Five things you may not know
I was watching a few YouTube videos recently featuring folks I like (including YA author Maureen Johnson) who spoke about five things that are unique or less well about themselves. And I'm too damn lazy to think of a good topic for today's blog, so I'm going to steal the topic.
1. For someone who injures herself routinely, I have a real lack of broken bones. In fact, I think the only thing I've "broken" was my little toe, two years ago. I stubbed it on a coffee table. When the doctor looked at my foot, he said, "Coffee table?" before I'd said anything. He explained, "About ninety percent of these injuries wouldn't exist if we didn't own coffee tables." So, in the interests of saving you, my readers, I share this. Avoid coffee tables! They just want to break your feet.
2. I used to have a sizable gap between my front teeth. A little less than say Lauren Hutton, but sizable. My dentist told me throughout childhood that when I was a teenager my wisdom teeth would show up and push my front teeth together. So I waited and waited and waited. Nothing. My wisdom teeth didn't show up in my teens or my early twenties. Finally, at age twenty-five they were erupting and I looked in the mirror and realized my gap was almost gone! It was sort of freaky, to have something there no longer be there. Now I have no gap at all. And I can get food stuck in my front teeth, which still fells really novel and annoying.
3. I didn't have many young girls in my neighborhood so I grew up playing with boys, boys who had no qualms about tackling girls during football games. As a result, I learned to throw a mean spiral curve and I thought girls who thought boys "played rough" were sissies.
4. For many years I wanted to be an astronomer. I watched stars at night and learned the constellations names. I knew a girl who went to Space Camp the summer after sixth grade. I was so jealous. Space Camp! I got worried about my astronomy prospects when I began failing Calculus, so I stopped saying I was going to be an astronomer or thinking I would be one. I still try to catch the Perseid meteor showers each summer, but it's tough living in a light polluted city.
5. When I was young I didn't believe adults when they'd say things like "It's safer to be inside a car during a lightning storm" or "You create more heat waving a fan in front of yourself than you would if you'd just sit still" (an old teachers' standby). Because I felt safer inside my house, and I felt cooler with a little breeze on my face. So you know what? While technically I concede their points, I'm still standing by my arguments. Aren't safety and coolness perceived anyway (or can be)? Yup. Still arguing.