Rubber-Sol, who's one of my all-time favorite bloggers, tagged me the other day for the "20 Things" meme. And since a few of you had asked for 20 more after I did the first list, I thought what the heck. So here's 20 more things you probably didn't know about me:
1. I’ve been wearing glasses since I was 10. I’m very nearsighted. In the last few years, I’ve begun taking them off for reading. (I know, I could just get bifocals.) I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been spending more and more time at home without them--and not just because I’m reading. There used to be such a stark contrast between my vision with them and without them. Maybe as I become more integrated, so to speak, so does my vision. I’d always used them as a prop to hide behind. Maybe I’ve got less of a need to hide these days.
2. I won our 4th grade spelling bee, beating out my cousin Debbie. We were always the smartest kids in the class and fiercely competitive with other. The word she missed? Caribbean (how ironic). Good thing, too, because I wasn't sure how to spell it.
3. I can't walk through a cemetery without visualizing skeletons in caskets. Even when I visit my grandparents' graves (and those of other family members) in my hometown, I only last a few seconds before I have to run off the lawn and back onto the sidewalk so I can feel relieved that I'm not standing on top of bones.
4. I spent two teenage summers working as a motel maid. For that reason, I’m slightly less relaxed than many travelers when using motel bathrooms because I know how carelessly I cleaned them back then. The first motel I worked at in my hometown (when I was 15) was just the site of a murder.
5. I learned there was no Santa shortly after the Xmas when I was five. Santa brought me a huge doll that year--she was nearly as tall as me. A few days later I was in the laundry room with my mother when I noticed a long box spanning the top of the washer and dryer. The box had several pictures of my doll on it. I put two and two together.
6. I love to drive...and didn’t do it for over a decade.
7. I was a bit of a hypochondriac as a child. I often feared I’d contracted some dreaded disease. But instead of taking my worries to my parents, I’d wait until they fell asleep and then creep out to the living room in the wee hours to look up the diseases in the Encyclopedia Britannica. (Having a 1st grade classmate die of leukemia when I was in 2nd grade may have fueled those fears.)
8. Once, when I was about five, I woke suddenly in the middle of the night. It scared me to sleep with the door closed, so the bedroom door was open. The foot of my twin bed was directly opposite the door, so lying in bed I had a direct view down the hallway. I sat up for some reason...and before my eyes, a man began to appear. He was wearing a suit and hat. I sat stunned and watched his image appear until he was fully formed...and then I let out a blood-curdling scream, which of course brought my parents running. I explained what had happened. My Dad searched the house and looked around outside. They assured me that there was no man there and that it had probably just been a nightmare. But I was wide awake when it happened and I can remember it now like it was yesterday. That man scared the hell out of me.
9. I had a tonsillectomy when I was three. I can remember lying on the operating table and having the doctors place a black mask over my face and telling me to count backwards from 100. People tell me this couldn’t possibly have happened. But I swear it did...and I don’t remember getting past about 96. It was ether.
10. At my tiny Catholic grade school, we had two grades in each classroom. When I was in 5th grade, I sat across the aisle from a 6th grader named Myra. She and her siblings were, well, slow. My friends and I made fun of them behind their backs. Myra was stabbed to death that year. She was stabbed about 25 times walking through a field on the way to the market to get more ice cream for her little sister's birthday party. The young man who stabbed her had for years lived two doors down from my cousins (in the house where we'd lived when I was a toddler). He once chased my cousin and me with an ax because we dared walk behind his fenced back yard on the way to the bowling alley (even though it wasn't their property we were cutting through--just an empty lot). I'd like to say this tragedy taught me about compassion, and that we never again made fun of other kids. But it didn't, and we did--we just never made fun of her little sister again.
11. When I was in 4th grade, I missed about 10 weeks of school. I got a couple of cases of bronchitis and then it developed into pneumonia. My aunt would bring my cousin by every day after school with that day’s homework; she’d pick up the previous day’s homework and take it back to school. I was a latch-key kid. I entertained myself by watching all of the old soaps on CBS (in black and white, on a huge, boxy TV), and I can still tell you the order in which they aired: Love of Life, Search for Tomorrow, As the World Turns, The Guiding Light, The Secret Storm and The Edge of Night. The Secret Storm was my favorite--Loretta Young’s daughter was on it. I thought she was so beautiful.
