both worlds, really.

And she has two kids who love each other a whole lot and who genuinely miss each other when they aren’t together. A firstborn and a baby that far apart makes for a great combination and they also help prove the birth order theory.

I have to go now. I miss my sister.

If you live to be one hundred, I want to live to be one hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you. - A.A. Milne

Before all those silly things called rules (and if you can’t tell, I’m being facetious here) and safety belt laws and booster seats, etc., people like my mom allowed their kids to lay in the back seat and sleep on short car rides from town to town. Sometimes, I slept. I do love a good nap beyond most anything in life.

However, there was something mystical about looking out the back window, while laying in the seat and watching the stars and the moon. I could make out the face in the moon and I imagined a whole world where the moon was my friend and we frolicked at night. There was so much wonder in this world and what I never could figure out was how the moon FOLLOWED me from town to town. It just further confirmed that what we had was special and that the moon was MINE.

As an adult, I can analyze this and see the ecogentricism of where I was and even how the moon “followed” me. But don’t you pretend for one second that you don’t understand the magic, because even as adults we crave that connection to the sky.

Why do you think cars have sunroofs and car makers have convertibles?

I’ll never be without a sunroof again.

When is the last time you took a minute to look up at the clear night sky? What’s stopping you from connecting with the child who looked at the moon and wondered if there was really a man up there?

Things that made us happy then can make us happy again.

One thing that Leon’s article was missing was something that I realized he probably didn’t value the way I did. Rather than asking him to write about it, I decided to write about it myself, thus adding value back to it and giving myself more bang for my blogging buck. What? I’m honest.

Here’s the deal, though. Leon didn’t get this the way I didn’t understand why he almost peed his pants over the Chick-fil-a jokes: I didn’t connect to it on the same level he did. Leon has an unnatural love of Chick-fil-a sandwiches, so the jokes were tear producing for him. Ralphie took some time to talk about serious topics as well as comedy, and one of them was self-image.

His main comment on this was that our culture sucks in that we put all of this emphasis on looks. Women essentially wear makeup for other women and that as long as men are getting laid, they rarely care if you wear it. If they do care, there are bigger issues, etc. You can fill in the jokes there. He made fun of everyone, including himself. But, for 5 minutes of that show, he told every woman in that audience how beautiful they were and you know what? I think we needed to hear it. I know I did.

It doesn’t matter who is telling it, we need to hear it. Yes, I know “you should be able to feel beautiful on your own without someone telling you.” Well, I’m telling you that the idea of that is an idealistic one in this society. Shoulda woulda coulda.

The bottom line is that some people feel amazing about themselves and I think that’s awesome. They have managed to have an ideal sense of self that we all strive for and I truly think that they are amazing for getting there. That sense of self was helped to development by many people who made that person feel secure during development. Not everyone had that security and not everyone has been able to or chose to nurture that sense of self in that way. Most of still keep plugging along trying to hit the caboose of the self-esteem train just for a couple of minutes a year.

Where am I going with this? Hang on, I’m getting there.

So, after my Sunday night Ralphie boost, bless his little heart, I was feeling a little better and it was on to Tuesday night Gender Roles. We did an interesting exercise. It’s something that can be used to help people find their archetypes (symbolic images in folklore and those present in our current subconscious such as heroes, warriors, etc.). For me, while we did the exercise, I was able to embrace part of myself and find a warrior subtype that I connect with: I am an Amazon.

Yep. I’m a tall, big-boned, blobby-bodied, goddess who is stronger than she looks both physically and emotionally. I’m able to be rough and tumble and do what I have to do to protect what’s mine and, at the same time, be emotionally in touch with those around me and be sensitive to their needs. During our active imagination, I realized that I am more independent than I realized and that I’m more ok with what I look like and who I am than I thought I was.

Screw you, Jenny Craig. Screw you, Weight Watchers. I’m an Amazon.*

* And of course, due to cultural norms, I feel the need to defend my newfound Amazonian nature with an “I promise I’m not crazy or screwed up” comment. I’m just empowered. It’s a good feeling. And if you don’t like my Amazonian status, good. Find your own archetype and we can be archetypal enemies. It’ll be like Heroes Quest! Man, I used to love that game. Or Dungeons and Dragons (that one, not so much). Anyway, I’m an Amazon! But not the crazy kind.

How is it that the idea of a movie can make a person smell buttery popcorn to the extent that the can almost feel the oil on their hand? I haven’t had a horse as a pet for 20 years, but when we go to the fair, the smell of horses instantly transports me to that place.

We didn’t go watch fireworks on the 4th of July, but we could hear them from our home. The sounds of the booming moved me back to childhood and a time of magic connected to those bits of gunpowder.

Long before I understood how they worked, I believed they were magical pieces of clouds from the sky that lit up based on my thoughts. I’ve always been something of a dreamer. When the fireworks stopped, the thunder and lightning started and a rainstorm came in.

I closed my eyes and the magic continued.

Yes. Our senses are amazing things. They influence our perceptions so much. We can fool ourselves into believing whatever comforts us or makes us happy. It’s hard to remember that at times we are sad or discouraged, but it’s there.

Believe.