I was fascinated to learn yesterday that my gal pal's father is an artist. I've known her for probably a dozen years and yet, somehow, this little golden nugget of information escaped my attention. It made me realize how much the things that we know about our friends change as we get older. Remember being 13 and knowing everything about your girlfriends? And I do mean everything--what teacher they had a crush on, when they started their period, how long that zit had been on their forehead, what their parents were fighting about, whether they made out with that cute guy in algebra after the game last Friday--everything. There were no secrets between us then.
As we got older, though, it seemed that we tucked those inner thoughts away and turned to more polite conversation among our sisters. Maybe sharing in such an emotional way began to feel immature; maybe it was simply the abating of teenage hormones (read: drama queen syndrome); or perhaps it was just that we discovered someone special who became the new repository of our secrets. No matter what the reason, I'm finding that I want to know more about my friends these days, and not just the polite stuff, either, like what they did last weekend. No, I want to know what makes them so infuriated that they'll hurl their favorite wine glass at the cabinet. I want to know what awful cheese-laden unhealthy thing they eat when they're stressed, what frees their heart, what they're still hoping to do with their life.
And so, in that spirit, I'm going to list five things that you may not know about me. They're not earth-shattering, but they are real.
1. As a teenager, I once hopped up on a table and yelled to holy hell for a room full of people to just shut up. I had been very demure and polite until then, so the element of surprise was very effective. Nothing has been quite the same for me ever since.
2. When I'm really stressed at work, I stop at a convenience store on the way home and buy a big bag of Funyuns. I spend the next 10 minutes cramming them into my mouth like a 3-year-old and wiping my funyuny, salty fingers on my pants. I would ladle globs of cheese on it if I could manage wet cheese and steering at the same time.
3. My great-grandfather changed his name after he and my great-grandmother divorced and no one knows why.
4. I once hit a cat while I was driving a van full of sex offenders to their weekly support group meeting in Tulsa, OK.
5. There are days when I'm not sure exactly how life is supposed to feel.
So there you have it. A little about me. Please feel free to reciprocate; I'd love to hear.
6 comments:
don't know if I can top that you had two divorced great-great grandfathers.
I applaud steppin' up and I will accept the challenge. Now I must ruminate about some dadgum thing that you Don't know, hmmm
I shop lifted a purse one time while shopping with my mom.
ps who is Mongo??
Urk, thanks for pointing out that I just outed my two great-grandfathers. Oops...okay, I've corrected it to reflect the heterosexual nature of my great-grandparents' relationship. Dubya can sleep now.
For more on Mongo, rent "Blazing Saddles," if you dare. All will be revealed. The end result is that you will be deeply offended and feel somehow dirty, but...you'll know.
I have a rather nasty gas problem today - the day after my birthday -because someone left me a huge box of home-made zucchini bread and I scarfed half of the mf-er immediately! It is horrifying to watch youself just SCARF! I was relieved a minute a go when my husband announced guiltily that he just scarfed the other half of it. Thank God for tender mercies!
1. In high school, I once went out on a date with a good friend's boyfriend within about a week of them breaking up. In my defense – if there is one – he and I had known each other for a long time before they got together. And she broke up with him. Still. Ghad. High school was just so incestuous.
2. When I'm stressed, I DON'T eat. At all. I can go days on just water and small bits of microwaved brie (thistle, I'm with ya all the way on the cheese).
3. I could have been a trust fund brat. My father's father was divorce lawyer to big shots and movie stars living in NYC in the 1930/40s - Gloria Swanson was a regular at my grandparents' for dinner. But granddad blew his fortune hangin' with a playboy by the name of Ernst Lehman and by the time granddad died in 1955, he was near penniless. My grandmother had to get a job teaching high school. She scrimped and saved and also played the market very, very well. When SHE died in the late 1970s, she left all four of her children a healthy little nest egg.
4. My mother spent a month living in her cellar at the end of WWII while the Allies bombed her village to hell. She lived on root vegetables and stale water. Her beloved grandparents refused to leave the house. She had to help extract them from the rubble when it was finally safe to go topside again. Yet she remained to her death one of the most fiercely optimistic women I've ever known.
5. I still want to do so much with my life, that I'm terrified I won't have time for it all. In that way, I am very preoccupied with death.
I suppose this could be one of the five things about AJ...I don't remember things about my great grandfather or mother or what either of them did with their names, or who got divorced, or remarried each other or whatever. In fact, my memory puts holes in itself before father time ever gets around to doing so.
AJ considers himself not so interesting as to have a head full of secrets about himself, and if there are some, they don't come to mind when summoned (see above).
Hmmm...I experienced several times (in earlier days) the bizarre threshold one crosses when under the influence of LSD. Before you say it, I must point out that the memory thing was with me long before that; it started around age ten. I once awoke to see the face of a Satanic minion rushing toward me at full speed (no drug involved, sorry). My wife's great great grandfather left his wife and family to marry a native American woman, traveled part of the Trail of Tears with her, and founded the now-gone Oklahoma town of Posie. I once hit a dog with my motorcycle while on my paper route--lifetime total so far is two dogs and one cat, all darters. Dogs survived; cat, I don't know--it went vamos back into the brush to recuperate or expire. In 12th grade, I moved out of my parents' house in a spite-fight with my dad, and shacked up for three weeks with a lovely & unstable Jewish lass, while my pregnant girlfriend cooled her heels and considered my many admirable qualities from afar. On my 40th birthday I attended my brother-in-law's wedding, and the most beautiful girl in the room decided she wanted to dance with *me*...I stepped on her toe so hard it almost broke. Sigh... At 17, I pulled my first 85-mph wheelie on a borrowed Yamaha. I am addicted to dark and nasty beer of all sorts and feel no remorse about it. When I take the younguns trout fishing and they give personal names to each of their catch, I do not hide my amusement.
This comment comes five months late, so AJ's anonymity is quite secure, heh heh.
Anyone need to know anything else about AJ? BWAAAAHHH HA HA HA!
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