As tagged by Cole!!
Rules: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write an entry of their own with 10 weird habits/things/little known facts, as well as state this rule clearly.
[And you're supposed to tag other people but meh, whoever wants to, please do!! Although I'd particularly like to hear lilacshrieks's thoughts, since she lived miiiiiiiiiiles away and I didn't meet her until high school - do you realize, darling, that that makes you one of the "youngest" friendships I have with people from home?! second only to Maui and her family! - and she's the one I get to talk to the least.]
Okay.
1. I only got into the performing arts because my sister was doing it and I didn't want to be left behind. First dance, then acting, then piano, then singing followed this pattern. Where I really failed was in piano, because I couldn't make myself practice the pieces that I was supposed to be learning but didn't enjoy. Piano seemed to come so naturally to my sister that I was pretty disheartened about it. I tried piano a couple more times, then violin, then French horn, but the only instrument I've ever really wanted to play was the fiddle. Plunking away at the piano or abusing my guitar make me calm, even though I'm bad at them, but I don't feel any drive whatsoever to actually master any instruments; the real evil lies in wind-driven instruments, like the French horn, because they remove your ability to sing at will (yeah, you can make sounds in your throat, but it's not anything like using your voice).
2. I break into a cold sweat whenever anyone mentions the creative writing I did while I was growing up; I had a thick black binder that held my work on a "book" and I carried it everywhere I went for a number of years. I never did finish it and apparently my mother has discovered it and taken it to the school where she teaches. That fact makes me want to retreat into a hermitage atop Mount Sinai. Or a cave at the foot of the Abyss. I get the shakes whenever I think of someone reading it. It's immensely personal for me.
3. When we lived in the old farmhouse, I used to go up the wooded hill behind our property. There was a fallen tree halfway up that left a view of the valley we lived in; the earth mounded around the roots provided a wonderful seat/table/burrow. I would take my homework or a book and spend several hours a day up there, after school. Sometimes, I took nothing with me and simply pretended to be a pirate queen standing on the rail of a ship. Sometimes, I made up songs and just sat and sang at the trees.
4. During hunting season, the woods around our old house always echoed with gunshots. I would take the labrador, who was terrified of loud noises, into the little walk-in closet that extended from my sister's bedroom upstairs. The dog would whimper and cower; I would pull out a pen and draw on the wallpaper behind the clothes racks (really ugly blue-and-white-stripedy-flower stuff). The one I remember most clearly was a whale.
5. I have very clear "memories" of breathing underwater. The old farmhouse had a gigantic tub in one of the bathrooms and I always went in to soak with a good book or seven. Eventually, when my eyes got tired and I decided I needed a break from reading, I would sink fully under the water. To be honest, I tend to have very realistic daydreams and these "memories" could just be me remembering make-believe, but I definitely recall feeling surprise whenever people talked about drowning and not being able to breathe underwater.
6. Stingrays unsettle me; when I was really young, everything I ever saw or read warned against going near one because of the risk of attack/death. When the Crocodile Hunter died, I felt vindicated in a way, because of all the funny looks people had given me when I protested "stingray-petting stations" at zoos/aquariums and told them that stingrays creep me out (which they do, immensely). That being said, stingrays utterly fascinate me and they're what I watch incessantly at the New England Aquarium. I finally made myself touch one - okay, okay, it was only a baby skate - while at the Aquarium of the Bay (a little ribbing from my sister goes a long way). Slimy. Uch. I'm not going to be doing that again ever.
7. I've been enthralled with Asian cultures ever since I read Children of the River in elementary school. I've been enthralled with Native American ('scuze me, tro, indin) cultures ever since I read The Talking Earth in middle school. The interesting thing about that is, the former was written for high school readers and the latter for elementary audiences. Come to think of it, Children of the River may have been the first mention I'd ever come across of this place called "Cambodia".
8. I used to sit in the backyard, watching the lab make her rounds of her territory. When I got bored, I'd get up and go investigate the places she'd spent time in the woods. I found one particularly lovely cove at the far right corner of our lawn where the bushes arched up overhead into a soft green canopy and medium-sized rocks dotted the ground, perfect for a little girl to perch on. The ground was covered with moss and the gentle flow of water from a natural spring at one side of the clearing. When I really didn't want to be found, that was where I went.
9. I have waking dreams. I frequently see superpositions of possibilties; I am able to separate what is really going on from what my mind is telling me just might happen if different people were around or different items involved. Years ago, my mother commented that she sometimes didn't think I knew the difference between reality and imagination. I do know the difference, I just can't turn my imagination off. Unfortunately, there have been times when I'm not entirely sure what's causing my daydreams, and they're not like the others. For example, the first time I held my eldest-baby cousin, I had a flash of insight that creeped me out thoroughly (it wasn't a bad premonition or anything, it just surprised me) and to this day I can't figure out what caused it, although I haven't been able to make myself look in a baby's eyes since. My mind went not blank but black, like the screen of a movie that's just about to start, and however long it took me to recover, my mother and aunt and uncle were chattering happily on a completely different topic than the one I'd last been aware of and my cousin had gone to sleep in my arms. As another example, after my great-grandmother passed away, I was sitting in my dorm room trying to figure out how I could rearrange my schedule so I could attend her funeral. My mind went black again and I saw my grandmother waving a hand dismissively. "Oh, that's just silly," she said, and laughed, and then everything was back to normal.
10. I have always, always, always wanted to be a redhead. I steadfastly refuse to dye my hair, though, because it wouldn't be genuine and I absolutely hate lying to myself, even about something that can wash away in a few shampoos. I try to be very knowledgeable about who I really am, to the point of writing out lists of what my opinions are just to keep things straight and figure out if there are any details I need to consider.
