Day 52

Day 52: How do our favorites become our favorites? Why do we place them upon a pedestal above all else in their category?

I still remember, at 12 years old, being asked to complete a Favorites Questionnaire by the YW camp director, which she planned to forward to my secret sister. Each category had one corresponding blank line for the answer. I sat at the kitchen table with Mom and went through the list, thinking maybe she knew my favorites better than I did.

“Mom, what’s my favorite candy bar?”

She looked up at me with this look she would get—one eyebrow would arc upward and her lips would purse just a bit. I realized later that it was her mother-waiting-for-a-child-to-figure-it-out face. I have one of my own, I’m told. “Don’t you know the answer?” she asked me.

“I like a lot of candy bars.”

“Then write them all down.”

“But, there’s only one blank.”

This is the part I distinctly remember. She said “Don’t limit yourself to blanks on a page. You are not a fill-in-the-blank girl.”

That settled in my understanding, mainly because I’d always thought of myself as exactly that, but I wasn’t, and neither are you. None of us are fill-in-the-blank people.

At work, my student interviewees fill out a get-to-know-you page, and when I designed it, you can bet I left big empty paragraph-sized spaces, because we are NOT fill-in-the-blank people. We are infinitely-interesting-and-amazingly-complex people. One blank just won’t do. #MomsCompanyTowels #oneblankjustwontdo #infinitelyinteresting #notafillintheblankgirl