100 things meme.
Oct. 19th, 2005 09:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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makesmewannadie for this. I originally did this meme in 2002, so if you read it then.... Very little has changed...except that my mother died in 2003.
1. I had a poem published in the DeKalb County Teachers Calendar when I was eleven. It was something about imagination and the loss of childhood…I think. It was a long time ago. I still have it somewhere.
2. I earned a partial scholarship to college in a drama audition. We had to do two pieces, one was an oratory delivery of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. The other was a piece I wrote myself which was…eh hem…about unicorns. (Told from a child's point of view -- notice the regression theme here.)
3. I saw the original Star Wars movie (A New Hope) 117 times before it was released on video or hit TV. In the space of two months.
4. I have six dictionaries, two thesarusi, four writing guides and two books of quotes within reaching distance of my computer.
5. When I was 4-5 years old my mother had to constantly go after me, to make sure I wouldn't go home with strangers. She once thought seriously about leashing me when I asked the garbage men if they would take me for a ride in their truck.
6. My best friend when I was about that age was a girl named Peggy who did not actually do much talking until after I moved away. She didn't need to. I talked for her. It was not unusual for me to go up to her mother and tell her that Peggy would like a cookie, or to have a book read to her, or to go outside and play. Whether Peggy actually talked to *me*, I have no recollection.
7. The first week I was at college, I got involved in a campus protest about the dismantling of one of the male dorms, that lead back to the plan to reassess the theatre space to make it more amenable to the music department…the local news picked it up. My mother called to ask me if that was really me she saw creating a civil disturbance. It was the only public protest I've ever been involved in.
8. A rite of passage for me was to have my paternal grandmother take me by bus to downtown Atlanta, to the old landmark Rich's there and have lunch at the Magnolia room. We had fancy chicken salad and very sweet iced tea with fresh mint. It was the first time in my life I ever had a croissant.
9. I don't drink much water because it tastes like metal -- like tin foil. It doesn’t matter if it's tap water, bottled water, fresh from a spring or tainted with lemon.
10. My best friend from college is still my best friend.
11. I lost fifty pounds in four month just so my college drama professor would consider me for the role of Kate in Taming of the show. I got the role.
12. I didn't start smoking until I was 22 years old.
14. My first job was as a car hop at one of the last Shoney's that had carhops. I was fifteen.
15. Despite my reputation for loving all things artsy, all things classic, there are very few movies produced prior to 1980 that I actually like. Old black and white films bore me to tears -- I find Casablanca unbearable, Gone with the Wind unwatchable and Dr. Zhivago an insomniac's cure. On the other hand, there is nothing I can think of that Kathryn Hepburn ever did that I don't absolutely adore.
16. When I was 17, my best friend at the time and I spent a weekend with the Hari Krishna's at their temple in Atlanta.
17. I thought the religion part was cool. I found the incense and the weird food to be a huge impediment to conversion.
18. I spent three years as part of a Wiccan circle. We have a pretty extensive set of rituals and spells in our Book of Shadows. Our protection spells were particularly effective.
19. I taught myself to read the Tarot, Runes and the I-Ching, then spent the better part of a year designing and making my own Cards, my own stones and my own casting sticks.
20. I am, currently, an absentee Episcopalian (High Church) who took to heart her old priest's admonishment that in order to be a good Christian you have to understand what it is to be a good Jew, and in order to be a good Jew, you have to understand what it is to be a good pagan.
21. For nearly a year in college, my spiritual pursuit of truth included a great time I had with two Mormon sisters. We saw great musicals, went to church, and generally had a good time. I was almost converted.
22. The conversion process stopped at a Mormon mass that included Wonder Bread as the host.
23. I was amazingly disappointed.
24. I once passed out at a high mass -- due to low blood sugar as opposed to being overwhelmed by the passion. I think.
25. One of the most humbling and sacred experiences I've ever had was going to a mass wherein the priests and assistant priests bathed our feet. I was sobbing by the end of it.
