Finishing Last...

My parents are in the market to buy a new car and it has made me realize that I think I'm their least favorite child... Let me explain how I've come to this conclusion.

The car they are planning to purchase (whenever my dad comes back up to Utah) is for my 16 year old little sister.  For those that know my little sister you may be thinking, "But Johnny, doesn't she already have a really nice, sporty, 2008 Toyota Camry?"  Why yes!  She certainly does!  So, now you're probably thinking to yourself, "Why then, would your parents want to buy her another new car?"  That's a good question, and trust me, the answer to it is just as good.  They are buying her a new car because it snows on occasion here in Utah and they only want her driving if she has a vehicle with AWD or 4WD.

Alright, so news of that event was just the catalyst to get me thinking about my siblings and the cars we've driven.  It's no secret that the younger children in most families end up being more spoiled than their older siblings.  To my parents credit, they were always nice enough to provide a car for their kids to drive.  The "kid-mobiles" they've owned and that we drove were as follows (as best as I can remember anyway):

Ryan: really old Volvo (I don't remember the model or year.  It was a major beater car though)
Kamille: same Volvo, then they upgraded to an '84 Toyota Cressida (which was also kind of a beater), then a '92 Toyota Tercel (at least I think it was a '92.)
Johnny: '84 Toyota, then the big jump to a salvaged purple 2000 Kia Sportage
Jordan: a LEXUS, then the 2008 Camry, then a 2006 Subaru Tribeca
Callie: Camry, and soon to be something newer.

Looking at this list you'd think that I was turning point.  I mean, look at it!  I got to drive a purple Kia Sportage!  Let me elaborate on these vehicles, how they were obtained, where they ended up, and how they got there.

Ryan is the simplest story.  My parents let him drive the Volvo, when he graduated he bought a truck for himself and started working for my dad.  Pretty straight forward.

Kamille is where it starts to get a little interesting.  She drove the Volvo for a little while, then my parents got rid of that and bought the Cressida and she drove that for a little while, but then she graduated and moved out to go to college.  That's why my parents bought her the Toyota Tercel.  The interesting thing about the Tercel is that my parents bought it used from somebody, then they gave it to my sister, then they "bought it from my sister" meaning they pretty much bought it twice, but then they still GAVE it to her!  They gave her a car along with a handful of cash.

I'll skip myself for a second and save that for last.

Jordan starts the luxury trip.  Our parents bought a Lexus from my dad's cousin and let Jordan drive that around for a little while, but then it broke down or he crashed it or something like that, so they bought the Camry for him to drive around.  When he dropped out of high school and moved back to Utah they gave him the car so he'd have something to drive around up here.  After he hit his first Utah winter with a drivers license he complained enough about the weather that my parents bought a Subaru Tribeca from my older brother Ryan because he wanted to get rid of it, and Jordan "needed" a better car for the snow.  They kept the Camry for Callie to drive, but they still bought a car with cash money from a sibling to GIVE to another sibling.

I've already mostly told you Callie's story.  She's currently driving that Camry and as soon as my parents pick out a new car, they're going to get her something that is more winter friendly.  You may notice that they didn't care about the snow with the three oldest children, but that can maybe be explained away by the fact that me and my older siblings aren't as helpless as the two youngest in the family.  It's also worth mentioning that my parents openly intend to give this new car to my little sister when my mom moves back to Texas and Callie stays up here.

Now lets talk about Johnny.  My parents let me drive the Toyota Cressida when I turned 16, and I couldn't have been more excited.  Then the Kia Sportage entered the picture.  My dad's friend in Arkansas owns a body shop and somebody abandoned the Kia because they didn't want to pay to get it fixed.  My dad's friend told my dad that he would give it to him if he just payed to fix it.  I don't know what the amount was, but it was much MUCH less than the vehicle was worth.  When the Kia finally showed up at our house my dad told me I could start driving it when I sold the Cressida for him.  Yes, I had to sell the old car, for a price my dad set, and hand the money over to him once it was sold.  Not completely unreasonable, since it was his car, but the lowest price he'd allow me to sell it for was higher than anybody would pay, so after weeks of turning people down I finally made my dad go outside to turn the prospective buyer down.  He walked back inside with a check for $800 less than he told me I could sell it for.  Okay, whatever... I still had a free car to drive, until I graduated.  Apparently when I graduated from high school I crossed the "free ride" line and my parents bought an '84 Toyota Tercel Wagon with MY MONEY from my uncle and told me that was the vehicle I got to drive now.  I was out of the state working for my dad at the time, so I didn't even see the car until I got back to Utah weeks later.  That car was 20 years old at the time and started to break down not long after "I" purchased it, so the solution my parents presented was that they would sell me the Kia I drove in high school for $6000.00... Like a sucker I took them up on the offer.  I haven't asked them, but I'm pretty sure that they got the car for much less than that.

To summarize, my parents have either bought cars from my siblings, given them cars for free, or bought cars from my siblings THEN gave it back to them.  What about Johnny?!  When I needed a car, they were nice enough to over charge me to buy a car they didn't want anymore.  And when I wanted to sell my current vehicle because I wasn't working much and couldn't afford the payments did they bail me out like they did for my older brother?  Nope...  Fortunately I had some money saved up until work picked back up and I started pulling in the cash again.

Yep, I definitely drew the short straw when it came to family vehicles.  Maybe I'm not the most loved child, but I'll take solace in knowing that I'll most likely be the only person in my whole family that will ever graduate from college (except Kamille, but she got an Associates Degree from LDS Business College, so I'm obviously not counting that.)

