Wednesday, April 27, 2005
100 True Facts You May Not Know About Nome
(which you'll sure as hell know after you read this)
I've been waiting to do this list for ages, and now, hyped-up on an iced Americano with three shots of sugar syrup that I consumed at 9:30 pm, I'm finally ready to go (It is 12:30 am!).
1) Unlike most babies, I was born with a full head of curly black hair.
2) Sometimes when I get the bus stop a few blocks from my apartment late at night when no one else is on the street, I run all the way home. I always do it late at night, when I'm listening to music. I often put my arms out and move them up and down and weave back and forth like a little airplane, the way I used to as a little kid. I don't do it for the exercise, and I don't do it because I'm in a hurry. I do it because I want to.
3) I have two cats, Charlie and Oliver. I call them Chaz and Ver, cause I'm like that. When I'm feeling really affectionate, they become Chazzie and Verrie.
4) When I was four years old, my best friend was the daughter of a fairly well-known scientist. She was super-shy, I was her first friend. I knew she liked me because when her father came to pick her up at kindergarten and asked her if she'd made any new friends, she took his hand, pulled him into the classroom, pointed to me, and said "I want that one."
5) She taught me to burp on command, tie my shoes, write exciting stories, colour inside the lines, take care of frogs, make instant noodles, recycle everything, and tell the difference between the truth and a lie. I haven't spoken to her in just over six years. I miss her more than anyone else I have lost touch with.
6) I took gymnastics classes for four years. I could do the splits all the way down, in every direction, until I was 12.
7) I played ice hockey on an all-girls team between the ages of 10 and 11.
8) I went on an Arctic expedition when I was 17.
9) I have never had a one-night stand, so long as the definition of a one-night stand involves sex.
10) I can bend the first joint on all my fingers without bending any of the lower ones.
11) When I was 13, I was a romantic. When I was 17, I was a realist. Now I often understand what the modernists were all about.
12) When I was 12 my teacher told me that I would never succeed in life because I was paresseuse. He asked me if I knew what the word meant. I said no and he replied in English with his heavy Quebecois accent "LAZY!" I nodded, then I went home and cried.
13) When I graduated near the top of my class from one of the most rigorous high school academic programs in the world, I wrote in my yearbook's grad write-up: "To my Grade 7 teacher who said I was parasseuse: Look at me now."
14) I still think I'm lazy. His words continue to ring in my mind whenever I'm depressed.
15) I had fish and chips for breakfast this morning.
16) I have only been in love once.
17) Guys are famous for taking revenge on me. Some favourite tactics: spreading rumours, turning my friends against me, breaking up with me in public places, holding grudges for up to and including seven years, lying to me, threatening suicide, insisting that I return any and all gifts, telling total strangers that I'm a bitch, writing mean letters, and ignoring me when I'm in the same room with them.
18) I have never read most of the books I own.
19) I once smashed the speakers in my ex's car and never told him it was me.
20) I used to steal things for absolutely no reason.
21) When I was 12 I tried to help my friend who was being bullied by a boy who lived in my building. He let her go, but beat me with a stick instead. I got slivers on my arms where I tried to protect my head. The boy's mother sent him into foster care shortly afterwards.
22) My great aunt died of tuberculosis when she was in her early 20s. I have always wished I could have known her.
23) When I was a little kid I felt sick on an airplane and the flight attendant gave me some spearmint gum. To this day I associate spearmint with nausea and can't stand the taste of it.
24) I got drunk for the first time when I was 14, on Mike's Hard Lemonade, Southern Comfort, and Raspberry Cider. I have not been able to consume the above beverages without feeling intensely ill ever since.
25) I lost my virginity when I was 17, in a cave filled with candles in the middle of the forest. When the wind came up you could hear windchimes from the top of the cliff above us. I carved our initials in the rock face. It was April, and still cold. It hurt more than anything has ever hurt, before or since. But I wouldn't have wanted it any other way.
26) I once let my friend and her boyfriend sleep on our couch overnight. My mother yelled at me for a month afterwards.
27) I used to climb to the top of tall cedar trees, high enough to see the ocean, and read my book all afternoon.
28) When I was 13 my friend and I smoked a lot of weed and lit my carpet on fire. I had decided to light a tissue and let it float to the floor, just to see what it looked like. It was pretty. I was really surprised to see the flames and smell the fabric burning. We stamped it out, and I left a rug over the burned spot for months. My mom discovered it while vacuuming the carpet and I lied and said I had knocked over a candle by accident.