26. When I was twelve, I went with a friend to a Baptist revival -- the preacher scared me so bad with his fire and brimstone sermons, that I was in tears and had to be taken home. I swore then and there that any man of God whose primary goal was to scare me, was no one I would listen to.
27. When I was fourteen, I had my tonsils taken out. I was one of some 200,000 kids who has problems afterwards. A few days later I was coughing up blood.
28. My parents took me to the hospital and the docs gave me something to help my blood coagulate…or something.
29. Early that morning, I nearly bled to death and had to be taken back to surgery to have the incisions cauterized and get two liters of blood transfused.
30. My parents didn't sue.
31. As a result of my tonsil adventure, I lost some thirty pounds.
32. The 30 lb. loss put me in a size 14 dress for my sister's wedding that fall. I looked great.
33. When I was sixteen I worked cleaning houses. My brother was my only client. I earned $7 a week. It was a fortune.
34. Our first pet was a collie named Missy. She was my best friend when I was five and six. I don't know how she died.
35. In the house where I grew up (mostly) the yard contains some dozen of so small metal file boxes or shoe boxes, each containing the remains of a pet hamster, mouse, rat, iguana, baby possum, or cat. There may be a couple of fish too. Maybe a snake.
36. I wouldn't let my father flush dead pets. They each had to have a comfortable coffin and a grave and a cross or stone and flowers.
37. I still do this with dead pets.
38. Except dogs. Dogs are cremated and have cool tins for their ashes.
39. When I was in high school, my best friend and I used to sneak into the older section of the city cemetery (Some graves predate the Civil War) at night with tape recorders and blankets and food.
40. We would lay on crypts and try to record ghosts.
41. We left food for the spirits…or the squirrels.
42. I still have a few of those tapes, but I'm not sure how well they play anymore. There was some interesting things recorded on them.
43. After a bizarre incident with a Ouija board when I was in college, I swore off them. I also burned the one I had. I haven't used one since.
44. I believe the veil between the living and the dead is a lot thinner than most people are comfortable with.
45. Cemeteries, especially older ones with stone markers instead of small plaques, are still one of the places I find the most comfort in.
46. The gods of the parking lots love me and are very kind. It freaks people out how often I find parking close to doors -- even on big shopping days -- and I don't have to drive around a lot. You have to respect the lines.
47. I hate malls.
48. The only time I have ever broken a bone was in college, when I got so angry at one of my roommates I went outside and punched a hole in the side of the trailer we lived in.
49. I have, however, been bitten by dogs 4 times and my cat once (recently) which has left me with scars on my leg and a certain lack of sensation in my right thumb.
50. I have had my tonsils out, my appendix and my gall bladder.
51. I have a mild (non-malignant) kind of skin cancer.
52. A few years before his stroke, my paternal grandfather and his sister went to England, to trace our family's history.
53. We come from a line of people who made bells for the kings and queens of England.
54. I don't remember my maternal grandfather at all, and have the barest memories of my maternal grandmother.
55. When I was four, my father's parents drove from Atlanta in the middle of the night to Columbia, South Carolina to pick up my mother, my older siblings and me when we got evicted from the house we were living in.
56. My father had failed to pay the rent three months in a row. He was on the road as a salesman when we were evicted.
57. My mother lost most of what she had gotten from her mother in the way of furniture and dishes at that time.
58. I don't think she ever forgave my father for that.
59. We moved to Walpole, MA when I was six and I started school there.
60. We lived across the street from the Ag College and down the way from the prison.
61. I learned to ice skate on the Ag College pond, and learned to sled on the hill that led to the pond.
62. When I was seven, I was taking my sled across the street to the hill when I was hit by a car.
63. Neither me nor my sled was really hurt.
64. My first school had five rooms and was the same cinderblock building they used for rec activities in the summer. Only first graders went there.
65. In second grade, we went to a brand new shiny school, and the first graders were allowed to go too. I don't know what school buildings the others while I was in first grade.
66. The first Christmas in Walpole, my paternal grandparents came up and gave me a doll. After Christmas, they did a recall on the dolls -- they were flammable or toxic or something.