12. When I’d missed quite a bit of school, my 4th grade class made me Get Well cards and my cousin brought them to me. I read each of them, and then pulled out my mother’s manual typewriter to type a Thank You note to each card-writer. The only problem was that the Thank You notes went something like this: “Dear _______, Thank you so much for the Get Well card. Here’s how you spell PNEUMONIA…” Thankfully, my mother intercepted the thank you notes, telling me gently that it was the thought that counted and that it wasn’t necessary for me to correct everyone’s spelling mistakes.
13. As a child I secretly wished I could have a mother like my Aunt. My Aunt was a stay-at-home mom. I desperately wanted a mother who stayed home and did things like bake cookies. It would be even better if she'd wear a dress, pump and pearls like Loretta Young's daughter on The Secret Storm and sit around all day and drink coffee with her friends.
14. I first came to Davis when I was about 13. My cousin and I were participating in a regional competition for 4-H demonstrations. There was something about Davis that drew me in. We stayed in dorm rooms on campus. I’d never seen so many bicycles in my life--they were parked everywhere. The demonstration? It was like a sewing primer for idiots, “What’s in Your (Sewing) Basket?” Amazingly, we won an award. Clearly for presentation and not for content.
15. I once sewed an outfit for a 4-H fashion show that looked great on the outside. It was navy blue, wool, cuffed bell-bottoms (I wish I had them now) topped with a red/navy/white “wesket” (that's what they called them in the olden days of the '60's.) It was sort of a cross between a vest and jacket--like a jacket without sleeves. It was belted with a wrap belt made of the same fabric. I wore a (store bought) white blouse underneath it. I won a medal, only because the judges didn’t ask me to open the wesket to look inside. If they had, they would have seen some shoddy work. I never did like detail work--still don’t. I felt like a fraud winning that medal.
16. I was a cheerleader from 7th through 10th grades. We went to cheerleading camp at Squaw Valley (near Lake Tahoe) the summer before our sophomore year. We were the pastiest cheerleaders there...all except for Cynthia who’s Native-American.
17. I collected every Seventeen magazine between the time I was about 10 and 18. I threw them out when I moved away. Who knew there'd be an eBay?
18. At the suggestion of my high school counselor, I took a shorthand class my sophomore year. (SHORTHAND...if only we’d known then that computers would be invented.) I hated it so much that I vowed to myself the first week of class I would never take a job that would require me to use it...and I never have.
19. I don’t own a pair of pantyhose or tights. I’ll probably buy some tights as the weather cools now that we’re back on the mainland, but I don’t plan to ever wear pantyhose again. EVER.
20. My parents’--and later my Dad’s--bedroom had the largest mirror in the house over the dresser. I liked to use it for primping. I saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald on TV when I was young. My Dad had some of my grandfather’s suits hanging in a garment bag in that closet. Somehow I mixed up my grandfather’s death with Lee Harvey’s. For many years after that, I thought Lee Harvey’s ghost lived inside my Dad’s bedroom closet. By the time I was 18 and ready to move out on my own, I still couldn’t go in my Dad’s bedroom when the closet door was ajar without getting completely creeped out and having to run out if I thought about it too much. I remember sitting in a Psychology class at Diablo Valley College when I was 19, talking about fears. When it was my turn to share my fear, I said, “I believe Lee Harvey Oswald’s ghost lives in my Dad’s bedroom closet.” It was the first time I’d ever told anyone that. (Dad sold our childhood home in '78, when he married my stepmother...otherwise I'd probably still believe it.)
Leave it to Pam to put a fabulous spin on BlogHer's "Ten-Second Me" meme that's floating around. (Mine is here.) Since Pam is not only a veteran traveler, but covers travel for BlogHer, she did "Ten Seconds of Travel." This is a fun one. Maybe you'd like to do this one, too. If you do, leave a comment for Pam here.
Recent Comments