Five Things About Me

I've been tagged by Ali at The Cleaner Plate Club to tell you all 5 things about me. So, here we go...

1)When I was about 4 years old, I would go outside after a rainstorm with a handful of marbles and put them in a puddle and pretend they were fish. I would then sit and watch them for a really long time....a freakishly long time. As I reflect back on that I can't help but wonder where the hell my parents were. I'm guessing they were having cocktails.

2)I grew up in a working class family and money was always tight. My mom was a fantastic money manager, however, and by the time my teenage years rolled around we were solidly middle class. For my 16^th birthday, she and my step-father planned to buy me a car. Yes, I know that this makes me sound very spoiled and let me just say right here, right now…I don't intend to buy  cars for my kids. I am going to make them walk to all of their events…uphill…on stilts…carrying 20 pound bags of sand. This is how I plan to build character – but I digress….back to the car. So, we went car shopping and my mother wanted to buy me this super cool looking orange Karmann Ghia. I told her that I refused to drive a “weird” car and I ended up with a 1979 Fiat Strada, a four door hatchback. Yes, my mom was cooler than I was.

3)I used to be a serious sleepwalker. I once walked out of my father’s apartment, into the alley and peed by the garbage can. Another time, I woke up and found that I was lying in bed but my mattress was bare. I went downstairs and found all of my bedding spread out in a perfect square on the living room floor. On yet another occasion, I got ready for school and then reached into my nightstand to get my earrings and found that my drawer was filled with every single piece of silverware that we owned. I no longer walk in my sleep but several times a year, while sleeping, I become convinced that a lone spider has descended from the ceiling into my hair. I am so certain that I sit up in bed and start ruffling my hair and then start brushing the invisible spider off of my bed. Makes you want to sleep with me, doesn't it?

4)In college, I played on the women’s rugby team and injured my knee as so many rugby players do. I had to have reconstructive knee surgery and had to wear this big, bulky brace and use crutches for about 6 weeks. Two days after I got the brace off and was cleared to ditch the crutches, I went to the Bar in Grinnell with some friends. On the way home, in a drunken stupor, I slipped on the ice, fell and broke my knee cap right in half. I was in a cast for 6 weeks. To this day, my mom still does not know that I was drunk. She thinks that I fell on the ice walking home from a late night lecture on campus.

5)One upon a time, I was a Lesbian Avenger and did street theater, ate fire and did a little bit of spray painting. One night, I climbed to the top of a very tall building to spray paint “Lesbian Avengers” on an enormous billboard that faced the highway. If you have never done this sort of thing, let me tell you that those billboards are very large and you have to stand very close to it because the walkways are quite narrow. You have to spray paint with confidence because you cannot step back to examine your work for correct spacing and consistent letter height. You spray paint on pure faith. That night, I had completed “Lesbian” and was working on “Avengers” when my co-conspirators below began to shout. I looked down to see if the police were coming or if my friends were simply growing impatient and, well, I lost my place. When I joined my friends moments later, they were all laughing and I looked up to see that the billboard read “Lesbian Avenengers” in letters 3 feet tall.

There you have it...five things about me. Stop by next week and we will return to our regular programming which is, coincidentally, also mostly about me.