Laurie tagged me this week with the challenge of writing eight things about myself--here are the rules:
Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves...People who are tagged write their own blog post about their eight things and include these rules....At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and they should read your blog.
OKAY. And Away We Go:
1. I have prehensile toes. That is, I can pick things up off the floor with them. I can write with my right foot though I'm not often called upon to do so.
2. I'm finally picking up (but not with my toes) my other contact lens after a year and a half wait--that's how hectic things have been 'round here.
3. Do I like Second Life? Well, yes, conceptually. In reality, I don't have time for it, my first life being busy enough.
4. When I was a little girl, I always had to have a lavender (or "purple" as I called it) dress at Easter time, regardless of the continent, regardless of my age. Who needs to grow old to wear purple? The black and white photo below shows me in my Easter finery at age seven. I know that I must be seven because the dress was the prototype of my first communion dress, which was white and had a gauzy slip that scratched when I sat down.
5. Such a sweet photograph of a darling angel. I threw my roller skate through one of those windows right behind me. Actually, I tapped it hard until the window broke. My mother watched me do it and was furious. She called my father who worked three blocks away at the embassy, and he came home to administer justice over lunch. I told him that the evil spirits had gotten into me and forced me to do the deed (so much for free will--I was predestined to do it). My mother stood in the doorway, fuming, and my father sat me on his lap and said that there was no good excuse for breaking windows even if I did believe that the "evil spirits" had provoked me. Which they hadn't.
6. I'm standing front of an orange- tiled pole, which I used to run around whenever my mother or our maid, Clair, chased me with a belt, which was often, but thankfully not a tag-team event. Part of the wall to wall windows in the background was a large, heavy door, and I used to bolt out, climb over the concrete wall and run to the trees to get away from them. Not that I hadn't provoked their irrational, immature reactions to my childish behavior.
7. It was during this time that our CCD class had an enormously pregnant woman as a substitute teacher. Normally, we were being prepared for the sacraments by sisters in a non-English speaking order, which put all of our bilingual skills to the test. But this morning, a parish member of St. Thomas More, the Catholic Mission to which we belonged in Caracas, came in and talked about God's rewards for good behavior. Dressed in yellow with a round white chapel cap on her head, she reminded me of an enormous Easter egg. She railed at us with the passion of a preacher, explaining how our pure behavior would result in gifts heretofore unimagined by our seven-year old minds. I know I sat quietly in my seat and chewed on my mantilla while she described in great and lurid detail the story of a young boy, our age, who was SO GOOD that God wanted him to come and live in heaven. And soon. This little boy never talked back, always helped his parents, and went to CCD without an argument, all attractive qualities for a heavenly life. To reward his good behavior, God gave this wonderful boy a terrible, painful, terminal disease that caused great suffering, which the young lad bore uncomplainingly, and which only caused God to further reward him with the ability to see JESUS CHRIST FOR REAL on the communion wafer--the boy having found time to prepare to receive the sacrament while dying.
And thus it was that when I received that first dry, sticky round disk and made it nearly evaporate on the roof of my mouth so that IT WOULD NOT TOUCH MY TEETH, I reflected on the story of this noble young boy and realized that I could best save my life by performing naughty acts from time to time since it appeared that God was not looking to take the bad kids to heaven.
8. It was around this time that teachers began suggesting to my mother that I had a fine imagination and would be a good writer when I grew up.
And now it's your turn. I'm lazily tagging any of you who want to take on this meme.
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