Getting to Know Me, Getting to Know All About Me (not really, but I thought it made a good title)

A few people have inquired about my blog ... and some have whispered to their friends, “What’s up with her?" (as I walked by them at Hanaford or Cole). Some feel as though I’m writing their thoughts or about their lives. Others, well, they just happened to come across my blog while reading other stories and remain neutral. 

I think it’s only fair to my readers to let them get to know me better - because there seems to be a lot of confusion in EG about who I am. Here goes …

Behind my warped sense of humor, wisecracks, love for satire, my take on life, and Italian/Irish “passion,” I am a big geek, and a serious one. There I said it: I’m a geek!!! I love spending endless hours admiring books in bookstores, libraries, and yard sales. Are you ready for this one? I planned a vacation to Portland, Oregon, to vist the largest used and new bookstore in the world—Powell’s.

While my friends vacationed on tropical islands, I was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Powell’s Bookstore — truly one of the best vacations of my life.

My writing experience: I went to graduate school for writing and was top in my class. I’m not boasting ... I’m only telling you because my professors were as perplexed with my work as perhaps you are. In fact, one professor questioned the authenticity of my work because it was so real and deep and surely my prose could not have come from a satire writer — surprise!!! Don’t you just love art? I like to describe myself as a diversified portfolio.

More Sharing: I was very competitive in graduate school and would spend eight hours at a time writing without ever realizing there was a world outside of my computer and thoughts. I still feel that way every time I write. My professors were often frustrated with me because I never wrote for a targeted audience (against all the rules).

Against the Rules: I write for myself first; always have and always will. I don’t think about what others say - good, bad, or indifferent. I can say at this age, I’m Zen with my words and the way I express my thoughts, fears, excitement, and pain into sentences, paragraphs, books, and one-liners. I do not measure my work by other peoples’ judgments, goals, or expectations.

I write about whatever is going on in my life or my head at the moment. I’m very tough on myself about my work and when I see a typo, misspelled word or missed punctuation mark after my piece goes to print, I get upset with myself.

My Angle: I don’t have one. I express my experiences in writing, you know ... Kay style. I guess what I’m trying to say to you is that I was born looking at the world with a different lens than most babies who hung out in the nursery with me. How could I not?

Considering that my mother’s doctor put her on meds two months before my delivery because she had pneumonia. What did Mom care? She was going to get a shot in the hip when it was time to deliver me, wake up wearing makeup and silk pajamas, and be handed a baby she only saw in between martinis with her friends.

Is it any wonder than that when I came into this world I was born cross-eyed? So now you know, I’m not “loopy, going crazy, or confused,” I’m just the cross-eyed baby born to a mother who did drugs (lol).

Not much has changed about me since elementary school, here's a glimpse into my younger-self and what my grade-school teachers had to say about me (my poor mother):

In the Beginning

“Kara spends most of her time in class daydreaming. She is always writing in her notebooks and she asks an insurmountable of questions — DAILY! It’s exhausting!"

“She questions everything! Kara loves getting up in front of the classroom presenting her work even when she is not asked to.”

“Most of my students dread public speaking. Not Kara, last week she presented some of her classmates work for fun. I’m flabbergasted with her; are you?”

“Kara likes to make everybody laugh in the classroom by writing poetry about the teachers. The math teacher was not amused with her prose."

“Please, Mr. & Mrs. Caldarone, make sure Kara does not bring any pencils, pens, crayons, or chalk to school with her. I will control her writing instruments from now on.”

“Today, Kara danced in the hallway on her way to lunch. I don’t think her behavior is ‘normal.’ When I asked Kara why she was dancing in line, she looked up at me and said, 'You can’t hear the music?’"

“Kara’s free spirit must be stifled. She is a very bad influence on her classmates.”

“During our English lesson today, I asked the class to write about being in another person’s shoes and what that might feel like to them. I used shoes as a metaphor. Kara, though, wrote about a pair of boots and how one boot got lost and the other one set out on an adventure to find its friend. Out of 25 students in my classroom, Kara’s Boot Story was published in the local paper. I, as well as other faculty members, find her boot story very troubling.”

"We caught Kara on the boys' side of the courtyard hanging from the monkey-bars. The boys play on one side and the girls play on the other. Kara is well aware of our rules, but yet she snuck by the teachers outside (a classmate of hers told us she saw Kara on the ground pretending to be a snake to sneak by us, which she did.)"

"Kara was on the bars for at least 10 minutes before she was detected. I sent her right down to the principal's office. When the principal asked her why she had done what she did, she said to him, "It's 1976, why do the girls get hopscotch and the boys get the fun monkey-bars--it's not right, it's not fair." 

"Thank you Mrs. Caldarone for picking her up in such short notice, it took the staff and me hours to recover from her reckless behavior, as well as as the other children. After Kara was asked to leave our school, some of the girls were chanting "Not fair, Kara is right, and She will fight."

How does she know the word feminist? Mrs. Caldarone we do not promote womens rights or anything else that goes against our policies or societies. You need to speak with her before we will allow her back in school."