My Family Is Not Very Religious Most Of The Time. We Pray At Christmas And Easter And Thanksgiving Dinners,

My family is not very religious most of the time.  We pray at Christmas and Easter and Thanksgiving dinners, and my mom’s entire side of the family excluding her parents and siblings is hardcore religious so whenever we do anything with them it’s kind of religious.

But the point is, most of the time we aren’t, but every year at Christmas time, a church in the next town over puts on a Bethlehem and it’s kind of a tradition to go.  They go all out.  The building is massive, and they’ve got it all decked out.  There’s animals and stalls and everyone is in costume and in character.  When you get there, they give you some pennies and you can go and barter for cool little trinkets, and there’s other more expensive things you can buy with your own money.  And they have the best apple cider.  All in all, it’s pretty cool.

But anyway.  We go every year, bundled up in hats and scarves and mittens, and have a good time.  We’ve been doing it for as long as I can remember, and my mom talks about going when she was a kid.

I’m going to mention again that everyone is massively in character, especially the really super hardcore religious adults.  Because this is an important fact.

Every year since I was about thirteen or so, there’s been this one lady who worked at a stall selling ponchos (I have, like, three.  They’re really cool).  She was probably there before that, but I was thirteen when she started trying to barter for me to marry her son, who was also about thirteen.

“What a pretty little thing.  I think you’d make a very good wife for my son.  These are your parents?  I’ll give you six goats for your daughter’s marriage to my son.”

Her son, meanwhile, is in the “shop” behind her looking absolutely mortified and like he’d rather be anywhere else than there, and I’m pretty sure I probably looked just as embarrassed.

My parents gave her some sort of excuse, like it wasn’t enough goats or they weren’t ready to marry me off yet or something, and we moved on.

The next year we’re back again, and come up near to the same stall.

“Ah!  You’re back again!  Have you married your daughter off yet?  I can up my offer to nine goats and three chickens for your daughter to marry my son.”

Somehow she remembered the exact people she’d tried to buy their daughter off of for an entire year?  So my parents are refusing her offers again and me and the son are trading embarrassed looks and we go on our way.

And then it happens again.  And again.  And again.  Each and every one of the last six years this lady has tried to buy me in goats to be her son’s wife. 

 A couple years ago when we were waiting in line to get inside my mom jokingly said that they should accept this year and see what she’d do and I completely refused because it was mortifying enough as it was.

One year we brought my friend with us and we’re waiting outside and my sister was like “Are you gonna sell Kee this year?” and my dad was like “Maybe if there’s enough goats” and my friend was confused as heck and I was like “This lady tries to buy me to marry her son every year.  I told you that” and she’s like “Yeah but I didn’t think this was a thing that actually happened” and she was still skeptical and by the time my parents had finished refusing the lady’s offer, she’s killing herself laughing and then spent the next few months telling me I couldn’t look at guys because I already had a fiancée.

Anyway, it happened again this Christmas and the son has somehow gotten almost ridiculously attractive since last year.  The speech this year had something to do with how I was far too old to not have a husband yet, and the son and I just rolled our eyes at each other as his mom tried to barter with my parents for me.

This year’s offer was twenty six goats and nine chickens.  My sister looked up how much goats are worth, and was mad our parents didn’t sell me so she could have sold the goats and gotten $2000-$8000 for them.  My dad says they’re waiting out on an offer of a camel.  My brother thinks they should have it more than once a year so he can get more apple cider.

Now I’m back at uni, and in my first psych class of the semester the guy sitting beside me looked really familiar.  

As in his-mom-tries-to-buy-me-with-goats-every-Christmas familiar.

That kind of familiar.

We introduced ourselves before class started and I sat there for a couple minutes readying to make a total fool of myself in case I was wrong before turning to him again.

“This is going to sound really weird if you aren’t who I think you are, but by any chance does your mom try to buy you a wife with goats every Christmas?”

His friend gives me a weird look as he walks past me to sit on the other side of him, but he’s definitely putting the pieces together.

“That’s you?  Bethlehem in [city name], right?  God, my mom is so mortifying.”

And we both kinda laugh and meanwhile his friend is giving us both weird looks now because apparently he didn’t know that his friend’s mom was trying to buy him a wife using livestock.

So he turns to his friend and is like

“Oh, I forgot to introduce you.  Danny, this is my fiancée, Kee.”

And I kinda rolled my eyes and was like

“I’m not actually your fiancée.  Your mom hasn’t offered my parents enough goats yet.  But apparently my dad will sell me for a camel.”

And he laughed and shook his head like

“I am not telling my mom that.  I don’t want to see what she has planned for if your parents ever accept.”

So yeah.  His friend was really confused by that point and we explained it to him and it turns out he’s pretty cool and we’re Facebook friends now and hang out in psych classes.  Apparently his mom only ever tries to buy me for him and she and my mom had gone to the same church growing up which is why she can always pick us out.

So yeah.  That’s the story of how some lady tries to use goats to buy me to be her ridiculously attractive son’s wife every Christmas, and how he’s in my class and we’re friends now.

