I've felt like I look "weird" since I was about 9 years old or so. I'd just transferred to a new school in the 4th grade, and I was in the bathroom one day, and saw what my face looked like for the first time in a while (I hadn't seen a reflection of myself for a long time prior to that), and was very taken aback by what I saw.
When I was really little, my mom still had all these little cardback books from her childhood that she gave to me and read to me once in a while (I think they were Golden Books or Whitman Tell-A-Tale books - a lot of them fell apart over the years, but we still have a couple) and one of them was a Lady and the Tramp book. I couldn't read at the time, but I liked looking at the illustrations (especially since they were illustrations of Disney characters I liked) and could make inferences about what was going on in the text based on what was happening in the pictures.
One illustration was of Lady (the proper, ladylike yet unworldly cocker spaniel) getting a look at herself via her reflection in a shattered window pane for the first time since her liaison with Tramp - her fur is filthy and riddled with clumps of mud, her pink ribbon is untied and askew, her nails are dirty, and her ears are all frizzy. Lady sees how disheveled she's become since she left home and is depicted in the illustration as being absolutely horrified, as if she can't believe that's really her she sees.
.....When I saw myself in the mirror that day at school, I knew exactly how Lady must have felt. I clearly remember thinking to myself, "No wonder I don't have any friends...I don't LOOK like anyone else here." And heck, I'm STILL less than thrilled with what I see when look in the mirror, even now that I'm in my 20's. ![Confused :?](./images/smilies/icon_confused.gif)
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I wish Sterling Holloway narrated my life.
"IT'S NOT FAIR!" "Life isn't fair, Calvin." "I know, but why isn't it ever unfair in MY favor?" ~ from Calvin and Hobbes