#jeannot lapin

1. I swear a lot. I’m a firm believer in using swear words as punctuation and see a difference in using swear words in a sentence I’m telling to someone and swearing at someone, though people around me rarely do.

2. I still have, in my bed, the stuffed bunny I received when I was 1. His name is Jeanot Lapin, his fur is great for stimming, and when you take his fur coat away (it’s a coat. Of fur. On a bunny. I love it) his fabric is the white and black lines of old prison uniforms you see in movies.

3. I’ve been on a date twice in my life. One of which I didn’t even realised was a date (until he ‘subtly’ tried to slide towards me on the fake leather couch. Fake leather couches don’t allow for subtlety) even though he brought me the HUGEST bouquet of flowers before leaving (I’m… There was circumstances. Also I’m oblivious. Whatever. He said it was to thank me for making save a huge amount of money by finding someone who would by his front row ticket to a show he couldn’t go! I thought it was absurd to spend that much money to thank me to save money.... but I never questioned it until the couch. Sucks because we were going along fine before that. but then I freaked out, didn’t know how to deal with a situation that I didn’t know I was in and so I sent him a “we can be friends” email. (*groans at self*) but I actually meant it!! I’ll die alone lol) Proooobably would have known I’m Ace a LOT sooner if we had representation in media (other than jughead).

4. I feel very bad about the way I learned the difference between a frog and a toad. My mind parents had a house in the countryside where I’d go for two weeks every summer. The kid next door was my friend and one evening we caught a frog and a toad and we put them in a bucket with water in it and… Idk we played with them I guess. I remember making a little plank for them to jump in the water. Anyway. Grandma call me back in and I want allowed out until the day after. I went to check on the frogs and. Well. We buried the toad behind the house. Poor thing.

5. I consider myself a dog person. In my lifetime I’ve had 3 cats (plus 4 kittens out of one of them, plus the stray that became @ashes-and-dust’s Ianto), one birb, one hamster, one rat, one gerbil and multiple fish. Apparently my very obvious wish to own a dog was all in my head as my mum was surprised to learn about it this last Christmas. I’m still maintaining she was oblivious. We’ll never know.

6. When I was 12, I realised I couldn’t get lost in the town I grew up in and it horrified me. I legitimately do not understand people who have never moved more than a few streets away from the house they were born to it just… I can’t wrap my head around it. Every time I’m in a train, a long distance bus, or a plane is when I feel the most me and I feel like I can breathe again. Same applies to jobs; after 3 years in just bored and need something new. It makes me a bit worried because I know I’m going to need to stop one day, if only because of money+age (because moving a lot doesn’t let you get high paying jobs), and if in not ready to settle I’ll be miserable and itchy with the need to leave again. I need to find a way to satisfy it while staying put. Even the job I had that brought me everywhere in the province wasn’t enough because in the long run I knew everywhere we were going.

7. When I was younger my mum volunteered at the community leisure thingy (an organisation that offered activities for kid and adults, like dance classes, chess classes, etc. in exchange for her work I got in free) and I was with her when she was meeting people about something. I was in the restroom, elbows on my knees, when I heard a metallic sound. I looked down and there was my home key, previously on a thread around my neck, lying on the floor in between my feet. Now. I had a (huge) tendency to both forget to take my key in the mornings and also to loose it. so my mum braided several lenghts of some kind of cotton twine together to make a necklace (way before those thing with the breakable plastic part existed that everyone has right now), made one of her unknotable knot on it and cut the thread close to the knot.That one was a brand new one, made just a few days ago. I took care of my business and went to find her going “mum look!” with laughter in my voice, holing up both the necklace and the key. I was waiting with excitement for my mum to explain what had happened. How had the key just... fallen down. My mother was unbelievably angry with me as soon as she saw it. Accused me on unknotting the necklace, taking the key out and knotting it again (with the knot perfect and just as close to the end of the thread as when she cut it?? also no way I was able to undo her knots). Defending myself only made her more angry, to the point where she almost got me convinced the key did not pass through the thread. Except it had!! the thread was intact and the knot unmade, and unless I unmaterialised the necklace and the key fell through, which I should be able to repeat if I had such ability, I STILL have no idea what happened and it BUGS ME TO NO END!!!!!

