Eight Random Things

Okay, it's the second-to-last day here at the charter school, and virtually no kids showed up, so I have time to catch up on my tags. Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein tagged me with the "Eight Random Things" meme. Here it is:

1. I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.
2. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. (You’re not the boss of me!)
5. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay, here goes:

1. I love the Beach Boys' music. Ya got a problem with that?

2. I have very, very bad handwriting. In First Grade, my teacher, Mrs. Griffith, was exasperated with it. Even as I got to fourth grade, I was being given penmanship books meant for younger kids, to no avail. I took to typing all my correspondance many, many years ago. Even I have trouble reading my writing.

My high school friend Lisa Fox suggested that I may be left-handed, and that nobody had figured it out at some point. She may have been correct, but by high school, it was to late to relearn writing.

3. I can recite the alphabet backwards. When I was about 10 or 11 years old, a friend told me that his mother, who was dyslexic, learned the alphabet backwards as part of therapy. I decided to see if I could do it. I did, and can do it to this day. This has not been a skill I thought would ever come to use, but about five years ago, it got me out of a lot of trouble and infuriated Charleston, Illinois' answer to Barney Fife. I will post about it soon.

4. I was at the last Replacements show on July 4, 1991, in Grant Park in downtown Chicago. So were nearly all my friends, along with something like 75,000 other Chicagoans.

I know-- I'm special.

5. I love anchovies. When I roomed with my old buddy Garrett when he moved back to the US from Europe, we used to order double anchovy pizzas. The pizza place always called back just to make sure it wasn't a prank.


6. I once saw a guy get his eye knocked out of the socket in a bar fight. I blogged about it here. It's one of the reason I avoid such unnecessary physical confrontations. Well, most of them.




7. I love broccoli. I eat it nearly every day of my life. Tomatoes, too. Usually with olive oil or hot sauce on them.

And it turns out that all of those things-- along with coffee, tea and red wine-- are among things I love that are turning out to be good for me.

Oh, and naps, too.

8. I inherited a tendency to look a lot younger than I am from my mother. Up until a couple of years ago, I was still getting carded to buy wine and beer. I'm 46 years old.

When I got a traffic ticket at the age of sixteen, I tried to do an end run around my parents-- I knew my father would get furious. I went to court and was told by the judge to bring a parent the next time. I told my mother, who also thought it would be a good idea to hide it from my father. When we went to court for the ticket, I got another tongue-wagging from the judge, who told me he'd told me to bring a parent, not my older sister. My mother, who was about 35 at that point, did look like she was about 25.

And yes, she's still getting mileage out of that story, thirty years later.

I tag anyone who wants to do the meme.