To Be Like Theodore

Many people think they have me pegged.

Considering the topics I'm delving in, it could give the erroneous impression that I'm one of those girly-girls whose favorite color is pink, who enjoyed shopping at 8, who begged their mothers to wear lipgloss at fourteen.

They are way off.

My most despised hue as a child was pink (I still avoid it).  It was my dream to be a tomboy, but I fall like a ton of bricks (splat) and can't throw. My out-of-school uniform until I was 15 was a ratty sweatshirt I had stolen from my brother and a Biz skirt. I refused to wear makeup at his wedding the same year, despite my mother's begging/threats. I didn't like to shop until 18. I never wore makeup on weekdays until a year ago - at age 24. 24!

Yes, I am slow.

I came to the conclusion that I don't want to be typical, and I thought my only other option at that time was to eschew fashion in any form. My sister-in-law changed that by showing me by example how to look chic yet unique (not necessarily trendy), and I developed my own sense of style.

I was thinking how everyone nowadays wants to be able to classify their fellow humans. People are no longer permitted to be different. If  one does one thing, then they must obviously do the other. No personal quirks are allowed; they must be categorized and labeled like insects in an entomologist's drawer. 

I was watching an interview of Edmund Morris, who wrote a trilogy on Teddy Roosevelt. 

Teddy was an eccentric, a moralist, an elitist,  an intellectual, a Republican, the trust-buster, a regulator of big business, a man of society, a voracious hunter, the first conservationist - a man of many facets and talents, even seeming contradictions. 

Morris says that he would not have been elected nowadays; presidents must have monochromatic lives (lawyers who become professional politicians) who do not diverge away from their party's mission. Any sort of interesting dimensions are shmecked out and demonized.

I'm not saying that I am not guilty of that sort of prejudgment and classification. But then again, I am sure I have been prejudged and classified. All that matters is that we don't act on it, that we can meet people with our shotgun opinions shoved to the side, clearing the mind for open and welcoming thoughts.