67. My father had to burn the doll and I screamed for hours, my mother says.
68. I got another doll, a rag doll, not plastic. I named her Jane Ellen for the girl up the street because I thought it was a pretty name.
69. I still have Jane Ellen. (Although she needs the attention of a doll hospital, badly.)
70. I have some half dozen books and toys from my childhood -- from before we moved back to Georgia.
71. Until I was about 30, I seriously thought and planned that at some point I would become a nun. It's still a plan.
72. In a dream/daydream I'm convinced God told me that I needed to live my life before I could give it to him.
73. I'm convinced that God is very fond of basketball.
74.When I surrender some part of my life or troubles to God, I see myself passing him a basketball. He never misses the catch.
75. I'm sometimes reluctant to pass the ball.
76. We moved to NY in the middle of my second grade year. The teachers there (and before) thought I was gifted. My mother thought I was just imaginative and had an extensive vocabulary.
77. They put me in advanced classes for gifted children.
78. Mom was right.
79. By the time we left NY (and the public school systems) and moved back to Georgia, in the fifth grade, I couldn't do math, my reading skills were below average, and I was having behavioral problems.
80. My mother spent a good portion of my elementary school years in battles with the principle and the teachers about me. They thought I was a gifted underachiever, with maturity problems.
81. She told them I was an eleven year old girl (or twelve, or thirteen) who was friendly and gregarious and imaginative who would do fine if they'd quite telling me how disappointed they were that I wouldn't try harder.
81-b. Mom was right.
82. When my oldest nephew was about 10 or so and we were at the beach, he asked me if I was queer since I didn't have a boyfriend and didn't want to get married, or have kids.
83. My nephew is a particularly intelligent young man.
84. The best conversation I ever had with my sister was when we were at the beach and for the first time, we talked about my father. (He was still alive.) We realized that we had almost the exact same experience of him. It was the first thing she and I ever had in common.
85. Since then, we have found a lot more things that we have in common. I love having a big sister.
86. My roommate's mother is crazy. However, she has always been very kind and generous to me. I'd give it up if she'd be less crazy in dealing with her daughters.
87. My older brother had to step in and break up a fight between me and a boy in school. Bro' was the senior class president -- I was in the eighth grade.
88. I got into theatre in high school because my brother had been in the drama club.
89. My brother got into the drama club in high school because a girl he liked was in it.
90. I spent the next fifteen years (give or take) involved in live theatre.
91. I have traveled more since getting involved in fandom than I had in all the years prior.
92. When I was studying Art History in college, I fell in love with the works of Eugene Delecroix and then Miro. They are still my favorite artists.
93. My father, in his life, was a traveling shoe salesman, a traveling clothing salesman, a golf instructor, a golf pro, the manager of a golf course in Ellicotteville, NY, a ski lift operator, the owner of a hobby shop, a bonsai artist, a landscaper, a cryptographer for the Air Force, and the best playmate a little kid could ever have. Not necessarily in that order.
94. The resemblance between my father and Peter Pan, did not go unnoticed.
95. I was and remain a huge fan of Gordon Lightfoot, Loggins & Messina, Johnny Cash, and Neil Diamond.
96. When I think of my paternal Grandmother, I always think of violets. I have inherited her violet dinnerware, and the desire to have them in my yard. I have not, unfortunately, inherited her knack for growing african violets that bloom, from the leaves. I also inherited her belief that things will be what they will be and no machination of man or woman can change that.
97. From my paternal grandfather, I have inherited a love for fresh figs, fresh vegetables from my own garden and a fascination with birds that doesn't include needing to know what kind of bird they are.
98. From my father I inherited the art of gab, a fascination with history, and a short but creative attention span.
99. From my mother I have inherited a sense of tolerance, the love of tradition, a sense of faith that extends beyond religion, and the desire to make other people laugh when I can.
