Category Archives: Personal Life

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Here are a few of my happy memories.

Age 4. My mother was heavily pregnant with her third child. Me and my toddler-aged brother sat on the couch next to her, gently touched her belly, and talked to the baby that would soon be joining us.

Age 8. Our family lived in a trailer home next to a highway that was built on a big hill behind our home. We were very low income, and I know my parents worried about how that would affect their kids. The biggest thing on my mind then was how often I’d get to go sledding down that hill. We had some lightweight plastic sleds that glided down that hill perfectly. It was my favourite thing in the entire world other than reading, and I did not care that my parents couldn’t afford to buy us fancy new toys or name-brand clothes.

Age 18. Exams were wrapping up, and winter break was just about to begin. I sat in my college library and thumbed through the magazines they had there, paying special attention to the ones about science, literature, or history. It was neither a big library nor a fancy one, but I loved how quiet and peaceful it always was. I spent a lot of time there between classes even if I didn’t have any papers to write or upcoming tests to study for.

Adult. Recently married and living in Canada now. We couldn’t afford to travel on our honeymoon, so we explored a lot of free or low-cost stuff to do here in Toronto instead. I was amazed at how large, clean, and beautiful High Park was. Out of all of the parks in the world, it’s still my favourite one.

Adult. My first book was published, a collection of short stories. (There’s a link to it at the top of this site). I really should try to get more of my work published sometime. Writer’s block is terrible.

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I’ve been looking forward to this topic for months! Let’s see if our ideas of unusual hobbies and interests match up.

I’ve already told you all about my pet earthworms that horrified my mother, so let’s dig up some other interesting memories.

When I was a kid, I sometimes played with coins.

I liked stacking them up on each other as tall as I could, or making groups of them in various sizes and pretending they were little families, or of playing a miniature version of curling with them where one penny would be pushed quickly on our laminate or wood floor to see how many stacks I could topple.

It provided hours of free entertainment.

The Black Death was another interest of mine for years. We must have had a lesson about it in school that talked about how high the death rates were, but I had trouble wrapping my mind around how many people died during those waves of disease and read many books about the subject as a kid and teen.

I had another phase after my grandmother’s death where I asked my mother countless questions about what heaven would be like since the Bible wasn’t vivid enough on the topic for my tastes. When she didn’t know, she eventually bought me a book from the Christian bookstore on the topic which I quietly refused to read because I didn’t know or trust the author. Was I expecting God to come down and answer my questions personally? 😂 I don’t know, and I did appreciate the effort, but I didn’t want conjecture. I wanted proof.

Slipping out of church to explore was another hobby of mine because preacher’s kids spend a lot of time in such places. If it’s not our home church, it will probably be a church pastored by someone we know.  There was one church we occasionally visited that was massive and had dozens of rooms to explore.A few rooms were filled with books, religious of course.  One time I wandered up to what I think was the attic and found a door with a piece of paper on it that said something like “Protected by Angels.” I did not open that door and still have no idea what was on the other side.

So those are or were some of my unusual hobbies. How about all of you?

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When I was a child, I was:

Quiet and shy. I still am!

Well-behaved. My friend Mei-Ling’s mother once asked her why she couldn’t be more like me. This embarrassed me as I didn’t think people should be compared like that.

Studious. I made the honour roll every semester, although I did get C grades in Spanish, Math, or Science sometimes. History the arts, and English were easier subjects for me.

Bookish. I read constantly and insatiably on every subject matter I could find.

Anxious. When I was about 8, I took a break from reading only to realize I couldn’t find my parents or siblings anywhere. We lived in a cozy trailer home at the time, and so I should have been able to find someone within a minute or two. Given that I was a preacher’s kid, my first assumption was that everyone else had been raptured but that I wasn’t devout enough to be chosen, too. I panicked and ran crying to a neighbour for help, but I was crying too hard for her to understand me. Eventually, my mother returned from running an errand, possibly paying the rent, and I realized that God hadn’t actually come back yet after all.

Imaginative. I was always imagining something in my mind no matter what else I was doing. Sometimes I talked to myself quietly about the beautiful stories that were going on in my mind.

Inclusive. Classmates who were left out of other groups could always hang out with me. Sometimes I was bullied for spending time with the kids that others thought were too weird or awkward to associate with. I say this not to toot my own horn or anything, just to give you a picture of what i was like on the playground.

Messy. My tidy parents somehow created a child who was not. I never left food or anything like that in my bedroom, but there were books everywhere and it could get dusty as well.