100 Things About Me
1. I am adopted and went home with my parents when I was 4 days old.
2. The one note from the hospital nurses conveyed to my parents at that time was that, "When she gets mad, she holds her breath until she turns blue."
3. I was potty trained by the time I was 12 months old with almost no accidents.
4. I could play Sorry by the rules by the time I was 3 years old. My mother had no idea this wasn't perfectly normal.
5. When I was 5 years old, we moved into the 5th house we'd lived in since I was born. My mother still lives in that same house today.
6. When I was in kindergarten, I got in trouble for writing my name in cursive on my paper because "Nobody else knows how."
7. I sucked my thumb till I was 7 or 8. My mom tried everything to get me to stop. Then, one day, I came home and told her I was going to stop. And I did.
8. When I was in 3rd grade, and waiting for the bus home, I tied my shoelaces together for the fun of it. Then I couldn't get them untied and so tried to walk to the bus hobbled in order not to miss it. Not surprisingly, I fell down, and scraped my knee badly. The bus driver was nice enough to carry me half-way up the hill to the house when we got to my place. I'm sure today she would have gotten in huge trouble for leaving the bus and the other kids briefly. I still have the scar.
9. Growing up, we always had a garden and, in a typical summer, often canned around 120 qts of beans, 120 qts of tomato juice, probably 30 or more quarts of sweet and dill pickles, at least 15 pints of strawberry jam, and various other jams as fruits were available.
10. We never did make dill pickles that I thought were very edible. I don't know what we didn't do right, but they just never were "right", even though we grew our own dill and garlic.
11. I think the best jam we ever made was lightly spiced peach butter.
12. The local university's agricultural program had planted, years before we moved in, a peach grove to experiment on in the field adjacent to our property. By the time we moved in, they had long since finished using the grove and had abandoned it. After asking the mowers to make sure no one used it and getting permission, we had a bottomless supply of free peaches for over 10 years until they finally knocked the grove down. I still miss being able to run up the hill for fresh, ripe peaches for dinner.
13. I miss having a garden tremendously, though I know I wouldn't possibly have the time right now. Maybe in a few years we'll have to move so my kids can grow their own food.
14. We also had chickens when I was a kid, and I loved climbing back into the piles of hay bales to find their eggs. Fantastically tasty eggs they were, too.
15. I actually had a pony as a kid. We had one mare and my pony mare, so I grew up riding. My dad was kind of wanting to sell the horses, and said that if we freed up that space, we could get a pool. I was all for that, and the horses were sold. My mom cried and left in the car so she wouldn't be there when they took her horse away, and we never got a pool. I still feel somewhat guilty about that.
16. I tend to believe that everyone, at some point in their lives, should grow a food plant and eat from it. I believe that everyone who eats meat should, at least once, take an animal from its animal form (with fur or feathers and head still attached) and reduce it to meat. I don't believe that we should feel guilty--we're at the top of the food chain, after all--but I think we should be grateful and understand where our food really comes from.
17. I had no sense of humor as a kid at all. None. I will always have a soft spot for John Ritter and Three's Company because it was the first humor I ever understood.
18. I grew up in the very religiously conservative Church of Christ.
19. The churches of Christ prefer that "church" be written lowercase as in this number (unlike the previous one) to reinforce that the church itself is the group of people, not the building, and thus is not a proper noun. The insistence (rightly, I believe) on this kind of precision in use of language is something I embraced and the rippling influence of such thinking can be seen in me today.
20. Members of the churches of Christ are known (where people have heard of them) for being tremendous Bible scholars. The type of serious, in-depth study we engaged in from the time I was 8 years old or so (my mom taught my wonderful Bible survey Sunday School class) prepared me incredibly well to be a good literature major. The method of study insisted (rightly, I believe) that unless we knew, to the best of our ability, what the writings meant at that time, to those people, and in the original languages, we simply didn't know what they meant.
