Seven Things You Don't Know About Me

The fabulous Alan Ryker posted his answers to this meme a while back, inspiring me to do the same.



1. I was this close to picking up an STD from one of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Back in 1985, after I'd dropped out of college and was embracing the alternative life style with both hands and feet, the then-relatively-unknown Peppers played my hometown, opening for Someone Bigger. Being then-relatively-unknown, they didn't have a lot of moolah to shell out for a place to stay, so they stayed at my house. (My housemate, Ben, who owned the local alternoclub, knew them.) Alas, I was out of town that weekend, so I missed my chance to (ahem) 'host' them in my own home.

2. Back in 1988, David Gilmour (of Pink Floyd fame) played my town. My boyfriend at the time was something of a local rock star and a big Floyd fan, and he managed to finagle a meeting with Gilmour after the show. The boyfriend shook Gilmour's hand, but I did not; I've always been reluctant to accost famous folk, and I didn't want to steal my boyfriend's moment in the sun. But I once stood beside someone who was shaking David Gilmour's hand.

3. I was once charmingly described as "obviously well-fed" in a newspaper article. It was in the context of my 1982 efforts on behalf of The Hunger Project; I organized workshops and tried to educate people about world hunger and how to end it. The reporter and her photographer drove nearly two hours from Raleigh to Greenville to interview me, with, like, photos and everything. Being fifteen, I immediately freaked about my weight, which I now find absurdly amusing, considering I weighed about 105 pounds then.

4. I wrote a sequel to the very first Star Wars film. I was ten in the summer of 1977, and I still remember coming home from the movies and dancing around with a table knife like a light saber. That film changed my life. I lived, breathed, ate and slept Star Wars for well over a year. One night I had a dream, and I wrote it down, then typed it up on the seventh-grade classroom typewriter over several weeks. Then I sent it off to George Lucas. Episode V didn't end up using my plot, so who knows whether he ever received it? But that, dear reader, was my first experience of a story that just had to be told.

5. The typewriter in the previous item was seventh grade though I was only ten because I skipped two grades in elementary school. Word to the wise: never do this to your children. My poor parents thought they were doing me a favor, but it killed my already tenuous social life. It took moving to a new town and letting me repeat seventh grade to remove (most of) the stigma.

6. In an attempt to overcome my intense geekdom, I was a cheerleader for two years, in ninth and tenth grades (before I went to NCSSM). I loved the dance routines--I still love dance, and if the universe would get with the program and offer streetdance classes for adults near my town, I'd be all over those puppies--but I hated the social hierarchy posturing.

7. I don't have a driver's license. I used to, when I lived in the States. Got it when I was sixteen, like everyone else. When we moved to the Netherlands in 2002, I failed the test on a technicality. Truth be told, I don't really mind; it's scary as hell driving here, and the older I get, the less able to adapt I seem to be.

Okay, Internet friends and acquaintances: I hereby charge you to go forth and be revealing. What are seven things we don't know about you?