I've been tagged!

[jpskewedthrone]

ebenstone tagged me for this meme! Perhaps you will learn something you wished you'd never learned.

Here are the rules:
• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
• People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

I'm not sure I can come up with 8 interesting things about myself, but here goes:

1. I clip my fingernails obsessively while writing. Nervous habit. I do it when I'm stuck and thinking. Or just thinking. Or just procrastinating about thinking. And it takes the place of actually gnawing on my fingernails, which is what I used to do when a child in school.

2. I've taken 12 years of piano lessons and used to be able to play some rather challenging classics. Never played anything like improv or anything "fun", just classical. Favorite classical pianist? Debussy. I went to state competition for Debussy's "The Sunken Cathedral" while in high school. I haven't practiced much lately, so would be EXTREMELY rusty. I also play the violin (a year of lessons), the clarinet (for 2 years in high school), and percussion (2 years in high school). I wanted to learn the oboe in high school but they said no, because they already had an oboist . . . oboeist . . . someone who played the oboe, and they didn't need another. How sucky is that?

3. When I was 7 or 8 or something, I fell out of a tree in the backyard. This would be mostly boring and uneventful, except for the fact that on the fall down I managed somehow to snag my front teeth in the clothesline beneath the tree, which of course ripped my two front teeth out. EWWWWW! However, it's a funny story, because while I was spitting up blood into the kitchen sink, I kept asking my mom how I was going to convince the tooth fairy that I'd actually lost 2 teeth when I couldn't find them in the yard. I could have cared less about the blood, I wanted my damn quarter! I got a candy bar from the tooth fairy instead.

4. I color my hair. (Ooops! Did I say that out loud?) I started getting gray hair in high school. Back then, I was in heaven, because the only part that came in gray was this lock in the front (which I still have). However, the damn gray began to spread in college. I personally wouldn't color my hair, but my partner prefers it colored (and spiked) and I don't really care one way or the other, so I let him color it.

5. When I was 13, I fractured 7 bones in my wrists and ended up in casts, on both arms, for 6 weeks. (Well, 4 weeks on one arm, 6 on the other.) This is entirely the fault of my gym teacher, who made the finish line of a race the brick wall of the gym. So of course I slammed into it in order to win the race. jennifer_dunne will understand. They didn't believe that my wrists actually hurt, so the gym teacher forced me to stay for the rest of the class. When I almost passed out getting dressed afterwards, they sent me to the nurse, who called my mom and told her I was faking it. After being home for a while, my mom decided I looked a little pale and took me into the hospital and . . .

6. Apparently while I had the casts on, I punched someone out at school. I don't remember this, and I honestly think I'd remember something like this. Except that it would be SO FAR outside my character, or what I thought of as my character back then, that perhaps I've blocked it out. Everyone says I did it, but still . . . I now think of myself as cool, or at least cooler than I thought I was back then.

Damn, coming up with 8 of these is hard!

7. Another scary story that will make you go EWWWWW! While in Texas, I was watching the Gremlins movie late at night with all of the lights off. It's TX, so I was in shorts. Anyway, I was sitting so that I could see my knee in silhouette against the bottom of the TV screen and about halfway through the movie a scorpion crawled up over the end of my knee onto my thigh. I screamed like a girl and swatted the thing across the room, then danced around the room with the heeby-jeebies for about an hour. I never felt it crawling up my leg. Not once.

And that isn't the only scorpion story I have to tell. Not to mention black widows in Virginia.

8. And just to make you smile: Halfway through 9th grade, I moved from Washington State to Virginia. They placed me in the honors math class, but the teacher tested me . . . and decided based on the test that I should be in remedial math. So I spent 2 days in remedial math before I rebelled and forced them to let me go back to the honors course. They agreed grudgingly, and I mean grudgingly. And now . . . well, you all know the story.

OK, now I'm supposed to tag some people. A few I would have tagged have already been tagged, and it's not fair to tag people twice. If I tag you and you've already been tagged, let me know and I'll chose someone else. So, the following people at "it":

pbray
jennifer_dunne
jimhines (because I know you need a distraction from the editor)
mizkit (because I know you need a distraction from the revisions)
comixboy (you have to do things I DON'T already know *grin*)
barbarienne
coolmajaka
fireun
lisamantchev

Comments

[pbray.livejournal.com]

Piano? I knew most of the rest, but that surprised me. Another thing you and Jennifer have in common.

[chichiri-no-da.livejournal.com]

OMG, that scorpion story gave ME the heeby-jeebies. I am again reminded why I'll never move to Texas.

The first time I came to that conclusion was when I learned of the existance of the brown recluse. *shudders*

I'm very unhappy that my personal experience with gym teachers ensured that I would not be surprised by your story about breaking your wrists.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

Eeek! I've been tagged! Will get to it this afternoon.

On another note, my daughter-of-lawyers instinct is popping up and saying, Did you sue the school over your broken wrists? 'Cause I totally, totally would have. It would have paid for your college education.