Five Or So Things

BBFF Swishy tagged me. She knows (well, she does now) that I hate tags, so I'm switching it up a bit. Instead of Five Things About Me You Don’t Know, I'm taking it one step further and making this a new tag called:

SIX THINGS ABOUT ME YOU DON'T KNOW THAT MAKE ME REALLY STUPID IN A LOT OF PEOPLE'S EYES.

And here they are, in no particular order:

1. I was married once before but for obvious reasons I don’t talk much about it. It was a very short marriage-just shy of two months, but going into it, we knew we were making an incredible mistake but it was one of those things where we were high school sweethearts, and our parents were the best of friends (obviously, they are not friendly anymore).

The wedding was spectacular, because his mom and my mom were crazed with the details, which was good for me because I’m not much of a planner, as you all know, so I just sat back and let them take over.

I should have known when he smashed the cake in my face at the reception that it was not going to last. That’s the ONE thing I asked him not to do the whole time we were planning to get married. That bastard.

2. When I’m at the computer, thinking, I pick the bottom of my feet and collect the dried-up skin and keep it in a pile next to my keyboard. I am going to continue to do this until I land an agent and then see how big the pile gets. I’m betting I can probably fill a pillow with it. I just doubt it’ll be that soft.

3. Religion and Dances: I went to Catholic school for 11 years, including preschool and kindergarten, and a stint at an all-girl’s school in ninth grade. Ninth grade was pretty traumatizing, I think. Well, at least the after-football-game dances were. Everyone would convene in the hall where the dance was and dance and make out and talk to cute boys. Except me. I still cringe and have major flashbacks when I hear The Fixx and that one song that was playing one particular night I was feeling very desolate, unattractive, lost, lonely, loserish, pathetic…

(OK, now I gotta look it up on itunes…OK, I’m cryin’ here now: One Thing Leads to Another.)

I didn’t go to my high school senior prom, but my sister, who was a junior, got asked by a senior (one who I would have said yes to, probably, had he asked ME, but NOOOOO, he had to go and ask my cheerleader sister to MY prom. Actually, one guy did kind of ask me, and he was a guy I really did want to go with, at the time, but I laughed because I thought he was joking. And who knows, maybe he was too. He didn’t go to prom either, but he did start a rumor later that year that I gave him a BJ. When I ran into him at our 10-year reunion, I reminded him of that rumor, and he said he didn’t remember. I told him, “Well, let me just tell you pal, had it been true, you can bet your ass you would HAVE remembered!” I smacked my lips and strutted away.

I did go to my ninth grade (another traumatic experience, looking back) “Christmas Formal” and damnit, I’m going to find that photo and take a digital picture and post it here just so you can see how freaked it was! I went with our neighbor’s son, who I had a major crush on my whole life (but he’s not the one I married), and I wanted this beautiful sapphire blue floor-length dress at JCPenney’s for only $90 (see, I was frugal even then!), but my MOM wanted me to have this DISGUSTING floral uglier-than-the-ugliest-piece-of-clothing-you’ve-ever-seen dress for $20. Guess which dress I got? Thank God the lights were dimmed at the dance.
I never went to a homecoming. A guy asked me when I was a junior and I said yes. I bought a beautiful sea-foam green tea-length silky dress for the occasion, along with some of that matching bright green mascara that was hot back in 1985. I had everything ready. I was talking to the guy on the phone. We went to the mall together. I thought I liked him. Then, I got scared. He was talking about drinking and smoking, and hey, that was just not Manic’s thing back then, so I chickened out and told him like four days before the dance I didn’t want to go.

That is probably the reason I never got to go to my senior prom – because I was such a bitch to that guy over the homecoming thing. I later wrote a short story called “Memories of a Lost Homecoming” that was a combination of my danceless experiences with homecoming and prom. It was published in our school literary magazine. I can pull it out and put it on the blog if you all want to read it? It sucks.

