I am not really a “get into a group person and do things in a group.”

I am one of those people who knows what I need or want to do, and in most cases I do what I need to do, without being told when, what and how to do it.

I get resistant if I am being dictated to.

With that in mind I tend to avoid the blog challenges that do the rounds.  Partly because I write when I write, what I want to write about and if I don’t have something to say then I don’t.

Blog Challenges require you to be mindful that you are being given a guideline/suggestion/instruction and you must “play along” …. I saw this one floating around today, and I am going to attempt to try my hand at it.

I can’t promise I will do all the posts, on time, and as indicated, but it might help me to get out of my writing funk – and get things out of my head and onto this pseudo page.

Writers Bootcampza is running this challenge for July 2014.

REMEMBER THE GOAL: The goal is to help each other to develop a rhythm of writing, improve on the general quality of your writing and… just write.

Please also read the submissions of other bloggers and leave comments on the writing. Be nice.

Basic rules:

1. Use the topic as a starting point, not as a title. Your title can be anything you like.
2. It’s a blog post, not an essay or a short story. So don’t worry too much about intro, body, conclusion. Just write. You’ll find tips for writing blog posts online.
3. IMPORTANT TIP: If you think you need more time to improve it, stop. You don’t. Just “ship it.” (Thanks Seth Godin.)
4. Use whatever writing style you favour (funny, serious, emotive) or a mix of these.
5. Try to read and comment on at least one other person’s blog post every day of the challenge. Ideally, read more and comment more. That’s the whole point.
6. Set yourself a reminder each evening/morning, to check the topic posted at 6pm SA time (see @Writersbootcmp on Twitter) and book in 30-60 minutes that day to write.

Today’s prompt is :  Even if you know me well, you don’t know this.

As a child I was very nervous and often anxious and filled with a lot of fear.  I am not sure if this is just the way I was or a side effect of my parents rather precarious marriage.  My parents were probably the two people in the world who should never have got married to each other.

Both came from rather “difficult” families and had experienced little in the way of love and affection growing up.

The usual story ensues, and it was young love, or lust and then pregnancy and getting married when my mother was 17.  By 23 she had 3 children, and  a pretty poor support system in my father.  Derick was not a nice person, he was a terrible father, and I fear an almost worse husband and provider.

The short part of it was that I was a sensitive child and with all of this going on around me, I developed a few “coping” mechanisms and side effects.

1.  I sucked my thumb — way past the point where it was acceptable to suck your thumb.  I can’t recall when I stopped, but it was way into primary school.  I would come home after school, and once things were done, I would take my favourite blanket (it was a tartan blanket with tassels around the edges) and lie on the couch.  Pull the blanket up over my mouth to just under my eyes and suck my thumb, whilst I rubbed the blanket’s edge against the side of my nose.  I did eventually stop, but I am not sure how old I was.

I had forgotten that I sucked my thumb until Isabelle found her “doggie” and put her thumb in her mouth, and she does the same thing.  She takes the doggie’s ear and rubs it against the side of her nose.

2. I developed a fairly bad stutter when I was between 5 and 7 years old.  Possibly it was set off by starting school, but I really struggled to get words out.  I saw a speech therapist for about two or three years.  Added to that I developed a “lisp” which is particularly disturbing if your first name has two “s” and “t” sounds in it. It was pretty traumatic.

3.  I went to a speech therapist and she assisted me to slow my thoughts down, and think about what I was saying before I started, and also some calming techniques.  My stutter did eventually disappear, my lisp however is still with me.

4.  The speech therapist that I was sent to was afrikaans – so she made me sound out the “r” in an afrikaans manner.  After a year I had managed to be rolling my “r’s” with the best of them.  My mother was horrified, my very English teacher nearly had a little breakdown. I was hastily assigned to another speech therapist to repair the “afrikaans” accent I had managed to acquire.

5.  I was petrified of the dark for most of my life – and still am on occasion.  It is totally irrational, and it is terrifying.  Not nervous, but silent scream deadly afraid of the dark.  I slept with the light on for many years, and only in high school started to move to the point where I could sleep in my room, in the dark with the room door closed.  I still get a bit panicky if I have to walk through the house in the dark, or venture out into the yard at night.  Hence the reason I avoid watching scary movies if I can.

So that may or may not have been a few things that you may or may not have known about me.  Well now you do.