Hello! :-)

Hmmm, I had set this blog up months ago, then totally stopped working on it because I wasn't sure what to say.  But just now when I checked, I saw that I have a follower already, and I haven't written a thing!  So I guess my first thing to say should be, "Thank you!" to The Professor for being my first follower.  :-)

I guess the next thing to do is to introduce myself. 

As you can see, my name is Lucretia (yes, it really IS), and I am an ElderGothBabyBat.  I know, that sounds like an oxymoron, but in my case it's true.  I should have been a goth in the 1980s, but I didn't even know what that was then because they barely existed in the U.S. before that, when I was in high school.  I think that waayyy too many of us ended up as "goths that never were" because we never had a chance to develop, born in just the wrong time and/or place so that we fell through the cracks.  I'm not sure who all of us became, but it wasn't who we were meant to be.  I know that is true of me.

I graduated from high school in June 1979; we had exactly ONE goth in my school, and she was in my Shakespeare class.  I used to stare enviously at her every day, wishing I could hang out with her and also wear all black, have pale skin, dye my hair black, and generally look incredible like she did.  Of course, being a shy bookworm (we'd say 'geek' now), I didn't do any of those things, or even talk to her.  I was much too shy.  But it wasn't until a few years ago that I FINALLY got a clue as to (among other things) why I love bats, mummies, witches, skeletons, museums and memento mori, why black has been my favorite color since I was old enough to color, why 'Dark Shadows' was my favorite TV show when I was in the first grade, why I love Edgar Allen Poe tales so much, and why I HATE being in the sun.  So I'm the right age to be an ElderGoth, but still so new in the subculture that I consider myself to be a BabyBat.  I don't have a problem with that moniker, although I know some do.  Being a mom does that to you.

Other personal facts you may (or may not) be interested in:  I'm married (third time) and have a 23-year-old son and ten cats. Fortunately, 5.5 of them are black or very dark, which makes it a bit easier to wear black clothing, if you know what I mean.  Unfortunately, three are orange and 1.5 are white.  I own stock in those sticky roller refills...  I have a Master's degree in Applied Anthropology, and my dream job is to work in a museum, preferably with ancient Egyptian mummies.  Currently I work at a university in Administration.  Bleah.

For now, at least, this blog is going to focus on finding my way through the morass of clothes, music, and other subcultural markers with the idea of not looking/acting/seeming like "mutton dressed as lamb". ::shudders:: (For those of you who have never heard that expression, it means a mature person trying to look and act like someone MUCH younger.)  Having recently reached the half-century mark, I don't think that tutus and cyberdreads are really ME, but I'm not into the Victorian styles either, much as I love looking at them on others.  I don't mind going to the occasional club, but I don't want that to be my only expression of 'gothness'.  And I'd love to hear from other older goths who are also trying to find (or have found) a good balance between being true to their own personal music and living relatively peacefully in this rather dull and boring mundane culture.

Well, I think that's enough about me for now.  How about YOU?  What's the thing you love most about the goth subculture?