Introduction to Velcroed

1981: Our heroine is born. She's somewhat beautiful, if hairless.

1982: Our heroine remains alive. Nothing overly significant happens at this point in her history.

1983: " " "

1984: Our heroine's father leaves her mother and her. Her mother relocates to childhood hometown, in with her brother and relatively newly-wed wife. This may or may not have serious psychological consequences for our heroine. Velcroed turns out to be a highly intelligent young girl. She can read at a level appropriate for a child more than twice her age. Everyone says she's beautiful, though years later, upon looking at photographs, she would definitely not make such an assertion.

1985: V's mother obtains a job as a secretary for a fairly large medical company. She begins to save enough money to buy a home for her and our heroine.

1986: V.'s mother somehow, miraculously, has saved enough for their very own home. V. begins kindergarten.

1987: V begins grade one. She is apparently highly intelligent, and it is strongly recommended that she skips to at least grade two. Probably wisely, V's mother refuses.

1988: V suspects that she may be socially "different" from the other children. But it's hard to tell.

1989: V has really awful hair this year.

1990: It becomes abundantly clear that V is somehow different, in some serious way, from the other students in the class. They reject her, for whatever reason, though she's cute and intelligent and has a vivid imagination. She doesn't speculate too much.

1991: V. has a mullet-ish haircut, still excels in school, still is marginally a social outcast.

1992: V's status as a social outcast is quite cemented. She continues to do very well in school. Her mother is diagnosed with lung cancer. When she learns of this, she doesn't really understand.

1993: V's mother is very ill. She begins junior high at a school where she knows only 2 students in her grade. She makes one very good friend.

1994: V's mother is still very ill, but there appears to be hope. V, for the first time in her life, has a number of rather close friends in her class.

1995: V's mother is clearly dying. She enters into what is clearly a depression and, for the first time in her life, ceases academic brilliance. Her circle of friends expands and she now has several very close friends. She also gets her first boyfriend who is, in retrospect, a total loser.

1996: V begins high school. Two weeks into the school year, V's mother dies. At first she feels nothing; she moves in with her only real family, her aunt, uncle, and two cousins. After months of numbness, she enters a very serious depression from which, a few months of therapy and grieving later, she seems to recover. She obtains boyfriend #2 and #3.

1997: V coasts through high school, hating it.

1998: No, really. Hating it. Thankfully it ends in June. She's off to university.

1999: University is a huge surprise. She makes a wide circle of wonderful friends and experiences many exciting things, some good, some bad. She has sexual experiences she, of course, regrets. She drinks and experiments with drugs which she sometimes regrets, but usually doesn't.

2000: The world does not end; Jesus does not return. She majors in English and Philosophy. Some of her professors think she's brilliant, most don't.

2001: V continues studying Literature and Philosophy. She decides that she loves Post-Modern literature and Philosophy, though the latter is definitely not what she personally ascribes to. She writes a very crappy novel. She loses her virginity and decides she wants to be an English teacher.

2002: She graduates and decides not to be a teacher after all. She spends the year working at a call center for a hotel company. She hates it for the most part, but doesn't know what else to do. She then decides she wants to be a teacher after all.

2003: V reapplies to the education programme at university #2. She gets back in.

2004: She goes to university #2 for her BEd degree. She does very well and falls madly in love. She and this man date for a few months. It's a short relationship but one that ends up being her most meaningful relationship of her life thus far.

2005: V continues the Education programme, to little fanfare.

2006: V drops out of the afore-mentioned programme. Again. She then suffers what can best be described as a nervous breakdown. This is a terrifying and awful time in her life. She is diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, which makes a lot of sense. She is put on anti-anxiety medication. After a brief period of unemployment and recovery-like activity, she becomes employed with the Red Cross doing community development stuff. She likes it, basically.

2007: V decides, for the third time, that she does want to be a teacher after all. She quits the Red Cross and reapplies to the Ed. programme. Having 1.75 degrees, this qualifies her for some work in the Education field, namely teaching English to second-language students. She returns to her old junior high school to teach two of these students, making awesome money, awaiting her internship in the fall that will, finally, result in an Education degree.

She's happy. She lives in a pretty sweet apartment. She has a pet fish and a kick-ass television and furniture, though the view is lacking. She is perpetually single, and suspects she always will be, though she is, at times, very beautiful, and no sludge in the brains-department. She can run a 7-minute mile, but usually she tuns a lot slower. She tries to be a good person. She tries very hard to be a good Christian. She thinks she succeeds, but it's hard sometimes.

And then one day in April, she starts a blog, for no apparent reason.