so Nance, a writing buddy of mine tagged me to write 10 interesting facts about myself. as she said, “Feels a little uncomfortable, but that’s what writing is all about–putting yourself out there! so i’m gonna get right out there. not that i’m one to hide anything really.

1. i am a 6’5″ woman. my doctor once told me i was a statistical anomaly. right before my 12th birthday my mom took me the doctor because she was afraid i was never, ever gonna stop growing. when the doctor measured me and told me i was 6-feet tall, i started to cry and made him measure me three more times. he told me not to worry because i would probably stop growing once i got my period. i spent all of 7th grade praying i would get my period. as more and more of the girls got their’s, i began to think that maybe i was really supposed to be a boy. because all the girls had their periods and i didn’t. but then, the last week of school it came. i was ecstatic. that was until i got measured again in ninth grade and learned that i as 6’3″. they had lied! but then i seemed to level off. i graduated high school at a nice, feminine 6’3″. it wasn’t until i was measured for my cap and gown in college that i discovered i had managed to grow 2 inches between 1990 and 1995. how fair is that? now i don’t measure, ever. i have a sneaking suspicion that i might be about 6’6″, but i really don’t want to know.

2. the sisterclub are technically my half-sisters. i have a different father. i think being adopted by my dad, and all the problems he and i had in my teen years has left me a boatload of ‘dad’ issues that come out in the weirdest ways (for instance my weird fetish for much-older-than-me men who are really quite tall, as if i’m looking for my biological father in some weird way). anyway, when people who have known us for awhile find out i have a different dad are shocked and appalled, like we were keeping a secret. i remember sister #4’s friend amandahugnkiss feeling a bit betrayed when the ‘secret’ finally came out.

3. for most of my life, i’ve had a debilitating fear of tornados, i totally blame this on my mom. when i was a wee lass, we lived in a mobile home (trailer if you will). whenever the sky would get dark and thunderstormy, mom would pack me up and we’d go over to my aunt eileen’s house until the storm blew over. she, in turn, inherited this from her mom who used to freak out when when it would storm, maybe because the house they had didn’t have a basement.

4. my mom had me out of wedlock. my grammu, she had to get married because she was pregnant. and my grammu’s mom she had a child out of wedlock. i like to say i come from a long line of hussys, though it pisses my mom off. but COME ON, that’s some funny shit.

the number that dare not say it’s name. i have a weird thing against the number five. however, i love love love the number six. i love the number six with a passion, and i’m giddy that this year my birthday falls on 06.06.06!

6. when i was a teenager i used to obsessively catalog my Sweet Valley High book collection. i would write down all the titles in a notebook, along with the date of publication and a plot synopsis for each book. this is probably why i never had a date, ever, until i was in my 20s.

7. i was a minor celebrity in college. people loved to hate me because of a column i wrote for the school newspaper called Chromey Zone. when they decided to close down the yearbook due to the fact that nobody ever bought it, some of the adminstrators said that the yearbook kids should get me to write for it and then everyone would buy it to see what i’d write. one of these administrators also told my friend rick who was on student senate that i should be careful crossing water street, because there were a lot of people in Eau Claire who might not stop if they saw me crossing the street. i used to get stopped in the grocery store and everything. it was crazy. i remember my friend casey tellling me that he couldn’t wait until they stopped talking about me on the radio.

8. i am totally running out of things to say here. perhaps there are not 10 interesting things about me. when i was a kid i used to have dreams that came true. this was never a good thing, because it meant that someone i loved/knew was gonna die. but i haven’t had a dying dream since about 1996 and that is a good thing.

9. in my early 20s i worked as a gas station attendant. i kinda loved it because i got paid to read magazines and listen to the radio really loudly. those were back in the good old days of Rev 105. it was glorious! i worked with a girl who was pregnant three different times in one year. that made me incredibly sad. also we used to have a lady with a gambling problem who would come in and buy 100s of dollars worth of scratch off lottery tickets. she also made me sad.

10. i have five tattoos and a nose ring. this isn’t interesting at all. i wear glasses and had tubes in my ears when i was a kid. i have a weird divot in my ass-region that i claim is a giant scar from where i had a vestigal tail removed, though my mom claims otherwise. i think that’s all i got.

sorry nance!