Things I Should Have Learned Before I Actually Did, Part 1

Hindsight is 20/20. It’s easy to look back and think “I should have known that sooner!” while forgetting what it was like to actually be your younger self. Sure, older you would have put that knowledge/skill/perspective together much faster… but older you has different resources and experiences. This is why there is such a thing as a “first draft”!

However, there are also times when we can look back and say, “Hey, yeah, that’s something I should have known earlier,” for lots of different meanings of “should.” Sometimes, we mean that, despite available resources, we learned it later than socially typical. Sometimes, we mean that, for whatever emotional reason, we resisted opportunities. Sometimes, we mean that it would have been more useful for us to take the time to learn this things earlier. And sometimes, we mean that external resources weren’t in place, and we really think that situation warrants change.

Here are some things I “should have learned” earlier. These run the range from trivial to unspeakably serious. By grouping them together, I’m not trying to lend weight to the small things or levity to the big ones; rather, I’m trying to give a sense of my personal experience, and also to underscore that “should have” doesn’t discriminate between important things and silly ones. (And also to show that, even if you’re “late,” you can still learn all sorts of things!)

In no special order, later than I should have, I learned…:

…to prepare pitchers of iced coffee.

I have no one to blame but myself and maybe baby-brain. I bought a whole bunch of cold-brew concentrate and was making it glass by glass every morning. This was getting tiresome, but it took, like, a whole month for it to click that, uh, I could just make a whole pitcher at a time?

… about the fundamental concepts and history of systemic racism and colonialism.

As a white/white-privileged kid and young adult, my understanding was that racism was hating someone else because of their skin colour and that Canada’s history was the story of brave European explorers building a new life. I don’t blame the individual adults in my life for this lapse, since they were (mostly) similarly privileged and therefore learned the exact same thing from the generation before them, but is ridiculous that I went through almost twenty years of school without being taught about the ongoing marginalization of BIPOC folks and the past and continuing harm wrought on them through racism and colonialism.

I still didn’t learn that from school–I owe a great debt of gratitude to the online writing of Angry Black Woman,* whose work I stumbled across during my free time as a twenty-something, and to everyone who’s generously and courageously written and spoken about this topics. I’m glad that the social web and revised curricula mean that the generation after mine is and has been exposed to this history and these facts about the world, regardless of their own privilege.

… how to use the upholstery cleaner I bought.

I bought this thing, like, two years before I ever touched it, with the intention of cleaning the chair I sit in every day (sometimes with sweaty and/or wet hair). You’ll be ~*~shocked~*~ to learned that I put off actually using it, overwhelmed by the idea of learning how to assemble and prepare the appliance.

And then Baby came along and promptly spat up on the carpet, and, hey, turns out that it’s not so tough to figure out after all. Much more user-friendly than I’d let myself believe.

… how to ride a bike.

I still can’t ride a bike without wobbling. I learned in my late twenties, despite plenty of encouragement and instruction from everyone from (as a child)  a family friend who successfully got every other kid he taught coasting along on two wheels to (as an adult) my cousin, who is a literal cycling coach.

When I was a kid, my family friend correctly identified the problem: I didn’t actually want to ride a bike, because I didn’t see any benefit in it for myself. There was nowhere I wanted to get to that I couldn’t get to by walking, and I didn’t enjoy the feeling of riding a bike for its own sake. The only reason I wanted to bike was because I knew it was a skill I ought to have at a certain age (see also: my feelings toward driving a car, although that was a) easier for my parents to force me to learn, and b) actually important for emergency situations).

… that I am queer.

For this one, I definitely mean “should” as in, in a healthy society, I should have been able to feel more comfortable and less intimidated by the idea of my own sexuality earlier than I did, not that I did or didn’t do anything “right.” Being masc-of-centre since childhood, post-puberty-me spent a lot of time encountering stereotypes about queerness based on the way I looked. I was very anxious that people should understand that I wasn’t lesbian just because I had short hair. I also absorbed a lot of negative cultural messages that being attractive to other women is the “remedial” sort of attractiveness for those who are too ugly to be attractive to men.

That, coupled with what I now can identify as being under the asexual umbrella and not experiencing sexual attraction in the same ways that many of my peers seemed to**, meant I spent way more time and energy worrying whether there was anything wrong with me and whether I was attractive to others than on examining what I wanted.

(But don’t worry–even without figuring myself out for a while, I still ended up in a very happy relationship with Husband! There’s no deadline on this stuff, and you won’t miss out on a joyful life if it takes you longer instead of shorter. Don’t beat yourself up if it takes you a while to know yourself, whatever the reason!)

Already convinced I was an all-around “late bloomer” on everything? Just wait ’til you see the second half of this list next post!

* I’m not linking because the captcha on what I think is the site doesn’t work for me/the browser I’m using (?), so I can’t confirm that it is in fact the blog I mean, but hopefully you can find her excellent content via search.

** For example, although I can intuitively understand, say, eating food you aren’t supposed to because you want it so bad, I don’t viscerally “get” in the same way having sex with someone you aren’t supposed to because you can’t resist. Likewise, I was utterly confused as a preteen and teen about how my friends could have passionate crushes on celebrities and fictional characters. Like, they’re pretty and all, but I don’t even know them, why would I be attracted to them? My version of a fictional-character crush was/is getting very into a ship couple and writing mental fanfic for those characters over and over. (To be clear, I’m not saying that either approach is better/worse–I’m just saying, mine felt different, and it took me a very long time to understand that my friends weren’t feeling the exact same things as I was and just acting weird about it!)