{"id":5634,"date":"2017-08-14T00:02:56","date_gmt":"2017-08-14T06:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.mops.org\/?p=5634"},"modified":"2017-08-14T00:02:56","modified_gmt":"2017-08-14T06:02:56","slug":"a-wallflowers-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/a-wallflowers-secret\/","title":{"rendered":"A Wallflower\u2019s Secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stare at the 19 strangers encircling me and they look back at me \u2013 expectantly. I don\u2019t like this kind of attention; even in small groups I prefer to keep quiet and let others do the talking. Together, we form a unit, ready to take on a small slice of the world, but beyond the nicknames we\u2019ve just been assigned, we know almost nothing about one another. I\u2019m supposed to say something about myself. Something unique. Something that makes me different from everyone else here. Something memorable.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m in my 20s, like most of the camp counselors, at the beginning of a two-month stint at a camp for inner city kids. The counselors all arrived early for initial introductions and icebreakers, and now we\u2019ve hit the part of orientation I like to call \u201cforced mingling through group games.\u201d Rough girls from tough neighborhoods I can handle, but this, this is scary. Suddenly a thought crosses the panicked blank of my mind and I begin to ramble at the ring of faces watching me.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know that thing that hangs down everyone\u2019s throat?\u201d<\/p>\n

Polite, uncomprehending stares. I start again.<\/p>\n

\u201cHave you ever read a story about someone yawning or about an animal opening its mouth really wide to swallow something?\u201d<\/p>\n

They look perplexed, but interested.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn those pictures, there\u2019s always something pink hanging in the dark opening, further back than the teeth, not quite in the throat. It\u2019s called a uvula.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure they\u2019re following.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know what I\u2019m talking about?\u201d<\/p>\n

A few nods.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell \u2026 I\u2019ve never met anyone who is like me in this way: I have two of those.\u201d<\/p>\n

I take a deep breath and sit back down, glad it\u2019s over. There is a stunned silence while they all move from mental images of yawning storybook bears to visions of what can be found in my deceptively normal looking mouth.<\/p>\n

Then something happens that I could not have expected. Everyone starts to clap and a few people cheer.<\/p>\n

I am astounded. My heart warms. They like my interesting fact!<\/p>\n

In the years that follow, I tuck this memory away, filing this fact in a mental drawer for future situations where I\u2019m expected to say something astounding about myself. I\u2019ve learned to take the pressure off of myself to be exceptional, when in fact all I have to do is share a bit about who I am.<\/p>\n

Only one thing has changed since that summer at camp: I\u2019m now a mother. My pregnancy was hard. I gained 60 pounds over the course of nine months and felt enormous when my daughter began wiggling herself into this world. We didn\u2019t own a car at the time, so a midwife drove us to the hospital, where I spent the night pacing the halls and gripping my husband\u2019s sweater. With the arrival of a new dawn came the baby: goopy and gorgeous, with a good head of shiny black hair and a voracious appetite. And good heavens, you\u2019ll never guess … two uvulas.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Holly<\/a><\/p>\n

Holly Dickson-Ramos is a freelance writer who lives with her husband and daughter in Ontario, Canada.<\/p>\n

\n

This article currently appears in the\u00a0summer\u00a02017 issue of\u00a0The MOPS Magazine<\/em>. If you didn\u2019t get a copy and would like your own, you can\u00a0subscribe<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>to get\u00a0The MOPS Magazine\u00a0<\/em>in your mailbox every season. If you subscribe, forward your receipt to\u00a0magazines@mops.org<\/a><\/em>\u00a0and we\u2019ll shoot a copy of the current issue in the mail to you for free \u2026 just because we like you.<\/p>\n

\"MOPSMag_cover_Summer2017\"<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stare at the 19 strangers encircling me and they look back at me \u2013 expectantly. I don\u2019t like this kind of attention; even in small groups I prefer to keep quiet and let others do the talking. Together, we form a unit, ready to take on a small slice of the world, but beyond […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":247,"featured_media":5660,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[704,1222,1223,54,55,56,121,362,1224,1225,655],"class_list":["post-5634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-acceptance","tag-camp","tag-fact","tag-mama","tag-mom","tag-motherhood","tag-new-baby","tag-quiet","tag-secret","tag-shy","tag-unique"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/247"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5634\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themom.co\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}