Melanie and Roger have a new set of questions for Share Your World/Harry Potter for the week of Sept. 7.

Roger’s Magical, Mystical Questions: 

1. What happened to cause you to discover ‘bullies” were real?
   Nothing – I have always known bullies were real. My brother was a bully when he was a kid and his favorite person to bully was me! Although I was never seriously bullied (my brother’s would be called teasing), my son was in high school. One day he came home early from school – he’d been “suspended” for two days for fighting. I was not mad at him because he was fighting with the bully – he was sick of the other kid’s bullying. The kids watching actually rooted for him!
   
   I had a book about bullies for children that I had read to him when he was much younger. And when he complained about the bully to me, I told him that he should ignore him if he could, and feel sorry for him because he (the bully) obviously had self-esteem issues. Maybe there was violence in his home.
   
   Now we have a bully in the White House – what a role model!!
   
2. Eavesdropping- When given the chance, how often do you eavesdrop?   (this may be a similar question to what some folks said they’d do with an invisibility cloak)
   I am tempted to eavesdrop at times, but usually listening in on someone else’s conversation isn’t very interesting.
3. Escalators, at one time, were the ‘next big thing’. When was the last time you rode an escalator?
   Three days ago, at Nordstrom’s.
4. Have you ever ‘let’ someone win in a sports competition or a board game? How did it turn out?   
   Probably – but it was more like others letting me win – I was the youngest of five children and always wanted to participate in games, but my life experience wasn’t as mature as the others’, so they sometimes let me win, I think. As for sports, I was always the worst in every sport except swimming. No one wanted to pick me to be on their team. And no one ‘let’ me win!

Melanie’s Muggle Questions:

I’m very short on time today (Sunday) so I’m borrowing from Rory and Sandmanjazz to fill the questions today:

Do our fears start with our DNA?  (Credit to Rory)
I suppose there are people more susceptible to fear than others; that might be DNA-related, but in general, regarding fear and “nature vs nurture” I would say it’s more nurture – i.e. learned. People who are more sensitive and likely to have fears may have had some early experience, even as far back as infancy. But there is definitely biology in there too, because fearful people are often insecure people, and insecurity can arise from experience or be a bi-product of mental illness.

If you could have your hair any colour for 24 hours, what colour would you choose?  (Credit to Sandmanjazz)
I think I’d like to be a redhead for a day!

When do you think a person gets old?  (Credit to Rory)
When a person starts thinking old! For example, my husband and I are both senior citizens but we don’t feel old! I feel like the same person I always was. Oh sure, I have more aches and pains but most of the time I just am who I am.

GRATITUDE SECTION  (as always this is optional)

Please feel free to write about an uplifting moment in your life this week! We went on a day trip last Tuesday, just out to the western suburbs to seek out “kitschy” stuff (such as the Humpty Dumpty doppelganger pictured below). It was fun and I felt renewed!

Here are some of the other sculptures in that park.

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