Johnny really said that Jaehyun is gonna be his future baby’s uncle. NCT’s friendship is one for the books.

She could step on me, and I would say thank you

[FANCAM] 190111 Lisa’s dance cover of “Swalla” by Jason Derulo ft. Nicki Minaj & Ty Dolla $ign @ IN YOUR AREA Tour in Bangkok © beebong | Do not reupload

“Fan fiction often demonstrates a high level of knowledge of and insight into its source texts (or canons, in fan fiction vocabulary) and, as an allusive literary form, rewards equally high levels of knowledge in its readers. This knowledge has an erotic inflection (as, famously, in early English translations of the Bible, where to know is to intimately penetrate); fans have not only understanding but intimacy with their canon, and fan fiction increases this intimacy. Theorists of fan fiction often speak of fan fiction as filling the gaps in a source text, a phrase with its own sexual undertones that also describes fan fiction’s self-assumed role as interlinear glossing of a source text. Silences and absences in the source text act as barriers to intimacy, and fan fiction writers fill these silences with their imaginative activity, enabling their own deeper understanding of the world and characters of the source text. In its current context in popular media fandom, fan fiction is, among other things, a heuristic tool: a mental technology that facilitates understanding of a text by means of an affective hermeneutics—a set of ways of gaining knowledge through feeling.”

—

Wilson, Anna. 2016. “The Role of Affect in Fan Fiction.” In “The Classical Canon and/as Transformative Work,” edited by Ika Willis, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 21.http://dx.doi.org/10.3983/twc.2016.0684. (via wildehacked)

[F]an fiction is, among other things, a heuristic tool: a mental technology that facilitates understanding of a text by means of an affective hermeneutics—a set of ways of gaining knowledge through feeling.

*Ding!* Lightbulb. It is exactly this for me. (Other things too, sure, but just… overwhelmingly this.)

GIVE MY MANS SOME LINES BRO

Okay, so you’ve been called smart all your life. As a kid, you were one of the smartest in your class. Maybe you could read at a much higher level than your peers, or you could fly through multiplication drills like they were nothing. Then, you get to high school and suddenly you’re surrounded by lots of people who were ‘gifted kids’. None of what made you ‘special’ seems all that important now. Your work is actually challenging, and it’s actually requiring effort.

If you’re experiencing this, just know that so many students have gone through the same thing. Maybe it happens in high school, maybe college. But a lot of us who were considered gifted as kids suddenly run into this and it challenges our entire identity. It can be paralyzing, but it’s 100% possible to overcome it and succeed! I’ve compiled a few tips for ex-gifted kids dealing with impostor syndrome and self-doubt. I’m not a therapist, psychologist, or any sort of education expert. I’m just speaking to my own experiences, and I welcome any input from others who have insight into this as well!

1. Understand that working hard does not mean you aren’t intelligent. If something doesn’t come naturally to you, that’s not a reason to give up. Believing that people can do things “just because they were born with a talent for it” is only going to hurt you. It’s not true! People may have natural aptitudes for things, but hard work is involved even for the smartest or most talented people. You are capable of learning anything, and you don’t have to be “good at it” right away to do so.

2. Comparison will kill you. You are your only competition. Focusing on how you rank with other students, and comparing yourself to your classmates is going to exhaust you. By focusing on others, you can’t put your full energy into focusing on your work and yourself. You belong. Even if you struggle with your work, you belong. Focus on your own self-improvement and doing your best.

3. Don’t focus on the goal, focus on your current actions. If you’re always thinking about the future, and about whether you’ll get into that school or that program or win that award or get that scholarship, you’re not using that time to get work done. Don’t worry about college applications, just do your homework. Focus on what you are doing now to reach your goals so you can apply to schools with confidence later.

4. Your grades may not reflect intelligence, but they do reflect work ethic. Don’t let others convince you that grades mean nothing. They sure as hell mean a lot to colleges, and thinking that you should “reject the current education system” is not going to harm anyone but yourself. If you don’t feel like you’re learning anything in your high school classes, that’s all the more reason to want to get into a university that will challenge you. If you put effort into your work, it will not let you down. Your hard work will be reflected on your transcript. Don’t lose focus.

5. Talk to someone. Let people know if you’re struggling. It can be hard to feel like you aren’t allowed to identify as “smart” or to feel pressure to constantly compete and improve. I went to a highly competitive high school that pushed kids to cope in dangerous ways. This is not healthy and not okay. If you’re feeling overwhelmed you need to find healthy coping mechanisms. Speak with someone you trust and don’t let yourself spiral. Don’t try to self medicate. Your well being is always more important than your grades. Period.

6. Enjoy yourself. School may seem like hell, and you may feel like it will never end and you’ll always be stressed and worried. But high school is only four years, and you can do things during that time that you probably won’t ever again. Take advantage of things that seem fun, even if people think they’re nerdy or weird. Try and remind yourself that you’re lucky to have your education and you have the power to do great things with it. Don’t lose sight of your own ability and your bright future!