100. I remember every time I've lied. It's both a blessing and a curse.
makesmewannadie for this. I originally did this meme in 2002, so if you read it then.... Very little has changed...except that my mother died in 2003.1. I had a poem published in the DeKalb County Teachers Calendar when I was eleven. It was something about imagination and the loss of childhood…I think. It was a long time ago. I still have it somewhere.
2. I earned a partial scholarship to college in a drama audition. We had to do two pieces, one was an oratory delivery of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. The other was a piece I wrote myself which was…eh hem…about unicorns. (Told from a child's point of view -- notice the regression theme here.)
3. I saw the original Star Wars movie (A New Hope) 117 times before it was released on video or hit TV. In the space of two months.
4. I have six dictionaries, two thesarusi, four writing guides and two books of quotes within reaching distance of my computer.
5. When I was 4-5 years old my mother had to constantly go after me, to make sure I wouldn't go home with strangers. She once thought seriously about leashing me when I asked the garbage men if they would take me for a ride in their truck.
6. My best friend when I was about that age was a girl named Peggy who did not actually do much talking until after I moved away. She didn't need to. I talked for her. It was not unusual for me to go up to her mother and tell her that Peggy would like a cookie, or to have a book read to her, or to go outside and play. Whether Peggy actually talked to *me*, I have no recollection.
7. The first week I was at college, I got involved in a campus protest about the dismantling of one of the male dorms, that lead back to the plan to reassess the theatre space to make it more amenable to the music department…the local news picked it up. My mother called to ask me if that was really me she saw creating a civil disturbance. It was the only public protest I've ever been involved in.
8. A rite of passage for me was to have my paternal grandmother take me by bus to downtown Atlanta, to the old landmark Rich's there and have lunch at the Magnolia room. We had fancy chicken salad and very sweet iced tea with fresh mint. It was the first time in my life I ever had a croissant.
9. I don't drink much water because it tastes like metal -- like tin foil. It doesn’t matter if it's tap water, bottled water, fresh from a spring or tainted with lemon.
10. My best friend from college is still my best friend.
11. I lost fifty pounds in four month just so my college drama professor would consider me for the role of Kate in Taming of the show. I got the role.
12. I didn't start smoking until I was 22 years old.
14. My first job was as a car hop at one of the last Shoney's that had carhops. I was fifteen.
15. Despite my reputation for loving all things artsy, all things classic, there are very few movies produced prior to 1980 that I actually like. Old black and white films bore me to tears -- I find Casablanca unbearable, Gone with the Wind unwatchable and Dr. Zhivago an insomniac's cure. On the other hand, there is nothing I can think of that Kathryn Hepburn ever did that I don't absolutely adore.
16. When I was 17, my best friend at the time and I spent a weekend with the Hari Krishna's at their temple in Atlanta.
17. I thought the religion part was cool. I found the incense and the weird food to be a huge impediment to conversion.
18. I spent three years as part of a Wiccan circle. We have a pretty extensive set of rituals and spells in our Book of Shadows. Our protection spells were particularly effective.
19. I taught myself to read the Tarot, Runes and the I-Ching, then spent the better part of a year designing and making my own Cards, my own stones and my own casting sticks.
20. I am, currently, an absentee Episcopalian (High Church) who took to heart her old priest's admonishment that in order to be a good Christian you have to understand what it is to be a good Jew, and in order to be a good Jew, you have to understand what it is to be a good pagan.
21. For nearly a year in college, my spiritual pursuit of truth included a great time I had with two Mormon sisters. We saw great musicals, went to church, and generally had a good time. I was almost converted.
22. The conversion process stopped at a Mormon mass that included Wonder Bread as the host.
23. I was amazingly disappointed.
24. I once passed out at a high mass -- due to low blood sugar as opposed to being overwhelmed by the passion. I think.
25. One of the most humbling and sacred experiences I've ever had was going to a mass wherein the priests and assistant priests bathed our feet. I was sobbing by the end of it.
26. When I was twelve, I went with a friend to a Baptist revival -- the preacher scared me so bad with his fire and brimstone sermons, that I was in tears and had to be taken home. I swore then and there that any man of God whose primary goal was to scare me, was no one I would listen to.
