I Will Dare
I've been considering doing this for some time, and
Heather's post today gave me the incentive. So, without further ado, here's a list of
100 Things About Me. Feel free to skip this entry and come back tomorrow, if this sorta thing bores you.
1. I am thirty-three years old and single, never married.
2. My eyes change colors - sometimes green, sometimes brown, sometimes a mix of the two. Today they’re green with a brown ring around the pupil.
3. I am left-handed.
4. I prefer to be described as thin, not skinny, thankyouverymuch.
5. I have one sibling, a younger sister.
6. She is smarter, wiser and better looking than I am.
7. She’s also my hero (or heroine I should say) though I’ve never told her that.
8. I like the Beatles, not the Rolling Stones.
9. I am a dog person, not a cat person.
10. My dog died several months ago. I don’t know if I’ll get another one.
11. After I put her down, I drove back to my empty home, sat on the couch, and wept.
12. I am not ashamed of that. I’d be ashamed if I hadn’t wept.
13. My favorite beer is Anchor Steam.
14. My favorite cheap beer is Miller High Life. For my recent birthday I received (from different people) a Miller High Life t-shirt and a Miller High Life glass.
15. My favorite meal is sushi.
16. I read Lord of the Rings twenty times by the time I was eleven.
17. I still read a lot, usually two books at once – one fiction, one non-fiction.
18. I read all types of books but most of my favorites come from what snobs put down as ‘genre fiction’ – westerns, crime novels, fantasy, and science fiction.
19. I was overjoyed when Anna Karenina threw herself under the train. I can’t abide Russian literature.
20. I wish she had dragged Hester Prynne and Holden Caulfield with her.
21. My other favorite 'meal' is steak tartar. Go figure.
22. I have a large family – three sets of aunts and uncles and about a dozen cousins on each side.
23. The older I get, the more I appreciate them all. I still feel a vague sense of pity for people who didn’t grow with cousins as playmates.
24. My sister constantly played the soundtrack to
Annie growing up.
25. I still know all the words and am not averse to singing them in public. Especially
Tomorrow.
26. I have said ‘I love you’ to four women in my life – once in high school, once in college, and twice post-college.
27. The first two times were not for real – not because I was lying, but because I wasn’t grown up enough yet to truly understand the word and what it meant.
28. The last two times were for real, but neither one ended well.
29. But I’m friendly with all my ex-girlfriends, save one.
30. My taste in movies is as varied as my taste in books. I do love gangster movies though.
31. One day I’ll get around to listing my favorite movies and books here.
32. I love lists, and making them. I’m sure that says something about me, I just don’t know what it is.
33. For the last thirteen or so years I’ve kept a record of all the books I’ve read.
34. If my apartment was burning down and I could save only one thing, it would be the insignia from my grandfather’s WWII uniform.
35. He died when I was seven and it’s the only keepsake of him that I have.
36. I thought I was all grown up because I was allowed to attend his wake.
37. I still hate wakes.
38. I will always think of the Peabody Essex museum in Salem as ‘my’ museum because of him.
39. Whenever I hear that
Bare Naked Ladies song about the ‘old apartment’ I think of
Beverly Hills 90210 and wonder how the former cast is getting along.
40.
Rin Tin Tin and
Speed Racer are the first two television shows I remember being really into.
41. I liked
Land of the Lost too, but the Sleestaks scared me so badly I hid behind the couch whenever they came on screen.
42. I don’t watch television anymore, unless the Red Sox are on.
43. I was an Eagle Scout.
44. I can still navigate overland by compass, tie knots, start fires and do some other woodsy things.
45. The above two items would probably surprise some people.
46. I love music, all kinds. Another list to be made.
47. I especially like
X, The Replacements, The Pogues, Sleater-Kinney, and
Johnny Cash.
48. I think the 80s were a great decade for pop music.
49. I recently discovered I prefer Powers to Jameson’s Irish whiskey.
50. Martinis should be gin – not apple, chocolate or any other damn thing. Just gin.
51. I hate exercising gym-style, but I love doing uechi-ryu karate.
52. Not saying I’m any good at it though.
53. I learned how to handicap horse races when I was sixteen. My mother taught me.
54. I taught myself how to play craps, because I have no aptitude for card games.
55. I wanted to be a jockey when I was a kid. I was terribly disappointed when my mother informed me I would be too big for that.
56. I am very slow to trust other people.
57. Except sometimes when I really should be slow to trust.
58. I probably need to work on balancing this out.
59. I used to have a short temper. My girlfriend in college cured me of that.
60. I was raised Catholic and went to a Jesuit high school.
61. In retrospect I think I received a better education in high school than at the very reputable university I attended.
62. I don’t attend Mass very often – like once or twice a year.
63. I don’t see myself converting to any other religion though.
64. Partly because I see anti-Catholicism as one of the few remaining forms of bigotry that society accepts. So why give anyone the satisfaction of switching?
65. I do like learning about other means of expressing one’s spirituality though.
66. My political views are all over the place – left, right, and center.
67. I am pro-choice.
68. I am for the right of citizens to keep and bear arms.
69. I am against the War on Drugs. (Can’t we learn from history folks? Please?)
70. I am for the War on Terror.
71. But I don’t necessarily think the President is going about it the right way.
72. It bothers me that television stations don’t want to air footage of people leaping form the WTC on 9/11. I don’t think we should be allowed to forget or become complacent.
73. My oldest memory is attending my aunt’s wedding. I must’ve been two or three.
74. I do have another vague memory of my mother singing to me in the car that may or may not pre-date the above.
75. The song was
Cecilia by
Simon and Garfunkel. Not exactly kids’ stuff.
76. My favorite summer place is the Salem Willows.
77. My favorite fall place is Borderland State Park.
78. Spring doesn’t exist here. We call those months ‘Mud Time.’
79. My favorite winter place is outside at night when it’s snowing.
80. I love the sound snow makes when it comes down at night.
81. I love thunder and lightning storms too.
82. When we were little my sister and I were trapped in a car during a violent thunderstorm. Lightning was striking the parking lot all around us.
83. My mother was in the store. A brave stranger ran to the car and carried us to safety.
84. Today you probably couldn’t trust that stranger. And some busybody would dime my mother out to Youth Services and we’d end up in a foster home.
85. I’m glad I’m not a kid today.
86. My mother also experimented with raising my sister and I in a ‘gender neutral’ fashion.
87. My sister was given a truck to play with; I was given a doll.
88. The experiment ended when she noticed that my sister tended to cuddle and hold the truck, while I treated the doll as some sort of blunt instrument.
89. I’m a closet romantic.
90. I think the sway of a woman’s hips is proof of God’s existence.
91. I’m a damn fine kisser.
92. I don’t see myself getting married anymore.
93. But I think I’d be a pretty good Dad.
94. I’m a very stubborn person.
95. But not as stubborn as I used to be. I’ve tried to smarten up along the way.
96. Coming up with 100 items for this list has been quite a chore.
97. But at the same time it barely scratches the surface of who I am.
98. I think it would be interesting to see a list of 100 (or 10 or 20 or whatever) things about me that somebody else compiled.
99. I bet I’d be surprised at some of things on such a list.
100. I’ll also be surprised if anyone actually read this list all the way through to this last item.