21. I get very irritated with hyper-conservative religious groups who proclaim loudly in the news that God forbids a certain behavior...and then back up their claim by quoting Leviticus (or any other Old Testament book). I want to shout at them (and often do, from the safety of my sofa), "Read the Book of Hebrews!" since it is a picky, point-by-point legal argument for why the Old Law was no longer binding on Christians.
22. I didn't figure out until I was about 14 years old that Christmas was a religious holiday (the churches of Christ do not celebrate it as there is no New Testament commandment to do so and the holiday has seriously pagan roots) and always hated "Silent Night" because I couldn't figure out what it had to do with Santa or Rudolph.
23. I can read music and sing because the churches of Christ do not believe in instruments in worship (again, no New Testament permission or example). I thought until I was 25 or 26 that everyone could read music.
24. I left the church when I was about 22 years old and am nominally pagan.
25. It's been over a year since I've had Circle. I need to be more consistent about having Circle celebrating holidays so my kids have regular religious observance and to enrich myself spiritually.
26. The first PG-rated movie I saw was Ice Castles which I desperately wanted to see because it had both ice skating (which I adored then and now) and a blind girl. I didn't want anyone to know that I was interested in the blindness aspect.
27. I think the first R-rated movie I saw that hadn't been bowdlerised for television was Silence of the Lambs. I made people tell me the scary parts first.
28. I had terrible nightmares as a child and was afraid of any number of things. Various terrors: the house burning down, tornadoes, tarantulas climbing up from behind my bed and crawling all over me, killer bees, nuclear war.
29. The most specific television-triggered nightmare I had was after watching the hour-long Superfriends episode (instead of the episodic ones with several small skits in the hour) where an alien race was shooting a ray at the earth and cutting it up into 5 parts to be sold at auction along with the natural resources and people. I thought it was a great episode and yet was freaked out. My mom threatened not to let me watch it anymore, so I stopped talking about being scared by it. To this day, I can clearly see the waters pouring over the edges of the pieces of the earth into its core.
30. In my first nightmare, when I was 2 1/2 or so, I told my mom that "The ABCs were coming to get me." My last nightmare from which I woke up shaking and terrified and had to go and get a person to hold me was of numbers coming to get me. The numbers weren't large, multi-digit numbers, they were simply large, over-sized 1- to 3-digit numbers, flying towards me like a starfield on Star Trek. Noting really inherently scary about it, but I was freaked anyway.
31. I started watching Dr. Who when I was 9 and in 4th grade. I was already inherently fannish, and, in my 4th-grade manifestation of that approach to media, I made a detailed list of every character, every planet, every gadget, every concept, etc. on the show. Then I wrote them all 5 times each.
32. I audio-taped Dr. Who as we didn't have (nor did anyone I knew) a video recorder. I was militant about it being quiet while the show was on and the little condenser mike was up near the TV. My mom hated the show because we were so picky about how we watched it and preferred to watch to the end rather than to come to dinner. That was perhaps the one mini-battle she choose to fight that she never won.
33. A couple of moves ago, I finally threw out all the old audio tapes of Dr. Who, most of which I had never listened to.
34. I deliberately learned to stutter after reading a book called Trouble with Explosives (which I bought from a book order at school) that was about a girl who stuttered. I then couldn't shake it, and still have a slight stutter when I'm really tired or scattered.
35. I taught myself sign language out of books the summer after 7th grade.
36. I taught myself Braille out of a book (which I wish now I'd bought before it went out of print) the summer after 8th grade.
37. For a long time when I was a kid, we had a full-sized, very nice pool table. Playing pool with my dad was one of the few things we did together, and I became quite good, although I never mastered bank shots of any kind but the most incredibly simple (where I'd bounce the ball off a side by an inch or so to bump a ball in.
