Long story short

I played the piano when I was young, though through no fault of my own. My uncle and aunt, both unmarried, shared a huge old house on the posh side of the city and were happy to take advantage of my parents' foster a child for the weekend scheme. Thus each week from the time I was 6 or 7, I would travel across the city to stay with them for two nights.

On a higher rung of the social ladder than ourselves, they believed every young lady should be accomplished in at least one musical instrument and I was sent to study piano under Madame Foxe. My uncle, an extremely pious man and well in with the Dublin nuns community, bought an old piano for me from the local convent.

How we got the piano into our high-rise flat I no longer recall but when we relocated, it was thrown off the 4th floor balcony to its death. By then my uncle had upped and married the office manageress, had a child, and like the piano, I was dropped. My dreams of a career with the National Philharmonic, dashed!

_{me circa 1972 making my confirmation}

When I was around 10, we moved to a house some 30km away and I started in a new school. Standing in front of the class on my first day, in the best bib and tucker my mother could produce on her trusty sewing machine while three sheets to the wind, the teacher introduced me to the class. 'Deeerdeee' he intoned, prompting one of the boys to call out 'weirdy' and deirdyweirdy was born, a nickname that followed me right to the end of my tortuous secondary school experience.

I was a quiet, studious child fond of her own company and I was taunted, jeered, sometimes bashed and even had my ponytail snipped off on the school bus.

By the time I was 16, I had embraced the deirdyweirdy moniker, bleached my hair white, painted my face with white clown makeup and took to dressing in a style peculiarly my own. This I felt allowed me to operate in an arena devoid of competition. It also subjected me to being followed by security whenever I entered a shop and even being told to leave, not to mention the consternation it caused in school.

I dated, but not much as most turned into longer-term relationships, and life is short. On the first encounter with one of my longer-term partners, he asked me if I’d ever considered a makeover. Another, when we were about 5 years together, kept hinting he had something special he wanted to give me on my birthday. I thought it was an engagement ring. It turned out to be a leather handbag. We broke up shortly afterwards. An Indian gentleman I stepped out with for a short while, whose name was Prem but was referred to as Sperm by my father, stalked me for months after we broke up and another of my beaus used the cash in our joint account to furnish a love nest for himself and his fancy-woman and then left me.

I’m old(er) now, in my 60s, and I must say in many ways I’m glad. There’s a certain freedom in invisibility and believe me, at around 49 you become more or less unseen. Gone are any thoughts I once had of plastic surgery or enhancements and I no longer take the time to count my wrinkles.

As to financial security, I’m waiting for my crypto to moon as I was never a believer in pensions and under no circumstances would I take anything from the state. I’m pretty self-sufficient here though so I don’t worry. It’s been my experience that things have a way of working out …even if it's not always the way you planned. And one thing I now know for certain is that it's not me who's weird, it's all the rest of you!
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Posted in response to @galenkp's Weekend Experiences prompt asking 'How were your high school years? Do you play a musical instrument? Bad dates and good dates...Have you had either or both? and Are you worried about growing older from a looks and financial security perspective?

Photos are my own

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