although on a lighter note..... ; ) have fun when the girls learn how to drive. I would not wish that on anyone ( hehehe )  Did you know that driving an Infinity at over 100 mph feels like it is doing 60 mph? My Dad had the patience of a saint and understood my need for speed.

Sure, I was a quiet kid but I have assertiveness and aggressiveness in there too. My parents were OK with it to a point but after that it was who the heck do you think you are? and all they would have to do is give me "the look". Mom would say, "I don’t like the way you talk to Mr. So and So." That was it and she didn’t make me feel bad because she knew the hormones played a role in it. I wanted to please her and eventually I adjusted my behavior. The reward was her being happy and if Mom is happy then everyone is happy.

I can still floor someone with attitude but the only thing that accomplishes is resentment by them and thus defeats any objectives that I had in mind :)  When you are generally a quiet person and then you are assertive about something people usually listen and follow you vs the loud person that has to be assertive about everything. But, being quiet and then aggressive scares the crap out of people because they considered you meek and took your good nature for granted. I had one picky manager that jumped back five feet because my aggressiveness scared her but she was a lot nicer after that. I’ve been compared to a wild cat and I don’t know if that was compliment.

I come from an assertive family anyway and you had to speak up or just blend into the background but just because I spoke my mind never meant that I got my way all the time. I never bossed others around but I would try to reason that my ideas were the right way to go. I would put the ball in their court and give them choices even though both of the choices were what I wanted anyway and they would pick and think that they were in charge.

The aggressiveness took awhile to manage but I had to get some sort of handle on my emotions because if you are always flying off the handle then nobody will trust you with the keys to the store. 

I’ve found that fitting in was something that I was just never meant to do : ) Maybe it has something to do with CAH but most likely it doesn’t. When I stopped trying to fit in the adventure of what my life is finally took hold.

This message board is great,

Aimee