38. By the time I got around to watching Scarecrow and Mrs. King in 1983 (one of the few shows I watched from the actual premiere), I upped the ante of my fannish record-keeping and made a detailed episode guide, typing in the episode descriptions from both the TV Guide and the television guide that came with our weekly paper, then elaborated with good lines and meticulous details about the ep. I still get compliments on that episode guide.
39. I saved TV Guides for years and had all the newspaper ones from 1979 on until I disposed of them in about 1988. I have the real TV Guide magazines from 1983-1992. They are in boxes in the basement and I need to dispose of them but am loathe to pitch them and can't find a place that wants them.
40. For having been in fandom so long, I have written very little: a couple of Robin of Sherwood poems, 2 Forever Knight stories and a couple of poems, and 2 Scarecrow and Mrs. King stories.
41. I have one unfinished FK story that contains some of the stuff I'm proudest of but which probably will never be completed as I wrote myself into a corner. I have one idea to get out of it, and need to rewatch episodes and give it one last go. Of course, I haven't been able to psych myself up into watching FK since it ended.
42. I tried to write a sexy Farscape story last year but am still so shy about talking specifically about sex that the two most over-sexed characters I've ever watched on a TV show talked for something like 8 pages straight and never got their clothes off. I'm even more inhibited than I thought.
43. My first letters to save a cancelled show were for Beauty and the Beast. I should have learned from that one. I've since participated in saving FK, attempting to save FS, and any number of other writing campaigns.
44. My favorite bit of participating in a "save our show" campaign was sending children's toys to the crew of FK when everyone was so bummed over the show being cancelled. I sent superballs and bottles of bubbles. The bubbles were specifically mentioned when we were asked to cease and desist because they were having so much fun with our gifts that they weren't getting work done.
45. I had the odd experience of, when we were in Toronto for Deb Duchene's production of The Winter's Tale of becoming the spokesperson when we went to the FK sets to give them googly-eyed "warm fuzzies" the week they were filming the horrible series finale. Nick Gray, the producer, had come out himself to tell us the set was closed to visitors. He was looking at me a bit strangely, and when I introduced myself as Amy Hull, he got that, "Oh! Okay!" look on his face. I couldn't decide if that was, "Oh, she's the one who printed the letterzine we keep getting," or "Oh, they're right, she does look like Deb."
46. Like most of my friends, I was horribly picked on in school. I was terribly sensitive and took everything incredibly seriously, and so was more hurt by the teasing than many might have been. Adding to the difficulty was that my brother picked on me pretty badly at home as well, so there was no respite. My father would get angry that we were fighting (he and his sister never fought, you know), and I would get in trouble if I blew up in frustration after hours of being pestered. I felt like I couldn't win--if I picked on him back, I got in trouble too. I think I only really got over a large part of that sense of futility and helplessness in the past 2-3 years.
47. In junior high, I was using the restroom to change a tampon once and, as I finished, I heard girls giggling. They had climbed up on the toilets in the next stall and watched me. I was mortified.
48. When I was 15 and my youngest brother was 11, he came after me with a bowie knife, screaming that he was going to kill me and that I was on his death list (he said because I killed his goldfish) and kicking my feet and legs while his face turned purple from rage. I never entirely stopped being afraid of him after that although he lived in the house for nearly another 5 years. Today I still do not allow him to have my address or phone number.
49. I've been cooking since I was 2 years old or so and "helping" my mom and grandmother while sitting on the countertops.
50. My dad's mother never baked or cooked using measuring cups. In fact, she didn't own any. I now understand how she could do that.
51. I learned to embroider by the time I was 7 or so.
52. I learned to sew when I was about 9.
53. I crocheted from the time I was 10 or so.
54. I knitted from the time I was 13 or so.
55. I started hand-piecing a quilt when I was 12. I finished piecing it the summer I was 19 and had a BORING job at the university. I started quilting it that year and it's still not quite 1/2 quilted. When it's done it'll probably be quite lovely.
56. As a kid, I hated P.E. but loved the President's Physical Fitness Exam portion. I was third in the 200 m run in 5th grade, coming in behind 2 boys. I could do the arm hang for 35-40 seconds.