{Edit!! I'm too slow, apparently. Em just tagged me for this, and she tagged TW too, so I feel superfluous now!}
[And you're supposed to tag other people but meh, whoever wants to, please do!! Although I'd particularly like to hear lilacshrieks's thoughts, since she lived miiiiiiiiiiles away and I didn't meet her until high school - do you realize, darling, that that makes you one of the "youngest" friendships I have with people from home?! second only to Maui and her family! - and she's the one I get to talk to the least.]
Okay.
1. I only got into the performing arts because my sister was doing it and I didn't want to be left behind. First dance, then acting, then piano, then singing followed this pattern. Where I really failed was in piano, because I couldn't make myself practice the pieces that I was supposed to be learning but didn't enjoy. Piano seemed to come so naturally to my sister that I was pretty disheartened about it. I tried piano a couple more times, then violin, then French horn, but the only instrument I've ever really wanted to play was the fiddle. Plunking away at the piano or abusing my guitar make me calm, even though I'm bad at them, but I don't feel any drive whatsoever to actually master any instruments; the real evil lies in wind-driven instruments, like the French horn, because they remove your ability to sing at will (yeah, you can make sounds in your throat, but it's not anything like using your voice).
2. I break into a cold sweat whenever anyone mentions the creative writing I did while I was growing up; I had a thick black binder that held my work on a "book" and I carried it everywhere I went for a number of years. I never did finish it and apparently my mother has discovered it and taken it to the school where she teaches. That fact makes me want to retreat into a hermitage atop Mount Sinai. Or a cave at the foot of the Abyss. I get the shakes whenever I think of someone reading it. It's immensely personal for me.
3. When we lived in the old farmhouse, I used to go up the wooded hill behind our property. There was a fallen tree halfway up that left a view of the valley we lived in; the earth mounded around the roots provided a wonderful seat/table/burrow. I would take my homework or a book and spend several hours a day up there, after school. Sometimes, I took nothing with me and simply pretended to be a pirate queen standing on the rail of a ship. Sometimes, I made up songs and just sat and sang at the trees.
4. During hunting season, the woods around our old house always echoed with gunshots. I would take the labrador, who was terrified of loud noises, into the little walk-in closet that extended from my sister's bedroom upstairs. The dog would whimper and cower; I would pull out a pen and draw on the wallpaper behind the clothes racks (really ugly blue-and-white-stripedy-flower stuff). The one I remember most clearly was a whale.
5. I have very clear "memories" of breathing underwater. The old farmhouse had a gigantic tub in one of the bathrooms and I always went in to soak with a good book or seven. Eventually, when my eyes got tired and I decided I needed a break from reading, I would sink fully under the water. To be honest, I tend to have very realistic daydreams and these "memories" could just be me remembering make-believe, but I definitely recall feeling surprise whenever people talked about drowning and not being able to breathe underwater.
6. Stingrays unsettle me; when I was really young, everything I ever saw or read warned against going near one because of the risk of attack/death. When the Crocodile Hunter died, I felt vindicated in a way, because of all the funny looks people had given me when I protested "stingray-petting stations" at zoos/aquariums and told them that stingrays creep me out (which they do, immensely). That being said, stingrays utterly fascinate me and they're what I watch incessantly at the New England Aquarium. I finally made myself touch one - okay, okay, it was only a baby skate - while at the Aquarium of the Bay (a little ribbing from my sister goes a long way). Slimy. Uch. I'm not going to be doing that again ever.
7. I've been enthralled with Asian cultures ever since I read Children of the River in elementary school. I've been enthralled with Native American ('scuze me, tro, indin) cultures ever since I read The Talking Earth in middle school. The interesting thing about that is, the former was written for high school readers and the latter for elementary audiences. Come to think of it, Children of the River may have been the first mention I'd ever come across of this place called "Cambodia".
8. I used to sit in the backyard, watching the lab make her rounds of her territory. When I got bored, I'd get up and go investigate the places she'd spent time in the woods. I found one particularly lovely cove at the far right corner of our lawn where the bushes arched up overhead into a soft green canopy and medium-sized rocks dotted the ground, perfect for a little girl to perch on. The ground was covered with moss and the gentle flow of water from a natural spring at one side of the clearing. When I really didn't want to be found, that was where I went.
9. I have waking dreams. I frequently see superpositions of possibilties; I am able to separate what is really going on from what my mind is telling me just might happen if different people were around or different items involved. Years ago, my mother commented that she sometimes didn't think I knew the difference between reality and imagination. I do know the difference, I just can't turn my imagination off. Unfortunately, there have been times when I'm not entirely sure what's causing my daydreams, and they're not like the others. For example, the first time I held my eldest-baby cousin, I had a flash of insight that creeped me out thoroughly (it wasn't a bad premonition or anything, it just surprised me) and to this day I can't figure out what caused it, although I haven't been able to make myself look in a baby's eyes since. My mind went not blank but black, like the screen of a movie that's just about to start, and however long it took me to recover, my mother and aunt and uncle were chattering happily on a completely different topic than the one I'd last been aware of and my cousin had gone to sleep in my arms. As another example, after my great-grandmother passed away, I was sitting in my dorm room trying to figure out how I could rearrange my schedule so I could attend her funeral. My mind went black again and I saw my grandmother waving a hand dismissively. "Oh, that's just silly," she said, and laughed, and then everything was back to normal.
10. I have always, always, always wanted to be a redhead. I steadfastly refuse to dye my hair, though, because it wouldn't be genuine and I absolutely hate lying to myself, even about something that can wash away in a few shampoos. I try to be very knowledgeable about who I really am, to the point of writing out lists of what my opinions are just to keep things straight and figure out if there are any details I need to consider.
{Edit!! I'm too slow, apparently. Em just tagged me for this, and she tagged TW too, so I feel superfluous now!}