8. My godmother was my favourite person, the only one I ever connected with even though she died when I was 7. She was awesome. She thought me curiosity (that’s a thing my mother’s side of the family doesn’t seem to have, except for her. I don’t understand, but that’s a fact. and because of distance I met my mum’s family a lot more than my dad’s), brought me my first star gazer, did experiment with me, brought me to UQAM (MTL’s university) where she studied/worked in the summer to do experiments on actual instrument, explained newton solids and bases&acids to me wayyyyy before I learned about it again in school in a way a 5 years old can understand, brought me to the zoo, etc. I loved her. She spoke, read and write one chinese dialec, though I’ve no idea which, and was obsessed with the culture, wanting to go there (in the 80s you couldn’t). she bought me a lot of book with both French and... Chinese (sorry) writings on it in the hopes to teach me, she made me a scrabble game in wood, explain pendulums... and then got lung cancer in the 80s, back when that was a certain death sentence, on top of depression and ended her life. She probably died never realising how much she meant to me. It’s a big part of why, even though I’ve had depressions all throughout my life and often fervently wished with all my might for my atoms would just disperse for a while to get some air in and rest before coming back together, that my mind has always shied away from darker thoughts. I’ll probably never know if I’m that person to someone, even though I don’t think I am. I don’t think you realise these things and it was such a big chunk of me that left when she did, leaving me with nothing to fill the curiosity she gave me, that I wouldn’t dare do this to anyone. So just in case. I guess I can say I’m grateful to her for that as well.

9. After her sister died, my mum tried to take up the role. Only my mother has zero once of curiosity in her. It showed. She brought me to a few museums and when I turned to her to share my excitement I was met with that glace she has. like she’s happy because I’m happy, but not because she’s having a great time. I’ve always hated that look for more than one reason (long story short my mum is the kind of person who is in love with having a child, not in love with that particular child. It makes me look like I’m whining about unconditional love and I know I should be grateful she wasn’t mean but whatever), but being met with it there, in the place of my interests, was a huge blow. Add to that the fact that she started to use my interest as a carrot for me to behaved, I started saying no to these outings, as much I as I was missing them.

10. My mother’s understanding of the dictionary was... overrated. As a child whenever I had a question the answer would be “I don’t know. Look in the dictionary!” Like the dictionary was this great big encyclopedia or something. We didn’t owned an encyclopedia, the internet was about 10 years away from getting in my home, and the library was REALLY far away. This made me immensely familiar with my Larousse dictionary. Especially the first and last pages (flags of the world and circulation panels, such as “one-way” etc) and the coloured, plasticised, Different Races of Dogs page in the middle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

11. *rakes brain for an 11th fact* I’m a hoarder (actual dragon! yay~) I was told I was type 1, but I’m fairly certain I’m type 2 and they just saw my flat on a good day, with excessive acquisition and a fair insight. Meaning that while I’m having trouble parting with things, especially if it’s to throw them away, I know it’s because I’m a hoarder. which doesn’t help as much as I’d like but at least I get work around it. Giving stuff away is easier, especially if I know the person I’m giving it to, etc. This coupled with the fact that my executive function problems means cleaning my flat doesn’t happen as often as it should. When it does I usually have a moment of struggle, followed by a huge (metaphorical) breath intake and closing of my eyes while I dump everything. Then I need a while to de-stress from having dumped everything. I’m not certain if it’s this of my autism that makes moving so stressful but either way moving my stuff from their “rightful” place, throwing some away (and goodness forbid: someone else touching my stuff and moving it) is.... not fun. Moving to Ireland is stressful to start with, I’ve got to actually do stuff with little executive function, but on top of that I’ve got to find a way to reduce my stuff down to two -50lbs luggage (I’m actually thinking of acquiring a hockey bag instead of my second luggage, because there’s no way I’m parting with my bed cover, pillow and the dressing gown my mum made but those take space). Which is way I’ve started this process so early when some people usually do the steps 3-4 months before leaving.

That got long. Also it’s super late after being tagged because this was done in more than one sitting lol.