57. I became so depressed my junior year of high school that I couldn't hold a thought well enough to remember what a teacher had said long enough to write it down in my notes.
58. That year I got so angry at my sister at Thanksgiving that I left my grandparents' house and went for a walk in their woods. I walked farther than I ever had before and eventually got quite lost. A nice man in the house I went up to when I finally found a road drove me back to my grandparents' place and I found that I had looped around to my right rather than walking straight. I didn't stretch after my long walk, and my calves ached so badly that I was limping for over a week.
59. I suspect I won't do much handiwork again till the kids are much older.
60. I had to switch orthodontists halfway through my treatment when my orthodontist and his wife (who was his hygienist) were arrested for child pornography after being found to have a huge collection of naked photos of their daughter and friends of hers who'd spend the night.
61. I went to Washington DC the first time when I went to Nationals the summer after my junior year with the research paper I'd written for the history fair. My topic was the integration of the public schools in my hometown, where the high school integrated in the 1964-1965 school year, and the grade schools in the 1970-1971 school year--after I was born.
62. I'd been so miserable that school year that I gave serious consideration to running away and not coming back with the van.
63. I also planned once to run away from home during that school year. I planned which of my schoolbooks to bring home, packed clothes for the next school day, and was going to sneak out of the house and ride my bike to tpala's house 3 miles away or so. My mom happened to be outside near the shed where the bikes were kept so I chickened out and never made the plans again.
64. I went to Washington DC for the second time with my government class during my senior year. We all did internships with interest groups in Washington, and I got an internship with the National Association for the Deaf. By virtue of luck and timing, I got to attend the Gallaudet rallies where the students were demanding their first deaf university prresident.
65. As a high school senior, I had to write a major paper for my English class where we were to read 1,000 pages by the same author and write about something in the writer's style. Since I adore the Narnia books, I re-read those, then read another 6 books or so by C.S. Lewis and wrote my 8-10 page paper on that.
66. As a high school senior I also had to write a 25 page government term paper. I used as my topic "religion in the public schools", covering the history up to the present at that time. I started reading my references the Wednesday before the Monday it was due. I had it in on time, but didn't leave my room all weekend except to go to church.
67. I then used the research from the paper to write another 5-6 assignments or so for multiple classes (that year's history fair, my English research paper, my History of Educ. class in college, my college US History class...).
68. I graduated 8th or 9th in my class. I can't remember which anymore.
69. I got my birthmother marthabrin's info when I was candystriping. It wasn't even the hospital where I was born, but they had the admit/discharge cards and the one with my original name was handily cross-referenced to my mother's. We found current information and rang her up when I was 18 and invited her to my high school graduation. I met her there for the first time and, before I hardly got to say hello, she and my mom dewwta were hugging tightly and tripping over themselves to thank one another. It was such a beautiful moment.
70. I knew from the time I was in kindergarten that I was going to go to college (being bright and in a college town indubitably helped with that) and that I needed to get a scholarship.
71. I got a full-tuition scholarship to SIU-C to study German, got an additional stipend because I was a National Merit Finalist, got to live at home, and college ended up being essentially free.
72. I met my oldest friends at media conventions. I met evil_overlord at a mini-con for Dr. Who I was at with tpala in about 1982...actually I met her mom, and gave her my address, then evil_overlord wrote to me. I met taraljc with tpala in the elevator at Visions 1991 at the Borg-ship hotel. I met finabair at my first MediaWest in 1993. The one exception is karink6, who was on my bus route and in my Girl Scout troop. She thought I was weird and didn't really like me the first year I knew her (I was pretty obnoxious that year). The next year we became friends.
73. I ran the trivia contest at the Star Trek, convention I helped work at with evil_overlord. My favorite of my questions were, "What was the bumper sticker on Dr. Gillian Taylor's truck in Star Trek IV?" and "What button was Marcus Nichols' wearing in Star Trek IV?"