27. When I was fourteen, I had my tonsils taken out. I was one of some 200,000 kids who has problems afterwards. A few days later I was coughing up blood.
28. My parents took me to the hospital and the docs gave me something to help my blood coagulate…or something.
29. Early that morning, I nearly bled to death and had to be taken back to surgery to have the incisions cauterized and get two liters of blood transfused.
30. My parents didn't sue.
31. As a result of my tonsil adventure, I lost some thirty pounds.
32. The 30 lb. loss put me in a size 14 dress for my sister's wedding that fall. I looked great.
33. When I was sixteen I worked cleaning houses. My brother was my only client. I earned $7 a week. It was a fortune.
34. Our first pet was a collie named Missy. She was my best friend when I was five and six. I don't know how she died.
35. In the house where I grew up (mostly) the yard contains some dozen of so small metal file boxes or shoe boxes, each containing the remains of a pet hamster, mouse, rat, iguana, baby possum, or cat. There may be a couple of fish too. Maybe a snake.
36. I wouldn't let my father flush dead pets. They each had to have a comfortable coffin and a grave and a cross or stone and flowers.
37. I still do this with dead pets.
38. Except dogs. Dogs are cremated and have cool tins for their ashes.
39. When I was in high school, my best friend and I used to sneak into the older section of the city cemetery (Some graves predate the Civil War) at night with tape recorders and blankets and food.
40. We would lay on crypts and try to record ghosts.
41. We left food for the spirits…or the squirrels.
42. I still have a few of those tapes, but I'm not sure how well they play anymore. There was some interesting things recorded on them.
43. After a bizarre incident with a Ouija board when I was in college, I swore off them. I also burned the one I had. I haven't used one since.
44. I believe the veil between the living and the dead is a lot thinner than most people are comfortable with.
45. Cemeteries, especially older ones with stone markers instead of small plaques, are still one of the places I find the most comfort in.
46. The gods of the parking lots love me and are very kind. It freaks people out how often I find parking close to doors -- even on big shopping days -- and I don't have to drive around a lot. You have to respect the lines.
47. I hate malls.
48. The only time I have ever broken a bone was in college, when I got so angry at one of my roommates I went outside and punched a hole in the side of the trailer we lived in.
49. I have, however, been bitten by dogs 4 times and my cat once (recently) which has left me with scars on my leg and a certain lack of sensation in my right thumb.
50. I have had my tonsils out, my appendix and my gall bladder.
51. I have a mild (non-malignant) kind of skin cancer.
52. A few years before his stroke, my paternal grandfather and his sister went to England, to trace our family's history.
53. We come from a line of people who made bells for the kings and queens of England.
54. I don't remember my maternal grandfather at all, and have the barest memories of my maternal grandmother.
55. When I was four, my father's parents drove from Atlanta in the middle of the night to Columbia, South Carolina to pick up my mother, my older siblings and me when we got evicted from the house we were living in.
56. My father had failed to pay the rent three months in a row. He was on the road as a salesman when we were evicted.
57. My mother lost most of what she had gotten from her mother in the way of furniture and dishes at that time.
58. I don't think she ever forgave my father for that.
59. We moved to Walpole, MA when I was six and I started school there.
60. We lived across the street from the Ag College and down the way from the prison.
61. I learned to ice skate on the Ag College pond, and learned to sled on the hill that led to the pond.
62. When I was seven, I was taking my sled across the street to the hill when I was hit by a car.
63. Neither me nor my sled was really hurt.
64. My first school had five rooms and was the same cinderblock building they used for rec activities in the summer. Only first graders went there.
65. In second grade, we went to a brand new shiny school, and the first graders were allowed to go too. I don't know what school buildings the others while I was in first grade.
66. The first Christmas in Walpole, my paternal grandparents came up and gave me a doll. After Christmas, they did a recall on the dolls -- they were flammable or toxic or something.
67. My father had to burn the doll and I screamed for hours, my mother says.
68. I got another doll, a rag doll, not plastic. I named her Jane Ellen for the girl up the street because I thought it was a pretty name.
