Niche... How do I find it?! (My Semi-Autobiography)

Five in the morning, the date, September 1st, the year, 1987, Kimberly Maas was in more pain than when Sylvia Plath stuck her head in her oven. I’ll save you the gory details of blood and placenta and skip to the part where the cutest kid in the whole damn world entered the room. At 6:05 a.m. I, Laura Ann Maas, made my way into 1987 in style. I went with the naturalistic theme, I had dreams of nudism and spending my life in a hot tub so that I could keep the hot little wrinkly look I had going on. Needless to say the world was about to change with L.Maas in it.

I was brought into a lovely dysfunctional family that I would grow to love more than Paris Hilton loves her little dog Tink. My eldest brother Jacob has always been able to relate with me best; from carrying me on his shoulders to teaching me how to drive he was my buddy. Then the next oldest is my sister Ericca. Nine years apart in age but as close as two adorable little peas in a pod, she is my best friend, my rock, and forever my role model. Next comes my darling older brother Caleb; how do I describe Caleb? Well, he is a witty, cynical, fascinating, ridiculously charming and beautiful young man. I love him more than life itself, but when we get into ludicrous arguments about which cleaning solution will best get a grass stain out of my new white pants I strongly consider just strangling him with them. Like I said, we are completely dysfunctional, but if we were functional I would have probably considered moving out. Moved in with the Partridge’s or the Brady’s we all knew what happened when the cameras were turned off. So, who are the owners of these charming little darlings? Kimberly and David Maas serve as our caretakers, our parents, but most of all our wisdom providers. They would bend over backwards, and do any other extremely difficult stretch to help us out. Because of this wonderful family I was able to become all that I could be, and I didn’t even need the Army Reserve.

Through the years I went on a journey, an adventure if you will, to find something better than a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, although I tried that too, I got lost. I was in search of my niche. Such a beautiful word, this “niche.” I was determined to find it; I adopted a cat once, thought I could be a veterinarian. Turned out the cat was a whore and there was a lot of incest, and, well, we ended up with 30 cats in about seven months. I thought this meant my business was booming, but my mother had different thoughts. Ok, whatever, so I crossed vet off my list, they don’t make enough money anyway. I knew where the real moneymakers were, and that’s what led me to my dream of becoming part of the WNBA. Day and night I was out in our driveway working on my “skills,” I had the lay-up down pact, about 20 percent with my free throws, basically I had MJ shakin’ in his high tops. But for some reason my eighth grade coach didn’t see my talent and put me on the “B-Squad” which we all know is the nice was of saying “Bloody Awful-Squad.” Well, whatever, I didn’t need the smelly WNBA anyway, girls in sports? Please. So with those two crossed off my list I decided to go with something a little subtler, organizing and planning. Which totally makes sense because what do you get when you cross a WNBA star with a veterinarian? Duh, an organizing and planning freak! Ok, so it doesn’t totally make sense, but it is kind of my passion. Weird passion, I know, but it’s what I like for now, and it is what led me to the fine institution of The George Washington University. How you ask? Well let me tell you, I set up this fantastic spread sheet of all of my likes and dislikes, interests and non-interests, and just about every other opposite pair in the world, did a couple of quick calculations, pulled out the Pythagorean theorem and out popped G-Dub!

Ok, so I didn’t exactly reach my life goal of finding my “niche” but, hey, guess what? I’m not done living yet! If I don’t find it at GW I’ll find it somewhere else, in the mean time I take every experience as a lesson and try to do everything in my power to make someone else’s day. So, until my little friend Mr. Niche comes knocking on my door, I’m just here as Laura Maas living my life and loving every moment of it.