Tell us something about yourself that most people don't know

Thank you joblackford. Japan would be such a cool country to visit; seems like it would be a friendly atmosphere there. I can see why you wouldn't need to drive while you were there. Living in the backwoods, neither my Mom nor my aunt drove and my sister always refused to drive. After I got my license at 16 I was the official chauffeur for everyone.
And yes I did attend a larger high school in the closest town to us (50 students in my graduating class there.)

YES! Toe jail is the worst! Even if my shoes fit, my toes feel like they are suffocating. 

The testing is so intensive. When he was tested in Grade 6, my son did 6 hours of testing over two sessions, and like you said, it involved different types of puzzles and all sorts of things. Very intense. His testing at age 7 was not as intense and it involved more paper tests and input from my husband and myself.

He ended up going to a school for kids with learning disabilities (grades 3-6), and a few of the kids there were face blind. It's called Prosopagnosia. One little classmate of my son's was so sweet, but she literally couldn't even recall her Mom's face., she had no face memory whatsoever. She'd have to memorize other things about people to know who she was looking at/talking to. It can be a trait of Autism but I don't think she was Autistic. It made making friends very difficult for her, and she just thrived once she got to this small school for kids with LDs, where all the kids had challenges but also some amazing strengths.






Prosopagnosia




I think a lot of adults are realizing they are neurodivergent because they see it in their kids/get their kids tested, like I did. And so it becomes more well known. Sometimes I worry about over diagnosing, or people thinking they have it because it's "trendy" (apparently it's a huge Tik Tok trend to diagnose oneself with ADHD or Autism), but then I think - for many people, it's really just a matter of understanding your own strengths or weaknesses, and everybody could use that. It's not something that I even mention to people other than my family, and mainly now just my husband and son, but it's enough that I understand myself better, and like you said, I don't have to think that I'm bad or wrong... or lazy, or just annoying, or whatever the case may be. Of course, medication can really help people and I'm not dismissing that, just saying as a starting point it's good to understand oneself and not feel shame.

I'm finding everyone's facts about themselves really interesting.

Let's see, some factoids about me?

I was the Governor of Alaska Girls State in 1976. I grew up on Kodiak Island in Alaska, but the first time I saw Kodiak bear in the wild was when we returned for a visit in 2022. I spent my senior year in Japan--but can no longer speak Japanese. I was a college cheerleader at a small Christian college. I have learned to windsurf and fly gliders. I can drive a stick shift, although I don't like to do so.