29) I never learned how to type properly. I use two fingers most of the time, and it's served me well so far.
30) I have never had the desire to see, hold, or fire a gun.
31) When my brother was born everyone called him 'peanut' because he was so small. I didn't know his real name until my aunt called and asked what his name was and I replied in all seriousness, "Peanut." If my parents had been better hippies the name might have stuck.
32) The only nickname that no one has used to refer to me in years is 'Niney." Only one person ever called me that and got away with it. It scarcely resembles my real name and I never found out where it came from.
33) My most recent nickname is Sha-Nay-Nay. It was given to me by a silly blond cheerleader and I don't much care for it.
34) I loathe my middle name and would change it if I could.
35) I fully intend to name my first daughter Caitlin.
36) I have practiced witchcraft.
37) The first time I had oral sex I hated it and never wanted to do it ever again.
38) I want to buy a scooter.
39) When I'm alone in the house I sing along to every single song. I leave the dishes in the sink for days, I watch a lot of TV, and I close the door to my bedroom when I'm sleeping. I walk around the house in various stages of undress.
40) I change my behaviour patterns if I'm alone in the house with the cats.
41) I'm really into Shirley Temple.
42) I leave flowers lying around in vases until they are way past dead.
43) I was never a Girl Guide, a Scout, or a Brownie. I wasn't allowed to go because they sang religious songs. I never went to a YMCA camp, a Bible camp, or a Jewish camp. I never went to church as a child, nor synagogue, nor Hebrew school. I didn't know what communion was until my cousin explained it to me at a wedding when I was about nine years old. My parents tried to minimize all my contact with organized religion, and as a result, I feel out of place in any and all houses of worship.
44) My cousins tried to convert me to Christianity by telling me as an impressionable teenager that C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia, which I loved to read, were really Christian allegories and I could only enjoy them if I accepted that Aslan the Lion was really Jesus Christ. I read the propaganda they gave me and felt ill -- they really helped suck the magic out of it for me.
45) I rarely consider the fact that I am in a "mixed-race" relationship.
46) I rarely consider the fact that I am of "mixed race."
47) On government forms that request your race, I always check the 'other' box and specify 'human.'
48) I never learned to play the piano.
49) I was always terrible at basketball.
50) I own a 1972 edition of Mao's little Red Book of quotations -- in French translation. I bought it at a flea market in Milan.
51) One of my best friends was in love with me for a year.
52) He admitted this when drunk in front of a huge group of people.
53) I have never gone skinny-dipping.
54) I have had sex in a university washroom, and in the backseat of an SUV. I have fooled around in a lecture hall, on a cold concrete floor, and in a car with three other oblivious people in the vehicle.
55) My eyes are always brown, regardless of lighting.
56) I had my first genuine crush on another girl when I was 14. I don't think she ever found out about it. I ran into her a few years ago and was too embarrassed to even say hello.
57) The worst grade I ever received in four years of university was a B+, 78%. The best was an A+, 90%, which I just got back today.
58) I'm really into viruses and virology. Outbreak is one of my favourite movies and I watch it over and over.
59) I have made out with a lot of people who I can say with absolute confidence that I scarcely liked, even at the time.
60) I love girls who are into drinking scotch.
61) I feel guilty when I wake up from dreams where I've been cheating. Even if the sex is really, really good.
62) I own a vibrator. I bought it when I was 16 with a guy who was not my boyfriend, or anyone I was sexually involved with. It's pretty basic and I'd like a new one but I fear my family's curiosity about unmarked packages arriving in the mail. And shopping in seedy stores is not a lot of fun in this town. They are definitely not geared towards 21-year-old females.
63) I have consumed a lot of pornography in my lifetime, but I've seen only a few full-length porno movies. I find them incredibly tedious, and it's challenging to get turned on when you're laughing at how ludicrous the whole thing is.
64) I love IKEA. I find the place to be utterly disturbing but wonderful at the same time.
65) I will do very very foolish things if deprived of sex for more than a few months at a time.
66) The only time I have truly felt like I could die at that moment and feel satisfied was on a sunny day in May when I was 17. I was lying on some moss with the Boy, on an island in the middle of nowhere, after eating shellfish we had gathered on the beach and having some really great sex in a tent on a hill by the ocean. I was completely sure that death would not have been a bad thing at that moment.
