23 Useless Things to Know About Me

1. I don't like wind chimes. Fine for other people, ok to hear the whisper of them far away, but not on my house.

2. In elementary school, the boy who taught me how to snap my fingers was left handed. I can still only snap the fingers on my left hand.

3. I honk and wave at anyone holding a sign and wearing a costume. Especially a gorilla costume.

4. Once in an emergency at work, I was drafted to arrange flowers in a hurry for what I thought was going to be a fancy lunch-e-o-n (as opposed to just lunch). I grabbed the only flowers at hand, some coral-colored camellias in the back of the building, and did my best, which was pretty bad in this instance, and included petals sprinkled across the tablecloth. It turned out that it was just five salesmen eating sandwiches on paper plates. It was embarrassing.

5. Once in a different emergency, I was the second person to arrive at the scene of an accident. I made sure the first person was calling 911, then I went under the semi truck to check on the woman who had intentionally walked in front of it. She was breathing slowly and heavily, and her leg was bent at an awkward angle with the bone sticking out. Her pants leg was hooked on the underside of the truck, holding her leg up. I unhooked it and laid it on the ground. Then I reached inside of her jacket hood, which had twisted around to cover her face, to see if her breathing was obstructed or I suppose, if her head was damaged. It was not. It was a very strange and intimate moment to have my hand inside the warm pocket of air in her hood, hearing her breathing and feeling for blood or brain or skull, my fingers touching her thin brown hair. She was unconscious and I stayed with her until the paramedic crawled under with me to take over. Then I went to work. I found out later that she lived.

6. When I was in my twenties, if I had had a daughter, her name would have been Eleni or Heleni, after a little girl I met on a train in Greece.

7. My only career ambition for a very long time was to be the Koolaid Mom: the one with the house that all the kids wanted to come over to. For a while I told people I was an Art Therapy major, then a History of Consciousness major, neither of which I ever was.

8. I am way too serious.

9. I used to go on diets in high school that consisted of Diet Coke plus something like raisins or popcorn, ascribing magical powers to the food, as though I was on the verge of discovering the next Cabbage Diet. The diets never lasted very long, nor were they ever very successful. (Then again, I only weighed 130 lbs.)

10. I make friends slowly but well.

11. I've always wanted to have a big mouth and or a big nose. I am envious of women with strong features.

12. The whites of my eyes show all the way around my irises if I open them wide.

13. In my pocket, there is usually.....
a third of a used dryer sheet,
a receipt,
a clean doggie poo bag,
a barrette or hair tie and/or crumbs from dog treats

14. When people say things like "expresso" or "nucular" or "sommenier" it drives me bananas. The fancier the word they mess up, the dumber it sounds.

15. I believe that when people say "stop being so sensitive" they probably just said something mean.

16. I prefer books to short stories, although I have read good short stories. They seem contrived to leave you hanging, even when they are very good. (Exception: every story in this book is excellent. Ditto Kate Chopin.)

17. I don't read mysteries; they are too predictable.

18. When I was in high school, I often wore a pink hooded sweatshirt with the drawstring ends tied into nooses. And I had a terrible crush on a senior football player named Lance Ward.

19. As a freshman or sophomore, I invited Lance Ward (who was some kind of "back" on the football team--running or quarter or line or something, and three years older) to my house so that I could help him with his French homework. (If I had been remotely hot at that age, that could have been a really excellent metaphor.) We studied together on the floor of the front room. I provided a repast of oranges. Lance ate the peel in addition to the orange. I even made a tape of old Beatles songs to play softly in the background. I think he still got a D on the final.

20. Later, I wrote a painfully bad poem about him that included the word "noone," which I meant to be "no one," but I wasn't sure at the time whether it was two words or one.

21. I don't like bumper stickers. Same as religion, slogan t-shirts, or wind chimes: fine for other people, but not for me. Love to read them, but don't put them on my car.

22. In college, I won two prizes in a city-wide poetry competition, first and third.

23. My favorite doll's name was Sasha. She is in a toybox in my garage right now. I check on her from time to time.