Facts about me, as I
Facts about me, as I have discovered, are in astoundingly short supply. The difficulty is, you see, that I live my life immersed in fiction - as author, reader, and character. But I might as well try.
A hundred facts about me.
1: If I had been a boy, my name would have been David.
2: And my sister’s. And yet it took until their third boy for them to actually get around to naming someone David!
3: My legs are short, for my height.
4: And my waist is higher in the back than in the front.
5: Whenever I find a ring by the side of the road, I put it on my finger, twist it three times, and make a wish, in the confident certainty that rings that you find by the side of the road are invariably magical.
6: I have been in love three times
7: But the first time doesn’t count.
8: And the other two were with the same person.
9: My face is asymmetrical.
10: I am almost incapable of remembering where I put the car keys.
11: Right and left are not at all intuitive concepts, for me.
12: When I was younger, I was always trying to be the center of attention
13: I don’t know how to work on cars. This distresses me.
14: I fell out of an apple tree once and split a nice cut in my scalp.
15: Dad fixed it.
16: Lately I have been observing in myself a marked tendency to lateness.
17: I still sing hymns
18: There’s a picture in my purse, of a girl I once knew in high school.
19: I once had the habit of periodically adopting a new word as my favorite curse. Among them "Eggs!" and "Thork!"
20: I don’t plan on having children.
21: But if I did, I would name them Ariston and Arete.
22: I have a great deal of respect for physical pain.
23: One of my favorite tapes when I was young was a tape of Hasidic songs
24: The first time I heard klezmer, I fell head-over-heels in love with it.
25: Words are my natural allies. Numbers are not.
26: I’ve finally managed to get over the red meat craving that began last winter.
27: I am a Christian now.
28: There are a number of facts that I am certainly not going to tell in this forum.
29: I have three brothers and three sisters.
30: I just watched "The Princess Bride", and it made me swoon.
31: Lately a new character has added herself to the list of types that make it into many of my stories.
32: I always have at least five stories going at once.
33: I don’t shave my legs, really out of convenience, but I pretend like it’s out of principle.
34: A bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap suffice for my shower equipage.
35: When I was in kindergarten, I wore my hair in two braids.
36: When I was in first grade, I wore it in a french braid.
37: Lately I wear it in a roll at the base of my head.
38: I really want a copy of "Essays Presented to Charles Williams"
39: My relationship to authority is a bit schizophrenic
40: Computerized cars unnerve me.
41: I had mushrooms with white wine, garlic, and olive oil tonight.
42: There was no reason why life shouldn’t be like a musical, so at one point, I came up with simple musical numbers at appropriate points in the unfolding drama.
43: I still remember dreams I had when I was quite young.
44: I need to read "A Wrinkle In Time" and its sequels again.
45: I am moderately flexible.
46: My sister has got my old room in the house.
47: I don’t think I’ve ever stopped believing in God.
48: I am persuaded of the supreme importance of story.
49: I was born in New Britain General Hospital
50: I love the smell of elevators.
51: I live chastely, for moral, ethical, physical, religious, rational, and irrational reasons.
52: I pronounce "poem" "poim".
53: My parents are the best human beings I know.
54: I fall in love with revolutions and revolutionaries, particularly of the reformatory religious sort, like St. Francis of Assisi.
55: Occasionally I see things as pictures when I’m thinking in Seminar.
56: I eat all sorts of things that weren’t meant to be eaten, like paper.
57: I feel the Middle Ages within myself!
58: There is a lot to be learned from my dreams.
59: If I can just make the person important to me laugh, then I’m recompensed for my labor.
60: One of the easiest ways to flatter me is to inquire whether I’m from another country.
61: Extra points if it’s NOT because of my accent.
62: People do say I have an accent.
63: You know pattern blocks? I used to make people out of them. The good ones, who wore skirts and had braids, were from Parthia. The bad ones, who wore pants and had orange faces, were from Miscellaneous Suspicions.
64: Which sounded to me like a very menacing name indeed.
65: I am as vain as a peacock.
66: I like mirrors, too, although for a completely different reason.
67: languages I know - English, reading, spoken, and thinking. Italian, reading and conversational. Spanish, reading and basic spoken (lapsed). French, reading. German, reading opera. Yiddish, hearing (bits and pieces, klezmer). Japanese, hearing (bits and pieces, anime), basic dojo courtesies. Latin, reading, up to the dative case. Ancient Greek, reading.
68: Alphabets or writing systems I can distinguish: Roman, Greek, kanji, hiragana, katakana, Arabic, Russian, Hebrew.
69: Number of bones I have broken - none.
70: I believe in St. John’s.
71: I have never had a cavity.
72: My first roommate left after three days.
73: I have never used drugs.
74: I am a political agnostic.
75: Cats, not dogs.
76: I distinguish two fundamental desires, that for pleasure and that for truth.
77: I think, though, that their fulfillment will mean their ultimate unity.
78: Calculus has had as profound an impact on my thinking as any philosopher. Other than Plato.
79: I got my Italy photos today!
80: I’m actually very stupid.
81: Material things can take on incredible and irrational preciousness to me.
82: I am inventing two languages
83: Two red-haired women illuminate my life
84: I am reading "I and Thou". You should be too.
85: I tend to think verbally, although I rarely feel verbally.
86: Main flaws- pride, jealousy, and cowardice.
87: It is not natural for me to be natural.
88: I am an omphaloskeptic at times.
89: I learned to drive on a stick-shift.
90: Speaking of sticks, I used to peel the bark off sticks so I could rub smooth wood beneath against my cheek. I called them "smoothing sticks."
91: I am not a geek. I am not a nerd. I am not a goth, or a fan, or anything else that had a name in popular culture.
92: I’m not Jewish, either - a source of continual disappointment.
93: I have done so much growing and maturing and changing this summer, it’s a wonder my foot doesn’t fall off!
94: I know who I want for my senior essay advisor.
95: I like to whistle - which I can do in surprisingly deep and resonant tones.
96: I talk to myself and my car, and sing as I walk on public roads.
97: I love you. Even if I want to kill you, I love you. I just can’t get past myself so I can express it.
98: If you want me to obey you, you must prove yourself superior to me in knowledge, character, and discernment. Otherwise I have no intention of doing what you tell me to, even if you are my boss.
99: I don’t want to be President anymore
100: Tempus Sans is probably my favorite font, but don’t submit any papers written in it.
Miss Nehring, you are another country.
August 2nd, 2002 at 10:53 pm::is flattered::
August 5th, 2002 at 4:36 pmThe guy at the gas station, a heavily-accented Indian-isn-looking gentleman, inquired as to where I was from. He was asking, he said, because I looked very much like I might be from Pakistan, in the northeast region closer to Afghanistan and Russia. It was my style of dress, said he, that had particularly made him wonder, they dress very much like I do.
I was grinning and bubbly all the way home.
August 5th, 2002 at 4:40 pm