Tag Archives: extrovert

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Dance

Sometimes I am an extrovert
sometimes an introvert
we are all a mix
we all have preferences
which can change with time
and situations

I would go to parties
check the exits
and spend time studying the bookshelves
when I was tired of people
greeting familiar friends on the shelves
and knowing a little more
about my host

I start dancing
meet my spouse
we took dance classes
dance with lots of people
and invented moves
and taught each other

Dance takes balance
paying attention to a partner
sometimes we dance with someone new

Sometimes I am an extrovert
sometimes I am an introvert
and I almost always love to dance

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I took the photograph yesterday through my front window. A bird dance!

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: extrovert.

We love to dance to this rather naughty song. It’s pretty extroverted!

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The introverted thinker on the playground

My daughter is an introverted thinker. Sometimes this is extremely entertaining.

When she was in first grade she came home part way through the year and said, “I want to get my hair cut like a boy.” “Short?” I said. “Yes,” she said. I didn’t think about it too much but made an appointment. I thought it was because she has that fine tangly hair that is really difficult to comb.

On the way to the salon, my intuition kicked in and I realized that something was up. She was in that deep abstraction mode, thinking.
I said, “Why do you want to get your hair cut like a boy?”
Her reply, “The boys chase the girls on the playground.”
Hmmmm.
“Do they chase you?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“They are not sure if I am a boy or a girl.”
“You don’t want them to be sure?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“There is another class that gets to recess before us. They get the tire swing. They have a club that is all boys. They won’t let us use the tire swing.”
“You are going to fool them. Okay.” I sat back to see how she would proceed with whatever plan she had regarding the tire swing.

She had her hair cut very short. The next morning she chose hand-me-downs from her brother. A rugby shirt, a navy blue sweatshirt, flannel lined thick jeans and his old hiking boots. She had never worn any of them before and her usual preference was pink. I took her to school. She went into her class and just went to stand by some other children, not saying anything at all. They commented on her haircut.

I went to the principal and described my daughter’s plan, mostly because I thought it was quite brilliant. He said, “Oh, we have to do something about this.” I said, “I wasn’t trying to get anyone to interfere.” He said, “No, but we have a playground policy. They are allowed to have clubs, but they are not allowed to exclude anyone. In other words, no ‘boys only’ clubs. We will hold an assembly to remind them.”

So for a seven year old introverted thinker on the playground, a problem required careful thought and a plan, which she then carried out. I liked the approach of challenging gender. As far as I could tell it did not occur to her to ask for help. I do wonder at times what other plans she is implementing.

She did get to use the tire swing. Then she went back to wearing pink.

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The Extroverted Feeler and the Terminator

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: grateful. I have a series of stories about my son and daughter. My son is the extroverted feeler….

 

The Extroverted Feeler and the Terminator

From the time the extroverted feeler is 3.5 until he turns 7, we live in Colorado, in Alamosa.

Alamosa is isolated high desert, in the San Luis Valley, at 7500 feet. We are surrounded by mountain passes, the lowest over 9000 feet, to the south. The San Luis Valley is named “Land of Cool Sunshine”. We have over 300 days of sun a year, but the temperature drops in this high desert valley every night, about 30 degrees. One day a fellow doctor announces that we’ve had a record high at night in the summer: 56 degrees. The locals complain about a heat wave when the day time temperature gets to 80.

My husband will talk to anyone, anyone and is interested in everyone. We get to know a German man, younger than us, I think through the gym.

He flies back to Germany to see family. Alamosa has a one gate airport and is really expensive to fly out of. He drives 250 miles, to Denver, to save money. Over a pass that is 10,000 feet plus.

He returns and is driving home.

He wakes up in a hospital. When the ventilator tube is removed.

We are visiting and he tells us about it. “When I woke up, they asked me what my insurance was.”

I said, “It’s in my wallet.”

“Where is your wallet?”

“In the glovebox. My truck.”

And then they show him a photograph of his truck.

He fell asleep and rolled his truck. Multiple times. There was no glovebox. Really there was not much left except bits of frame and wheels. And he’d rolled it about 17 miles from home. He almost made it the 250 miles. It was awful. Horrifying.

We are talking to him at his house a couple of months after the accident, when he is finally home. He was lifeflighted back to Denver after the accident. He’d broken an arm and his leg in multiple places and rib fractures and at home still has metal rods going into his arm. External fixation, holding bits of bone together.

My son is six. He keeps looking at our German friend and looking up above him.

Our friend notices. He is sitting in an armchair. Right behind him on the wall is a poster of the Terminator. Our friend is big and blond and has a Terminator build.

Our friend grins at my son when he realizes what the extroverted feeler is looking at. “Yes, that’s me. I am the Terminator. Part metal and part human.”

We laugh with him, glad that his sense of humor has survived….

…and had my son seen the Terminator? I suspect that he had, when I was off at work. His main sitter was a family across the street from us, a couple with teenagers. He loved hanging out with the teens. I think he got to watch a lot of movies that I didn’t know about….Our friend still had a bit of a German accent which would make it all the more compelling….

The photograph is my sister dancing with the invisible spirits… no, really we are on a road trip in the 1980s and stop for a hackysak break. She is gone from cancer.