So this is another post inspired by Facebook. Once “tagged” you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, you choose 25 people to be tagged, including the person who tagged you because (duh) they want to know more about you.
It’s presumptuous, yes, to think that anyone tagged or untagged will be interested and that’s also the beauty of this experiment. And it means I have to spend a few minutes remembering a few things about myself.
1. I’m named after an old man in a book my father read. Old Jules, by Mari Sandoz. Unfortunately, my mom didn’t get the memo and my middle name is misspelled as “Marie” on my birth certificate.
2. I had to change the spelling of my middle name to “Marie” on my license to match my birth certificate. I’ve used “Mari” since high school and I still cringe when I see “Marie”.
3. Marie is not a bad name. Neither is Julie. I simply don’t like to be called either. Jewels is fine. Just not “family jewels”. My cousins thought my name was Jewels until last year.
4. The first car I named was “Corgan” as in Billy Corgan, my idol. Smashing Pumpkins was my favorite band and I picked them because Nirvana and Pearl Jam were already taken.
5. My favorite birthday was spent on a dirt road with my best friends in high school. Karen made me jello in the shape of my age. I’m guessing there was beer, but I don’t remember.
6. I don’t smoke much pot and I still forget things. Like where I put my keys or lost my wallet.
7. I suffer from and enjoy euphoric recalls. My memories are sweeter than most on the surface and that’s where I tend to surf.
8. If I lived in the tropics I’d be a surfer.
9. I’m a dreamer. When I was in little school (that’s what we called our 1-3 grade school) I’d take a good hour or two to walk across town to home. The defunct train station would be bustling, horses and carts strolling the dirt streets and the brick buildings brimming with activity. My “old west” was fraught with excitement and adventure which sometimes meant hiking the creek. It wasn’t long before I started having to take the bus home … the entire 5 blocks (across town).
10. As a genre, I don’t enjoy westerns. And yet I love Lonesome Dove. I searched all the movie stores for a copy of the mini-series after I read the book. You can imagine my excitement when I finally caught it on TV. The Hallmark channel.
11. I heart cards. I have a drawer full of ’em. Some new, some recycled. My dad taught us how to make boxes out of cards and so I’ve always made a habit of saving pretty cards even though I haven’t made the boxes in 20 years.
12. I still think I’ll make the boxes again. I won’t throw away the cards.
13. You can identify my body when I’m dead by asking about the birthmark on my butt. Left cheek. No, it’s not a poop stain.
14. If I had cable I’d OD on Law and Order.
15. As a freshman in college I took a poetry class and got rave reviews on my explication and reading of June Jordan’s “Poem About my Rights”. I kept the manila envelope of notes from the class because the boy I had a crush on thought I rocked it. (I still never managed the nerve to talk to him.)
16. Sometimes I pull out my trusty anthology and read the same poems, aloud, like I play the same songs over and over on the guitar. I don’t remember poems as easily as songs, though, because my eyes enjoy the lines and my fingers, the paper.
17. I like to hide.
18. I fell asleep writing random things.
19. My mom likes to remind me about when I was a child, probably close to 4 or 5, when I wanted to be a “singing, dancing, teaching nun with umpteen children.” I loved playing school and church with my stuffed animals. I lined them up into 2 aisles, taught them Math and English from some old books my dad picked up at a sale the Catholic school held to raise money and would smash pieces of white (Wonder?) bread as the Eucharist. I hadn’t had my First Communion yet, so this ritual fascinated me and I loved sucking on the smooshed bread so that it’d slowly dissolve as it was stuck to the roof of my mouth. I don’t know when I realized that nuns couldn’t have children.
20. I crave silence. Need alone time. And can easily get lost in solitude.
21. I’m scared of child birth and have long since wanted to adopt. I looked into being a foster parent a couple years ago but didn’t get very far when I realized I was having a hard enough time with myself, let alone a (likely troubled) child. I haven’t ruled it out.
22. I have family I’ve never met. And it causes me to contemplate nature vs nuture.
23. When I was 9ish I got the worst haircut of all time (or so I thought). I cried on my grandma’s couch for hours and vowed I’d never go back to a salon. I think I let someone else cut my hair 5 times until I moved to Portland, met my current hair dresser and learned to trust again.
24. Boys were scared of me. And they’d tease me, saying I was a boy. All fed up with something to prove, I kicked ass at this game we came up with at a hotel swimming pool in Columbus. The pool had a bridge and 2 of us would hang and then kick at each other until one fell. Since I wasn’t a boy, I found out I could kick them in the crotch and they’d fall almost instantly. I was the shit.
25. I filled out applications to several different schools, including Yale and NYU and never mailed them. I told everyone it was because I didn’t have the money for the application fees but now I wonder if I even wrote the essays. Luckily, the state school, UNL, contacted me directly and told me they’d extend the due date for me … all I had to do was send in the application. $20 and a full ride later, I droped out to move to Portland. And I’m still starting things and not finishing them.
To those on Facebook: To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click post.
To others: Post your randoms as a comment. Or post on your own blog and link to it.
