First Daughters [gxg]

one | political hot potato

hot button issue (noun): an issue or subject that people have strong feelings about, and that can lead to serious disagreements - Hot button issues like climate change and same-sex marriage are dividing the country like never before.

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I'VE NEVER BEEN good with people.

Not the typical one-on-ones where you ask each other how your day was and make disappointing small talk.

I was especially hopeless when it came to making conversation that didn't have a point or wouldn't produce a result- but put me on a stage and I could make God listen.

It was obvious in the manner that people leaned out of their seats and even the most careless college students paid attention that I was making a statement, because on the podium in front of the hundreds of sociology students I spoke passionately.

I knew that they heard me and I'm not talking about the literal fact that I had a microphone in front of me- these are scholars that could sleep through a bear horn- they heard me because they knew I had something important to say.

That was obvious since I'd- admittedly rudely- chuckled at what our substitute lecturer had said and the stone look in her eyes made me fizzle like a shaken can of Coke with the pure adrenaline of a challenge.

I've always loved a challenge. That was clear to my parents when at just five years old I'd fallen out of a tree because a group of stupid boys said I couldn't climb it- I did and I still have what remained of a scar on the right side of my forehead to prove it, along with the serene memory of the world from on top of a tree branch engrained into my brain.

I could see everything from up there. The abandoned bird's nest nestled in between the branches, the veins of the green leaves that had graced the tree during the spring season and most importantly- the dumbfounded looks on the small boys' faces as they looked up, watching me in amazement.

My mother had scolded me for it, but my father had stretched out his hand and given me a high-five and I couldn't bring myself to even mind my mother's lectures because I knew I'd made my dad proud. From then on it wasn't privy that I was truly my father's daughter.

Almost everyone knew it. And it wasn't just based on the fact that I looked like the female carbon copy of him because I didn't. I hadn't inherited his almond-shaped blue eyes and chestnut colored hair the color palette of our skin part of the few obvious differences.

Despite our lack of shared features, I apparently acted just like him. From the terrible habit we both had of biting our nails when anxious or in deep concentration, the way we always had to have things organized and go exactly the way we wanted them to, or we'd sulk and the manner in which we maneuvered in silence until it was time to speak up.