69. I still have Jane Ellen. (Although she needs the attention of a doll hospital, badly.)
70. I have some half dozen books and toys from my childhood -- from before we moved back to Georgia.
71. Until I was about 30, I seriously thought and planned that at some point I would become a nun. It's still a plan.
72. In a dream/daydream I'm convinced God told me that I needed to live my life before I could give it to him.
73. I'm convinced that God is very fond of basketball.
74.When I surrender some part of my life or troubles to God, I see myself passing him a basketball. He never misses the catch.
75. I'm sometimes reluctant to pass the ball.
76. We moved to NY in the middle of my second grade year. The teachers there (and before) thought I was gifted. My mother thought I was just imaginative and had an extensive vocabulary.
77. They put me in advanced classes for gifted children.
78. Mom was right.
79. By the time we left NY (and the public school systems) and moved back to Georgia, in the fifth grade, I couldn't do math, my reading skills were below average, and I was having behavioral problems.
80. My mother spent a good portion of my elementary school years in battles with the principle and the teachers about me. They thought I was a gifted underachiever, with maturity problems.
81. She told them I was an eleven year old girl (or twelve, or thirteen) who was friendly and gregarious and imaginative who would do fine if they'd quite telling me how disappointed they were that I wouldn't try harder.
81-b. Mom was right.
82. When my oldest nephew was about 10 or so and we were at the beach, he asked me if I was queer since I didn't have a boyfriend and didn't want to get married, or have kids.
83. My nephew is a particularly intelligent young man.
84. The best conversation I ever had with my sister was when we were at the beach and for the first time, we talked about my father. (He was still alive.) We realized that we had almost the exact same experience of him. It was the first thing she and I ever had in common.
85. Since then, we have found a lot more things that we have in common. I love having a big sister.
86. My roommate's mother is crazy. However, she has always been very kind and generous to me. I'd give it up if she'd be less crazy in dealing with her daughters.
87. My older brother had to step in and break up a fight between me and a boy in school. Bro' was the senior class president -- I was in the eighth grade.
88. I got into theatre in high school because my brother had been in the drama club.
89. My brother got into the drama club in high school because a girl he liked was in it.
90. I spent the next fifteen years (give or take) involved in live theatre.
91. I have traveled more since getting involved in fandom than I had in all the years prior.
92. When I was studying Art History in college, I fell in love with the works of Eugene Delecroix and then Miro. They are still my favorite artists.
93. My father, in his life, was a traveling shoe salesman, a traveling clothing salesman, a golf instructor, a golf pro, the manager of a golf course in Ellicotteville, NY, a ski lift operator, the owner of a hobby shop, a bonsai artist, a landscaper, a cryptographer for the Air Force, and the best playmate a little kid could ever have. Not necessarily in that order.
94. The resemblance between my father and Peter Pan, did not go unnoticed.
95. I was and remain a huge fan of Gordon Lightfoot, Loggins & Messina, Johnny Cash, and Neil Diamond.
96. When I think of my paternal Grandmother, I always think of violets. I have inherited her violet dinnerware, and the desire to have them in my yard. I have not, unfortunately, inherited her knack for growing african violets that bloom, from the leaves. I also inherited her belief that things will be what they will be and no machination of man or woman can change that.
97. From my paternal grandfather, I have inherited a love for fresh figs, fresh vegetables from my own garden and a fascination with birds that doesn't include needing to know what kind of bird they are.
98. From my father I inherited the art of gab, a fascination with history, and a short but creative attention span.
99. From my mother I have inherited a sense of tolerance, the love of tradition, a sense of faith that extends beyond religion, and the desire to make other people laugh when I can.
100. I remember every time I've lied. It's both a blessing and a curse.
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Date: 2006-12-12 09:20 am (UTC)The violet thing, #96, makes me wish I knew my own grandparents. It's touching.
The lying thing, #100? It's a little scary with me, cause I don't just tell a lie, I live it until, if you asked me what the truth was? I honestly couln't tell you.