That 25 Things Thing

There’s been an annoying little chain letter (plague) going around Facebook, where a person gets “tagged” by a buddy and is then obligated to publish 25 facts about herself. I decided to give in and play along. Here are my factoids. Feel free to reply with yours:

1. I love to write, and I have always craved a story well-told as much as food or air. No one who dated me ever had to feed me, so long as they could talk to me.

2. I grew up in a family of marvelous guitarists. My father, a minister, tucked me in with a combination of prayers and “lullabies” by Buddy Holly, David Crosby, John Pryne, and Johnny Cash. Years later, my husband would pick up the tradition, but substitute Van Halen, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Rush. The first dance. Our wedding dance was a slowed acoustic version of Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” recorded by Sean just before he proposed to me.

3. Few days pass that I’m not in awe of the man I married. He’s terminally left-handed, and grew up watching left-handed guitarists restring their instruments in order to play on the left side. He couldn’t afford to buy a guitar to restring like that, so he taught himself to play a regular right-handed guitar, flipped upside down, so that he could borrow any instrument and play it. A long time ago, he and I went into a music store (Sean in his suit from work, looking like a yuppie in search of a quarter life crisis hobby), and Sean picked up a vintage Stratocaster from the wall and started to play. It didn’t take long for the garage band reject store clerk, stifling a grin, to walk over and offer to “teach” him how to hold a guitar. You should have seen the look on his face when Sean flipped it and started playing. (Yes, I know this is a “fact” about my husband and not be, but it explains so much about why I love him.)

4. I have an 18th month old boy named Judd. He’s a beast. If he takes after his dad, he will surpass me in height by the 6th grade.

5. I am not a good sleeper. Once I’m out I’m fine, but I do not like the process of going to sleep, and I have to distract myself somehow in order to fall asleep. The idea of being put under anesthesia absolutely terrifies me.

6. My favorite movie is Stand By Me. I can quote almost every line, and when I close my study door to write, I often refer to it as “gone lookin for Ray Brower.”

7. My sister is my best friend. We’re very close, and I wish she lived closer. We’ve been passing a worn copy of a preteen book called “The Cat Ate My Gymsuit” for about a decade. We hide it in the other person’s house when we visit. Neither of us will admit to being the true and rightful owner of the book, and I’m not really sure how we got it.

8. “As a Scot and Presbyterian, my father believed that man by nature was a mess and had fallen from an original state of grace. Somehow, I developed an early notion that he had done this by fallen from a tree. As for my father, I never knew whether he believed God was a mathematician but he certainly believed God could count and that only by picking up God’s rhythms were we able to regain power and beauty.” Norman MacLean. Favorite writer.

9. I am generally very messy. My handwriting, especially when drafting something, looks like a pile of coathangers and is discernible only to me.

10. I am in love with diners and backroad attractions. My husband and I took a cross-country drive over American backroads for our honeymoon. Before I left, I’d seen about 10 states. Now I’ve seen 46.

11. I am afraid to sit by myself and eat alone in public. I’m aware that this is lame.

12. Handwritten letters are an obsession. I have almost every one I’ve ever gotten, including grade school notes, and I cherish them. Some are still in their original “fancy folded” condition. I may not have all your emails, but if you ever wrote me a letter, I kept it.

13. We just built a new house, and our bathroom has cable in it. That would be kind of gross if it weren’t so freakin’ awesome.

14. I could spend all day watching true crime stories. I got all excited when I heard that Spike was resurrecting Unsolved Mysteries. Sadly, the new host is no Robert Stack.

15. I have been waiting for The Wonder Years to come out on DVD for far too long.

16. I love old things, items and places with history. I’ve been fortunate to live at Harvard, Washington DC, and now Richmond, VA, places teeming with past. I love learning, and love discovering unexpected heroes.

17. That said, my overall knowledge of history is terrible. I mean really, really bad. I blame this on the only high school history teacher I ever had. Won’t mention any names, but he did tell us that all the employees at Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill, KY, were REAL SHAKERS.

18. My mother is my role model for grace and strength. The woman taught middle school for 30 years, and lost both her parents too soon, and under tragic circumstances. She probably thinks she’s led an unremarkable life, but she has no idea what her example has meant to me. If I can live one day with her level of compassion, then I’ve lived well.

19. I’m working on a novel. Parts of it are shocking. Seriously, I’m a little shocked that I wrote this.

20. I have a genetic condition called hitchhiker’s thumb. I can bend both my thumbs back almost 180 degrees at the top knuckle.

21. I’m 30. It doesn’t bother my much, because I’ve always looked younger. Once in college, I even got carded at the movies. Yep, Varsity Blues.

22. I love, love, love to laugh. My favorite emotion is that middle school-type laugh where you’re so caught up in it that you can barely catch your breath.

23. I don’t have a lot of patience for rudeness or obliviousness. If you are walking down the street and you stop abruptly, you’re being rude. I don’t care if your phone rang. You can walk with it. That’s why it’s portable.

24. When I was in the first grade, I told my teacher I didn’t need to learn how to write because I didn’t think it was very important. When I published my first book, I sent her a copy and wrote about the incident inside the front cover. I don’t know if she ever read it. I heard last week that she just passed away.

25. I’m trying harder and harder to live in the moment. It’s tougher than it sounds.

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