Dentist Conversations and Aptitude Tests

I was at the dentists office last week and while the dental hygienist was cleaning my teeth she decided that it was fun to keep asking me questions while her fingers were in my mouth.  Since I wasn't doing a very good job at giving detailed answers to her questions, unless they only required a mumbled "uh-huh" or "uh-uh", she would ask a question, remove her fingers and tools out of my mouth, and wait for a response.  I would have guessed she'd just start only asking me yes/no questions, but apparently we had plenty of time to kill before my dentist could come see me, so clean teeth -> ask question -> stop cleaning teeth -> wait for response, became her procedure of the afternoon.

She was super nice and other than the fact that she kept stabbing my gums with sharp objects over and over, I'd say we got along wonderfully.  I discovered that if during one of my responses I concluded with a good follow-up question I could keep her talking about herself so I could get a break from trying to say multiple complete sentences with the back of my throat filled with pooling saliva.  (Actually, maybe distracting her like that is exactly why she kept stabbing me with sharp dental tools instead of simply cleaning my teeth...)

Anyway, she told me (at length) how she took a career aptitude test in high school and it told her to be a dental hygienist, but she decided to go to college for Art and French.  She was working on a graduate degree in some kind of art when she realized she hated it, so she changed to the dental hygienist program and has been doing that happily for 20 years.

Today, after I finished a surprisingly frustrating day of Saturday work that was supposed to be super easy I remembered this conversation with the hygienist and thought to myself, "I wonder what the interweb has to say about what I should be doing as a career."  Sure, working for a geotechnical engineering firm is way different than teaching high school English (which for any out there that don't already know, is what I'm in college for), but  I still wanted to see what a career aptitude test had to say.

The test I took was at www.careertest.net, and after answering 75 questions or so it output results similar to the Myers-Briggs personality test.  The way it works is you're given a 4-letter personality type and each of the four letters has two possible options.  Each letter also represents a different part of your personality.  The way Myers-Briggs explain it is like this:

1 - Favorite World: (E) Extrovert, or (I) Introvert

2 - Information: (S) Sensing, or (N) Intuition

3 - Decisions: (T) Thinking, or (F) Feeling

4 - Structure: (J) Judging, or (P) Perceiving

Myers-Briggs makes you pay a lot of money to take their exam, and only have certain "certified" people that can administer it (even though you can take it online apparently.)  I had the opportunity of taking the actual Myers-Briggs Type Indicator instrument when I was a Junior in high school, but that was so long ago that I don't remember what the results were. I'm sure my results have changed since then anyway.  This little careertest.net version was WAY over simplified, but I wasn't taking it that seriously in the first place.  The results I got from careertest.net were......

ISFP (Introvert, Sensing, Feeling, Perceiving)

Of those four items, I was strongly leveled towards the 'S' and the 'F', and leaning pretty well towards the 'P', but the Introvert/Extrovert was almost a straight up tie (I was 51% introvert).  I thought that wasn't too far from accurate.  I'm usually most comfortable in small intimate settings, but am still fairly successful at making new friends when I'm in a larger group setting.  So, after you're told your personality type, the site offers you lists of careers associated with all the particular types.  I looked up but the ISFP and the ESFP since I was close to being either one.  Here are the lists of careers it gave me for each group:

ISFP bookkeeper clerical supervisor dental assistant physical therapist mechanic radiology technologist surveyor chef forester geologist landscaper designer crisis hotline operator teacher: elementary beautician typist jeweler gardener potter painter botanist marine biologist social worker

ESFP nurse social worker caterer flight attendant bookkeeper medical/dental assistant exercise physiologist elementary school teacher minister/priest/rabbi retail owner officer manager telemarketer counselor special education teacher merchandise planner credit counselor athletic coach insurance agent sales representative massage therapist medical secretary child care provider bilingual education teacher professional volunteer

Looking over both of these lists, I was happy to see multiple teaching professions since that what I want to do with my life the most.  It was also interesting for me to see the athletic coach, physical therapist, and exercise physiologist careers on there since the two minors I'm working on and planning to get are a Nutrition minor and an Exercise Science and Coaching Teaching minor.

Like I mentioned before, I wasn't taking this aptitude test very seriously, but even though it's an over simplified version of a popular personality identifying instrument, it was still just slightly comforting to see that the interweb is currently backing up my chosen career path.  Thanks Internet!

25 Most Listened to Songs of '10

We've started a new year which means it's time to reset the play counts on my iPod/iPhone again, but before I erase such wonderful history let me share with you the 25 greatest hits from Johnny's iPhone in 2010.

#	Artist/Song	Times Played
25:	Thom Yorke - The Eraser	42
24:	Vampire Weekend - I Think Ur A Contra	43
23:	La Roux - Bulletproof	43
22:	Empire of the Sun - Walking On A Dream	43
21:	Discovery - Osaka Loop Line	43
20:	Coldplay - Lost!	46
19:	The Temper Trap - Resurrection	46
18:	Radiohead - Everything in its Right Place	46
17:	TV On The Radio - Dancing Choose	47
16:	LCD Soundsystem - Tribulations	52
15:	Imogen Heap - Loose Ends	52
14:	Grizzly Bear - Two Weeks	59
13:	The Killers - This Is Your Life	67
12:	LCD Soundsystem - Someone Great	72
11:	Muse - MK Ultra	75
10:	Two Door Cinema Club - Undercover Martyn	80
9:	The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs	82
8:	Band of Horses - Laredo	82
7:	Florence And The Machine - Cosmic Love	86
6:	The Whitest Boy Alive - Burning	88
5:	Florence And The Machine - Dog Days Are Over	92
4:	The Temper Trap - Love Lost	96
3:	Two Door Cinema Club - What You Know	107
2:	Jaydiohead - Dreaming Up	133
1:	Band of Horses - Dilly	152

I'll be honest... There were a few songs on this list that were a surprise to even me, but I'm not ashamed!  Also, if you want to know how this list compares to my 2009 top 25?  Click here!