Cassie demands twenty facts of me.
Considering that I'm starting anew, I suppose this place could do with a little introduction to my world -- however, most of this will consist of facts that you might not know.
1. At birth, I was twenty-two inches long, eight pounds, and eight ounces.
2. I used to be able to ride a bicycle when I was four, but I busted my head open one day and ever since then I haven't been able to balance on one. Every time I've tried since then I always immediately tilt over and fall and scrape my arms and hands quite nicely. I don't know how I ever learned in the first place. I ended up reverting back to a tricycle after the fall.
3. Not many people realize it but I love inline skating. However, I haven't skated in almost five years because I have not owned a pair of skates. I would love another pair. Busting my lip and chipping my front tooth when I was ten didn't stop me from skating either, unlike busting my head open after flying off my bicycle.
4. Depending on where the shoe is made, I wear a size 10.5 to a 12 in men's (American).
5. My vision (the last time I had it checked) is 20/475 in my left eye and 20/525 in my right eye. Apparently in the future my vision will correct itself. Most people grow far-sighted when they get older but for me it'll eventually even out.
6. I wear 30" x 32" jeans.
7. I hit puberty at age eleven.
8. In first grade I won a blue ribbon at the County Science and Technology Fair for a Hyperstudio (remember that?) project I did on buffaloes.
9. In fourth grade I won third prize in the school speech contest for my little essay about Space Camp. I probably had the best speech but my delivery might have been lacking.
10. That same year I was the lead male role in a Christmas play opposite my best female friend at the time, Jobeth.
11. As a young kid I pilfered through encyclopedias, taught myself how to read at age two and a half, drew road maps of fictional lands, made weather maps and tropical updates for those fictional lands, designed my own bizarre freeway interchanges, tried to turn my bedroom to a model of city with my toys, and when I was in my infancy I would line up spoons end to end an equal distance apart from each other. If I thought it was even slightly off, I'd knock the spoons off the table and start again. Everyone thought at the time that I might have been a savant for this.
12. I moved from Panama City to Tallahassee in August 1989.
13. Next month I will have lived in this residence for ten years -- which is very unusual considering that this is an apartment complex occupied mostly by students and single working mothers and hardly anyone stays here for more than a year.
14. Politically, I regard myself more of an anarchist than anything.
15. I always wanted to learn how to dance but never had the opportunity to. As it stands, I've only slow danced twice in my life and it felt very awkward and unnatural to me to move around that way.
16. I have never done drugs, I don't drink (although I can't say I haven't had alcohol -- my father used to give me Heinekens when I was five), and I've never picked up a cigarette. It probably helps that I'm --
16. Afraid of lighting fires. I've never struck a match or lit a cigarette lighter because I just know I'm going to burn myself out of a combination of clumsiness and wretched luck.
17. I haven't had sex in a year and a half.
18. I haven't properly kissed anyone in nine months.
19. I've never had a valentine. At least, not from what I recall.
20. I've never weighed more than 141 pounds -- which is what I registered as the last time I checked.