74. I picked up a very tall Majel Barrett Roddenberry from Lambert Field in St. Louis in my fairly small Ford Escort to bring her to the convention in Cape Girardeau (a 2 hour drive).
75. I miss DOS. I love computer multi-tasking and having multiple programs open simultaneously. I am conflicted on this issue.
76. I got on the internet because of taraljc. It took her at least 2 years to convince me.
77. I was so miserable when I was living alone in Belleville, where I had my first full time public school teaching job but no friends, that I stopped eating (I did need to lose some weight when I started). I lost 25-30 lbs in 3 months, and for 2 years I ate very little.
78. The longest time I ever went without food (although I was always careful to drink lots of water) was four days. I was always disappointed in myself that I could never make my 5 day goal. After 2 days you stop feeling hungry and there is quite a buzz that goes with it.
79. finabair concocted a plan: she suggested to imbri6, who lived closer to me, that when I was coming over, imbri6 should make sure food I like that was fragrant was getting ready just as I arrived. So when imbri6 would ask what I was having for dinner, I'd say, "I've already taken care of it [unsaid: by deciding not to eat]." She figured out the unspoken part, and her wonderful, fragrant cooking always won. I absolutley believe that finabair saved my life by letting me move in with her.
80. One of the greatest compliments I have ever received was from my friend Hilda who described me once as "Amy, whose honesty is stronger than her fear."
81. I am bisexual and primarily attracted to women. I am married to a man because the first person I happened to fall in love with was him.
82. I think if I'd figured out that I liked girls when I was rather younger that I would have had far more teenage crushes--and possibly fallen in love at least once before I met my husband.
83. I am terribly fortunate that the first person I fell seriously in love with loved me back.
84. I asked my husband to marry me a number of times before he forgot to say "no" and run screaming. The day he didn't say "no" we'd been awakened by the phone ringing at a little before 6 am and were lying in bed talking because it was too late to go back to sleep. Since he hadn't said no that time, I began making plans, and he was rather swept along. (He had, for years, been talking about our children, grandchildren, where we would retire to...)
85. We had a very laid-back wedding--42 people, a friend officiated at the ceremony, in another friend's backyard outside, Husband's dad grilled food, low-budget--and many people commented on how much fun they had, which made me very happy.
86. My husband and his sister (like all my siblings and me) are both adopted.
87. I had known my husband for 7 years when we got married.
88. I got pregnant on our wedding night.
89. I got pregnant again on our first anniversary.
90. After our son was born, we got the husband fixed, as we are apparently, to quote a friend, "fertile like the Nile crescent". We are tremendously fortunate.
91. My daughter was born 2 weeks late when they induced me because I never went into labor. I think she knew she had a good deal and was essentially moving in and putting up curtains.
92. My son was born 5 weeks early at a small but healthy 5 lb, 5 oz.
93. Unexpectedly going into labor and having my son then caused me to miss MediaWest Con for the first time since I'd started going in 1993. It would have been my 10th consecutive MWC.
94. My children are 10 1/2 months apart in age. I never wanted to have babies, and am tremendously fortunate that my husband did want kids; they are a great joy, such as I never could have imagined.
95. I had not been afraid of death since I was a child until I had babies.
96. I wrote a proposal for a Shakespeare class for my school, and now teach the class. The proposal is 24 pages long, and I am quite proud of it. I am writing a second proposal for the same class, but with different plays.
97. I have an entire 5-drawer filing cabinet full with mostly zines, some TV scripts, and a few random fannish things.
98. I have files of school papers for each year of school dating back to my nursery school year when I was 3 years old.
99. I usually bake about 100 dozen cookies each Christmas, plus banana and pumpkin breads. I give most of it away, and love making people happy with the food.
100. I'm a very good shot with a .22 long rifle and am becoming ever better with handguns, especially a .22 semi-automatic and a .38 revolver.