Random Things From My Childhood

• I was the top kid in my kindergarden.
  
• When I was 9 my mom took a picture of me in my new bathing suit before a pool party and when she first saw the picture stated that I was going to grow up to be busty
• During 3rd grade I started noticing I was smarter than a lot of the kids in my class in 4th grade I noticed I had an easy time making people laugh.
• By 5th grade I knew I was never going to be pretty or popular. I decided I was going to get people to like me by being smart and funny
• My 5th grade teacher told my parents (and me) that "Rayann is very intelligent but she doesn't apply herself" That is pretty much a description of me all through life
• When I was 8 I saw a picture of Matthew Broderick in a newspaper accompanying an article about the new movie he was in "Project X"...I read it over and over and instantly developed a crush on him. I went to school the next day and told all the kids he was my favorite actor. 23 years later and I still have that crush.
• In 6th grade I fell hard for Neil Patrick Harris and from age 11-14 I managed to collect over 650 pictures of him. I dressed as Doogie Howser in 7th grade for Halloween and all thru 7th and 8th grade got stuck with the nickname "Doogie". When he came out as gay I felt cheated,and like I had lost something essential to my childhood and I cried.
  
• I had my first kiss on a Tuesday in June at age 12 on a bench at Acacia Middle School. My boyfriend was 15 and rode his bike all the way from the high school to hang out with me. He was killed in a car accident in December of my 18th year. I stood up at his funeral and said that he had been my first love.
• I grew a cup size each grade from 7-9th starting as a B at the beginning of 7th and finishing at a D at the beginning of 9th. At age 12 I started learning how much power breasts hold.
• I wasn't conventionally pretty or popular but I had personality,brains, and big breasts and so I was not single from June of 1991 until October 9, 2007 except for 2 months in 11th grade and 2.5 months at age 28.
  
• I grew up with out cable my parents finally decided when I was 19 they wanted better reception and we got Dish Network.
  
• In 1988 I watched gavel to gavel coverage of both the republican and democrat conventions. I remember the kids in class asking me what the differences were between the 2 parties. I was already a republican at age 10.
  
• From 5th grade until graduation I missed only one day of school. I was really sick with the flu in 8th grade and I begged my mom all day to pleeeease let me go anyway. She didn't me. In 11th grade I had the flu for three weeks and I never missed a day. I would sit in my classes wrapped in a blanket, sucking down Halls. I don't know what happened in college, I lost my motivation I guess I didn't care very much if I missed a class.

<3Rayann

Hey You Should Write a Blog!

I've been told since high school that I should be a writer. If you spend any time with me you'll notice I have a tendency to either ramble uncontrollably or I go completely the opposite direction and am stone silent. My head is always teeming with debris and I often find myself in conversation with myself. I have an excuse for this of course. I am an only child and am therefore authorized to talk to myself and not be classified as insane ( now granted there are people who would classify me insane for other reasons but that's a whole other blog). Anyway as I was saying I am an only child and developed the skill of entertaining myself for hours at a time. This came in handy during college when I had hours between classes and nowhere to go. This also worked out nicely while killing time in front on my ex boyfriend's work for 8-10 hours at a time. My mind is constantly running, rarely is there a quiet still moment. It's pretty much going from the moment I wake up until the second I fall asleep. As a child there weren't really many kids around my house to play with so I spent a lot of time on my own. I used to tell myself stories and sometimes pretend I was performing on some sort of tv show. One of my favorite anecdotes about my life as a lone child is all the times I played tether-ball against myself in the backyard. Hitting it back and forth leaning around one side of the pole and then the other. It never seemed out of the ordinary to me. But I digress...
I tend to collect a lot of useless and random knowledge, and (un)fortunately I have a knack for remembering the strangest things and the most random details. I'll remember the exact date I met someone and what they were wearing at that moment. My mind stores the smallest details about so many things, and then there are some events and details I couldn't remember if I thought all day long. All of this stored info is sometimes fantastic and sometimes its overwhelming and crushing. A song starts playing and instantly I'm flooded with memories associated with that song. Now that's fairly normal I suppose. But I go way beyond songs. Foods, scents, colors, places, movies, tv shows, items of clothing, certain words...all can send me into a flood of tears. In a way its paralyzing. I can't set foot in a Cold Stone Creamery because I used to go all the time with my ex. If I'm in a shopping center with one in it I can't bear to go near it, much less go in. Is it ridiculous? Probably is, but its just how things are. It was a long time before I could bring myself to walk into a Panda Express without being overwhelmed with sadness. I haven't been able to bring myself to conquer Cold Stone. And yes,before you even ask I'm in therapy, have been for nearly a year now.
I don't necessarily expect everyone to understand some of my quirkiness, that would be unfair to insist upon. Sometimes I don't understand them myself I just accept that its a part of me. I've been told a lot lately that I'm unique and that its a good thing so I'm just going to go ahead and believe it. I suppose everyone has something out of the norm, I'm just more likely to let you know about mine.
So anyway I should get back to the whole "you should be a writer" deal that I started this blog with. Back in the day I used to be quite the writer. Going back to elementary school I was always good at book reports and essays. I was never quite as good with fiction for some reason, well with some exceptions, but there are always exceptions. I took great pride in my essay writing and it was like getting a trophy when my essay was read as an example to the class. I knew I wasn't ever going to be popular and pretty, but I could be the smart, funny girl. One of my proudest moments came at MSJC . The deal was if a paper was late it was graded down for each day late. I turned in one paper a class late and therefore the highest grade I could have gotten was a B+. I got an A and was told by the prof that he just couldn't give an essay that good a B. Once I got to Cal Baptist however I had my spirit crushed. I think most people at the time knew about my huge crush on Dr. Orr and the day he told me that he really didn't like my writing style and that it was hard to grade my essays fairly. I tried so hard over and over to just once have him like a paper and rarely did it actually happen and it devastated me every time. Professors at CBU either loved my writing or found it intolerable. I eventually just gave up for the most part. I wasn't smart anymore I thought. I did take an English class at Riverside Community college while I was at CBU and I got an A an had one of my papers read in front of the class as the best in the class. One time I wrote an amazingly good short story for a class and the class and professor( Dr. Lu-who always loved everything I wrote for some reason) gave me a very good review. My boyfriend at the time tho found lots of things wrong with it and literally laughed at parts of it, he was always very good at making me feel stupid. Anyway somehow I managed to pull off an English degree( and a Poly Sci degree as well),but after all those years of feeling quite inadequate I never thought anyone would actually care to read anything I wrote. A few of my friends ,however have been encouraging me for a while now to get my thoughts and stories out "on paper" so to speak and so I'm here. I don't intend for the majority of blogs to go anywhere near this long, but you know how it is when you get on a roll

<3Rayann