I was talking to my cousin today, and he said that his friends had met my mom at some kinda Taiwanese dinner banquet or something and thought she was kind of fierce and intimidating. And his friends said that after meeting my mom, they suspect that she's the reason why my personality is the way it is- that is: fearful, afraid, shy, hesitant all the time. It's weird, I never chalked it up to that; I've blamed a hundred other things, but this sounds just as plausible as anything else. Hmmmm, definitely something to think about (and report to a shrink in the future, HAH!) In truth though, I'm sure it was a combination of things.