The Old Me Looks At The New Me

I recently did a blog where I mentioned that I had multiple lives – before children and after delivery – and that one of my BC passions was attending science fiction conventions. A very dear and old friend posted a photo of me dressed as Princess Leia to that note on Facebook.

My husband asked me what my Princess Leia self would have to say about my current self. He was referring to my current obsession with KPop and KDrama. I was a bit startled since the two selves are worlds apart with absolutely no common ground. He chuckled and said, ‘yeah.’

My initial thought was that she would have been highly disappointed in me at having forsaken what was once dear and important to me. Well, not actually forsaken since I am eagerly awaiting ‘The Force Awakens’ but certainly it has taken a backseat when it once drove the car.

This was several weeks ago and I’ve had time to think about it. I remembered an incident in my freshman year of high school when we were given an English assignment to write a book report. I asked if I could do mine on ‘Fahrenheit 451.’ I was told that science fiction wasn’t real literature. Yes, that is a direct quote. Now, forty-five years later, that book is required reading.

During those secondary school years, I was laughed at, made fun of, looked down upon, and shunned by most of my classmates. Nowadays we would call it bullying. Back then it was just part of growing up and being different from everyone else. It was the price you paid for being a nerd when being a nerd wasn’t cool like it is today. But that thought struck several chords in me.

One was the ongoing battle with my youngest daughter who insisted growing up that her generation was the first to ‘invent’ everything. For example, when she went through her Goth phase which was triggered by and made popular again by Pauline Perrette’s portrayal of Abby in ‘NCIS’, she turned a deaf ear to my insistence that ‘Dark Shadows’ was MY generation and that I spent my elementary school years pretending that I was Angelique Collins.

Another was an old proverb, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” And how very true that is when I openly talk about my current passions of KPop and KDrama. I get those same looks now that I got my whole life. You know the ones I mean. The ones that say, “You’re a freak.” The ones that say, “You don’t belong.” The looks that are accompanied by snickers or outright laughs that only punctuate the unspoken words and make you feel unwanted and misunderstood.

And that was when I knew that my Princess Leia self would not have been disappointed in my current self. My Princess Leia self would have been and IS *proud* of my current self for continuing to be a little bit out of step with everyone else. My Princess Leia self would have never existed if I hadn’t been bold enough to be who I was instead of what everyone else was or who everyone else wanted me to be.

And someday, maybe not anytime soon, but someday, just like those other things, a new generation will ‘discover’ what I already have been a part of and make it popular. I think the current term for that is ‘hipster.’ I would say that is what I’ve been my whole life, but I’m sure that I would probably be corrected and told that my children’s generation invented that.