Secret Badassery

One morning recently I was going to wear a white t-shirt to do work experience in an office, but I decided that I am, in fact, an anarchist, so I wore a black t-shirt instead. My subtle rebellion against the establisment was ignored. I was not stopped at reception by a bouncer saying 'You can't come in here young lady, that black t-shirt is far too hardcore for the office environment.' Once again, my secret badassery is so stealthy that nobody has caught on to it yet.

Sometimes, if I am feeling particularly tired or grumpy, I consider putting on eyeliner, as if that would be a noticable statement against authority and would frighten people on the train. 'Imagine,' I sometimes think, 'If I wore nail varnish, that'll show everyone that I am wild and out of control.' I seem to have made up completely non-existent uniform regulations so that I can mentally rebel against the adult world without actually rebelling. If I listen to angry teenage-girl music while wearing boots I somehow assume that this is it, this is the revolution. I am the Mockingjay. 

In truth, I respect authority. I used to cry when I got told off in school, apart from when I was sent out of maths for laughing because that was ridiculous*. I obediently follow instructions. Sometimes I automatically refuse cups of tea because I feel like I don't want to waste time and resources, then I have to awkwardly backtrack and say that I actually would like a cup of tea, please, thank you, if it's not too much trouble. All my memories that involve actual bad behaviour are followed by even stronger memories of tearfully apologising. The toughest, most rebellious thing I have ever done was put glitter gel in my mum's facecream, when I was eight. I tried to say it wasn't me, I tried to blame it on my dad, or on my brother, who can't walk, and who in the unlikely event of gaining the use of his legs probably wouldn't think 'At last, I can make her go to work with glitter on her face, that'll show her.' Then I admitted it was me, cried, and was sent to my room. 

Basically: beware me. I may never have had a detention, I may have had a nightmare last night about being late for a lesson because I left my bag in another classroom, but I am a RECKLESS, UNTAMEABLE BADASS.** 

*I was forbidden from smiling for the rest of the lesson, as if it's illegal to actually enjoy maths. 

**Perhaps not. 

The Return of the Anne

After a two year hiatus, I have decided to re-start my old teenage blog.

This is for several reasons. Firstly, I can't remember why I stopped blogging. Perhaps the sad news story that I read on the 15th March 2012 was so harrowing that I suffered some kind of brain lapse, and subsequently repressed the memory that I ever had a blog. Perhaps I was overcome with university work. Perhaps I took a deliberate leave of absence from blogging to focus on my personal life. Maybe I just decided to tweet everything instead. I will never know.

Secondly, my parents found this blog one night in 2013. From the sound of it, they sat up for most of the night reading it. My dad then printed off my Christmas-related blog posts and stuck them on the labels of my Christmas presents. While I found their enthusiastic response encouraging, I was pretty embarrassed. They didn't create me and raise me to adulthood so they could Google me. Nonetheless, my dad seemed disappointed that I no longer had a blog, so maybe I'm restarting this as a desperate cry for further approval. Hi Dad? Dad? Are you reading this? Dad?

Thirdly, I think of things to blog about all the time. I enjoyed blogging. I miss blogging. When I tried to blog about my time in Indiana it eventually failed, because I was tweeting everything I blogged, I was extremely busy watching every season of Grey's Anatomy, and I got acclimatised into America so that it stopped being as much of a novelty. People stopped mispronouncing my name. They asked me the same questions ("Do you watch Sherlock?" "So do you, like, drink a lot of tea?") over and over again. Now I have new things to blog about. A lot has happened since March 2012. I am a real grown-up, even though I'm currently reading the most recent Percy Jackson book and I still can't drive.

So, to the hopefully at least one person who is actually reading this (Dad, turn off the computer and go to bed), expect more blog entries in the future.