4. When I had my tonsils out at about four years old (Mom, how old was I?) I vividly remember the doctor putting that black rubber stinky-smelling balloon thingy over my face they made you inhale so you would pass out, and telling me to count backwards from 100. I think I got to number 98 and I passed out (of course, I was four, so I’m sure, UNLIKE Swishy, I didn’t know how to even count TO 100, and they were asking me to count it backwards!).

So, I wake up from surgery, feeling a little groggy and I just remember it being all hospital green like in the old days, that green that’s not quite avocado but isn’t exactly green-green, ya know? More of a yellowish-green with a hint of blue. Now that I think about it, the colors of the walls at the hospital recovery room probably matched my homecoming dress I had to return and the mascara that I kept.

And then I noticed a soft plastic measuring cup attached with an elastic band had been put on my wrist, and I was four, so I was thinking, “Wow, I’m high,” and then, “Wow, I must have done really well during the surgery because they gave me this plastic cup thing around my wrist as a prize for being so good.”

Then I barfed all over myself.

Years later, when having flashbacks of my surgery, I then understood the cup was for me to throw up into.

5. In probably eighth or ninth grade (it was probably ninth, since it was the year of trauma and I hadn’t been thinking straight), I had a book report project to do and I think we got to choose a place to do it on.

I chose Greece. Maybe because my parents had visited Athens, or more than likely, probably because I thought all the Greek myths were pretty freaking cool. In fact, freshman year in college, I took Greek Mythology, which was a three-hour class on Monday night and the old-lady professor would spend the whole time telling us Greek myths while I furiously took notes. It must have fascinated me because I got an A in the class.

Anyway, back to my ninth-grade project. We had to write blah-blah-blah stuff on our chosen place and include pictures. For whatever fucked up reason I had, I decided to save time and just cut the pictures from our set of encyclopedias.

Sidenote: For those of you too young to know what an encyclopedia is, it’s a bunch of books with a whole bunch of stuff written in it. Like, say, for instance, you wanted to learn about Athens, then you would go to the A book, and find all sorts of things about Athens and great photos too. Or if you were doing Greece, you could go to the G volume and find stuff out about Greece. It was a very cool invention back in the day. In fact, they even had salesmen who went door-to-door selling volumes of encyclopedias to women wearing foam hair curlers and pink furry robes, smoking cigarettes, with a baby on her hip and a toddler behind her picking his nose and the soaps blaring in the background while Luke proclaimed his love to Laura, or Greg got injured in a skiing accident and Jenny was rushing to his bedside, while Opal was trying to figure out how to split them up, or maybe even Dr. Noah Drake and Blackie having a discussion on how to foil Scotty. (Wow! Is my memory amazing or what?!)

OK, so, Greece. My book report.

I cut out pictures from our encyclopedia. I didn’t ask my dad to take the books to his office to photocopy them. I didn’t go to the library to find books I could photocopy. I. Cut. Them. From. The. Book.

OK. S T U P I D

My parents were pissed. They yelled. They got mad. They probably even grounded me, and back then, grounding me was telling me I couldn’t lock myself in my room and read any more V.C. Andrews books for the week, so that was a tough punishment! For real.

I guess I learned my lesson. Now I respect books. It was a stupid thing to do, but maybe I was procrastinating till the last minute and the report was due the next day? I don’t know. Regardless, I have never treated a book that way since; I truly learned my lesson.

Oh, and you can bet your ass I got an A+ on that report.

OK, we all know No. 1 is a lie. All the rest, except for parts of No. 2 (there’s not a big pile because I put the dried-up skin in the garbage when I’m done for the day), are completely, utterly, stupidly true.

Hmmm… I think maybe I could write a memoir on being stupid. I’ve got plenty of material!

And tagging these folks, who I hold near and dear to my blogheart.

Kari
Eileen
Jessica
Karyn Bosnak
Ask Allison

PS--another thing I had to add. Nine years ago today, I became the happiest mom by having Ajers, via an emergency C-section, at the age of 28. Happy Birthday Ajers. I love you!