Poll Results

Well, the results are in for my first blog poll: as it turns out, my friends are a bunch of mama's boys and daddy's girls, just as I suspected.
Seriously, thanks to all of you who took time to answer the poll. I thought that it was a good question because I couldn't answer it myself: each of the factors that I listed have played such a crucial part in the formulation of my own identity that I would be different person than I am if any one element was removed. Apparently, it was a pretty good question because your answers were pretty evenly distributed too (although I will say I'm a little disappointed in my fellow "surfers", if you even call yourselves that -- geeze).
I do find it very interesting that the one answer that got the most response was 'parents'. It makes me think long and hard about the significance of parenthood: not only do our children become our world, we become theirs. I think we often underestimate the degree to which parents create the environment that shapes young people. It makes me think of my parents and the environment that they created for me. Specifically, it makes me think about ways in which all of the other person-shaping pieces of my past grew out of that environment: my parents raised me in a very religious home; they read to me a lot and gave me lots of books; they brought me up on a Minnesota fishing resort and in LA; my dad taught me to body-surf. I absorbed all of these things. They germinated somewhere deep inside. As an adult, I took several of these things in different directions, different from where my mom and dad have taken them, but it was they who planted the seeds.
It makes one consider the significance of parenting. Thanks y'all.