67) I have seen a moose close-up only once in my life. I thought it looked strangely humanoid.
68) I am incredibly irritated by headaches and will take painkillers at the first sign of one. But muscle pain is a good thing and I will avoid taking pills in order to keep feeling it.
69) I have asthma. It is exercise-induced, which generally means I don't have trouble breathing unless you make me run really fast without warning.
70) I would have a really hard time being obese.
71) I used to study the 1845 John Franklin Arctic Expedition for fun. I was about 10 at the time. When I was 16 they let me crack open the rare book archives at the local maritime museum to look for documents. It was really exciting and I didn't much care that at that point there was an essay mark involved.
72) I would really like to have a dog. A husky, or a shiba inu, or even a little pug. Either way, it has to have a tail that curls up in the back. This is my primary dog requirement.
73) If I won the lottery, I would buy a rag doll cat. Then I would get a big apartment and buy lots and lots of cat toys.
74) I am a silly kid. I often run around yelling "MEW!" at the top of my lungs. The Boy is usually the only person to witness this sort of behaviour.
75) I think masturbation is a wonderful thing and I wish I'd discovered it much earlier.
76) The moment I am freed from a life of school or work, I enter a schedule where I stay up until 3:00 am and wake up around noon. Always. Even when I try to get up early, or go to bed on time, it works itself back to that schedule again.
77) I think I'm a terrible dancer, choreographed or otherwise.
78) Tequila shots have never made me ill. Drinking tequila straight from the bottle, however, has made me violently ill and I vowed never to do it again.
79) I am a published poet. I haven't written a poem I liked in just over three years. I hate all my older work and can't bear to read it.
80) People often think I'm a snob, but if you're in trouble I will do almost anything within my power to help you.
81) I have never disliked a person because of their age, gender, race, sexual orientation, class background, or nationality. I dislike people only when they are jerks, or profoundly irritating. And even profoundly irritating people can be entertaining.
82) I know almost nothing about how real estate, insurance, the internet, motor vehicles, the human body, the stock market, musical theory, architecture, engineering, mining, chemistry, genetics, quantum physics, calculus, electronics, electricity, nuclear power, global politics, the United Nations, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, firearms, radios, televisions, dvd players, washing machines, and many, many, many other things actually work.
83) I don't think I'm very smart most of the time.
84) Most of the time, I think I am incredibly lucky. I don't feel that I've really worked hard, I feel like I live a blessed life.
85) I don't believe in God / Allah / Buddha / Mohammed / Jesus / Krishna / whatever you want to call him. But if he showed up and told me to repent and I wasn't on drugs or really hungry or clinically insane or needed corrective lenses, I would do it in an instant.
86) I think my grandfather was a sleezy, piss-poor excuse for a man and if he was alive today I would tell him so.
87) My parents never beat me as a child.
88) I used to believe I was alone in the universe and everything I saw was the product of my own perceptions. I was about eight years old at the time. I haven't been able to feel that way again since.
89) For years, I could smell serious injury before it happened. I knew whether an ambulance was there to rescue someone who had fallen, or if they were just following a false alarm. I knew when one of the older kids at school broke his ankle in the hallway before he actually did it. I felt a great deal of dread in the minutes before I fell off a chair and hit my head. I knew the girl behind me in gymnastics class had hit her nose and it was bleeding, because I could smell the blood halfway across the room. I lost the ability around age 10 and have never gained it back. I'm partly glad about this, and partly disappointed.
90) I loathe the colour orange.
91) I wish I could sing in a band.
92) I didn't learn my multiplication tables until I was nearly 12 years old.
93) I couldn't ride a two-wheeler without the training wheels until I was 6. My three-year-old cousin showed me up big-time last weekend.
94) I have a secret fear that I will never be able to conceive my own biological children.
95) I am deathly afraid of being pregnant and giving birth.
96) I really hate feta cheese.
97) I started speaking French when I was four years old. Most words I learned in French before I learned them in English. I lived in France for five weeks and French Switzerland for a year. I still think my French is lousy.
98) I can't draw to save my life.
99) I rediscovered the colour pink when I was about 15 and now I love it.
100) I wear my sunglasses at night. The lenses are purple.
Whew!
It is really time for bed.
Sorry for the length to anyone who is still reading this.
Comments would be greatly appreciated.
-N
p.s. that took me a full two hours to write. Go team!
