"If you learn nothing else in life, learn and remember this, Reality is malleable."Inanimate Sexuality
Now that I have your attention,
One of my earliest memories and I'm talking three years old here, was my Grandfather taking me, my brother and two sisters to a neighborhood pizza joint in Long Island, I remember that we did this probably once a week.
On one side of each booth was a shiny, chrome, art deco Jukebox remote just like the one pictured above. While we waited for the pizza to cook, I would study the letters and numbers intently. Now granted, I did not know the difference between letters and numbers, not being able to read yet. But I could differentiate the shapes as all being unique.
This is where it gets weird.
For some unknown reason my three year old mind assigned a gender for each letter and number. This was not something that I had to work out. There was no sexual ambiguity here. The letters and numbers were plain and simply either a boy or girl. Yea, I know, BIZARRE you say. But wait, don't run away just yet, I'm not finished.
My two sisters being older than I, would come home from school with the idea that they were the teachers they had idealized that day and took it upon themselves to teach me to read their school books (Under the apple tree, Dick and Jane Etc.) and thus, I was reading on a second grade level just prior to kindergarten. During my entire academic career, letters and numbers maintained their specific gender identity, whether print or script or the ever evolving family of fonts and stylizations
There were no sex changes, cross dressing or leanings. Each and every letter and number remained the same sex as I had originally envisioned. Today I am a graphic artist by trade and utilize literally thousands of fonts and typefaces every week. And no matter how you shape it, twist, bend or embellish it. This odd, useless genderfication persists, unchanging and never forgotten. I only hope for the sake of my sanity, (Stop, I know what you're thinking), that one day I will know what all this means.
Oh,... and keep your Freudianism's to yourself, for cripes sake. I was only three.
On one side of each booth was a shiny, chrome, art deco Jukebox remote just like the one pictured above. While we waited for the pizza to cook, I would study the letters and numbers intently. Now granted, I did not know the difference between letters and numbers, not being able to read yet. But I could differentiate the shapes as all being unique.
This is where it gets weird.
For some unknown reason my three year old mind assigned a gender for each letter and number. This was not something that I had to work out. There was no sexual ambiguity here. The letters and numbers were plain and simply either a boy or girl. Yea, I know, BIZARRE you say. But wait, don't run away just yet, I'm not finished.
My two sisters being older than I, would come home from school with the idea that they were the teachers they had idealized that day and took it upon themselves to teach me to read their school books (Under the apple tree, Dick and Jane Etc.) and thus, I was reading on a second grade level just prior to kindergarten. During my entire academic career, letters and numbers maintained their specific gender identity, whether print or script or the ever evolving family of fonts and stylizations
There were no sex changes, cross dressing or leanings. Each and every letter and number remained the same sex as I had originally envisioned. Today I am a graphic artist by trade and utilize literally thousands of fonts and typefaces every week. And no matter how you shape it, twist, bend or embellish it. This odd, useless genderfication persists, unchanging and never forgotten. I only hope for the sake of my sanity, (Stop, I know what you're thinking), that one day I will know what all this means.
Oh,... and keep your Freudianism's to yourself, for cripes sake. I was only three.
posted by Michuli @ 9:19 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
I understand that there are those who "see" the color or experience the "taste" of numbers and letters, so perhaps noting the gender of them isn't so strange after all.
I thank you most kindly for not fitting me with a backwards, cross-armed jacket.
-michuli ;-)
Bah, just when I was pulling the padded van around...
I go to resturaunt's with assigned genders, but I assume that's easier since they are named. You are certainly unique.
Yea,...like that's not the pot calling the kettle Ralph.
That won't seem weird at all to anyone who watched the TV show "The Letter People" as a kid. All the vowels were girls and everyone else was a boy. I've thought of them like that ever since.
Heather
www.spiritblog.net
I have never seen the show, but I would have disagreed with it. the vowels "e","i" and "o" are obviously male. Although "i" would be a juvenile.
Hmmm... I reiterate. The vowel "i" would be a juvenile, not I would be....aww nevermind.
He's not one of us!!
I think it's your artistic mind at work, even at that young age. I'm not artistic, I'm more analytical.
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