Thirty-Four Things, Part II

Last week, I wrote out the first half of the list of thirty-four things I knew about myself. Today is my 34th birthday, and as promised, here is the second half of the list. Yorkshire Pudding requested “sex, drugs and rock and roll” in part II. I shall do my best to oblige.

Thirty-Four Things, Part II

18) Sex: I was not impressed by my first kiss (too sloppy). I was not impressed by my second kiss (too aggressive). I was ready to throw in the towel until I experienced my third kiss. It was lovely. I dated the guy for far too long simply because he was such a great kisser.

19) Drugs: The few times in my life in which I smoked had more to do with the boys I fancied than anything else. Each round of cigarette smoking ended up exactly as before: illness a la food poisoning. Eventually, I realized (a) cigarette-smoking really wasn’t for me (b) I needed to have crushes on boys who didn’t smoke.

20) Rock and Roll: When I was 14, I met Joan Jett. Ulric and my mother went with me to the concert, and they were (perhaps) the youngest and the oldest members of the audience. Afterward, I was determined to meet my hero. A newspaper reporter doing a story on Jett had an extra backstage pass, and offered it to me. Not only did I get to go backstage, but the reporter was able to manage it so that my mother and brother could come backstage too. I got autographs for all of my penpals, and Joan Jett gave me a leopard-print bandana.

21) For the first 6 years of my life, I lived in a house in the woods that didn’t have hot running water or flush-toilets. Our house was heated by a coal-stove. I suspect this experience has much to do with my befuddlement over how others find camping “fun.”

22) When I see digital time, I mentally convert it to analog. The numbers don’t mean as much to me as the position of the hands on the clock.

23) I am extremely prone to motion-sickness. As a result, I had mediocre reference skills in grade school and college because I avoided microfiche and microfilm. I am thankful for the full-text articles in databases that became more accessible just as I started graduate school.

24) Before I got together with Bede, I told a friend of mine that I doubted things would work out because Bede “wasn’t silly enough.” At the time, I didn't realize I was just trying to find an excuse for things not to work out, as I had no prior experience with healthy relationships.

25) I decided to become a librarian to save myself from having to train as a teacher. (In my twenties, I would have made a lousy teacher.) Hardly anyone believes me that I didn’t become a librarian because my mother was a librarian, but think about it: how many people do you know these days who actively want to do what their parents did?

26) It’s been two and a half years since my youngest brother died, and I am still incredulous that he’s gone. Some part of my brain is waiting for the joke to be over and the punch-line to be worth it.

27) I don’t tolerate bullies. I don’t have much in the way of brawn or clever, on-the-spot responses, but I do have a long memory and a boatload of patience.

28) Schroeder from the “Peanuts” comic strip and the score for the film “A Clockwork Orange” fanned my love of Beethoven. There was a time when “A Clockwork Orange” was my favorite film. It was incredibly violent, and I didn’t like the violence, but still, I was obsessed with the film. I don’t think I could watch it today.

29) When playing Monopoly, I almost always pick the iron, even though I rarely iron my clothes. I acknowledge the irony.

30) My favorite light reading is spicy historical fiction set in the Elizabethan Era or just before.

31) Although I don’t believe in reincarnation, sometimes I get the sense that I wasn’t always this fortunate.

32) I grew up with three sets of grandparents: my mother’s parents, and my father’s parents who divorced and remarried before I was born.

33) As long as you’re respectful, you can pretty much ask me any question you like, and I will answer it as truthfully as possible (or let you know that I only want to tell you part of the answer).

34) On the calendar of saints, the feast day of Alkelda of Giggleswick is March 28. I gave the name “Alkelda” to a character (Twi’lek Jedi, if you’re interested) I developed as a guest-player in the Star Wars role-playing game.