Archive for March 25th, 2008
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
Seven Things You Don’t Need to Know About Me.
(as called out by Jess, so shall it be done)
1. I’ve had a lifelong fascination/adoration/heartache for all things ballet. I am fascinated by the ballerinas that sometimes ride my bus in the mornings. I envy that ability to move, to stretch, to create such beautiful wordless expressions. It started when my stepfather would bring home ballet instructional videos from the library. They would play in the living room and I would jump and spin around as a seven year old, lost in a world only known to me. I cannot attend a dance recital/event without crying, without bringing a hand to my heart while watching. I am intrigued by the way dancers will stand, sit, carry themselves. I grew up playing competitive sports but I’ve always had an incredible soft spot for dance.
2. My grandfather(my father’s father) was a Pentecostal preacher. He built the church with his own two hands. As a very young child, I sat in the front or second row with my father and sister during the sermon. I found the subject of “God” and “fear” to be interchangeable at an early age due to the atmosphere of the church. My grandfather would shout, go red in the face, be all over the stage while older women spoke in tongues. It did not “scare” me at the time, but later on I found myself restless and disinterested in any sort of church service because I was used to religion being something of high energy, something kind of frightening that needed to be scared into me. I am not used to the quiet murmuring of prayer. I am more acquainted with the loud jumble of tongue and testify.
3. In high school I had a bad habit of popping caffeine pills and diet pills daily—twice a day. In the morning, before lunch, sometimes even before track practice. I wanted to exercise all the time. It was a desire and a need that I could not express, could not fight. During class I could not sit still, did not want to sit still. There were Saturdays at home spent doing jumping jacks, sit ups, leg lifts, push ups in the living room while listening to Underworld’s “Born Slippy.” I did all of this in front of a mirror. Dexatrim, No-Doz, Metabolift. I ended up in the hospital with a heart murmur due to a combination of diet pills/migraine medication at the age of seventeen. During the overnight stay a heart doctor lectured me on the dangers of pill-popping. I will never forget how humiliating it was for my father to find blister packs of diet pills in my coat pockets.
4. I smell books when I open them. I love the smell of books. New ones, old ones, ones borrowed from friends. I am also pretty terrible about dogearing pages instead of using a bookmark. It’s more of a reflex than a conscious decision to do so.
5. I can be horribly disorganized, but I am also obsessive compulsive about certain things. I always triple knot the laces on my shoes. I like to color coordinate my clothing. If I am writing something longhand, I will write it out at least three times, in at least three different ways(printing, cursive, cursive with a backslant, cursive with a forward lean, all caps, all lowercase) until it is exactly to my liking and nothing is scratched out. And always in pen. I may write it once in black, once in blue. I don’t do this with everything handwritten, but it is a habit going back to my note-writing days in middle school. I would write 2 to 3 versions of the same note, to get it just right.
6. I have been punched in the face by someone that supposedly loved me.
7. I still like to lay out in the sun. It reminds me of my mom, who would lay out in the sun in a bathing suit for hours—11am-ish to 3pm-ish. She has done this since the age of 11. There is something about the heat, the flesh, the smell of suntan oil and real lemon juice in the hair. Laying out with my mom was a weird way of bonding, but it worked. Despite all the dangers of it, I still get the urge to sprawl on a lawnchair with a radio nearby, and think of those days in the sun with my mother. I miss those strange little things about us from the past. And I miss her more than anything.
