Tag, I'm It!

Do you remember as a child having to play Heads Up Seven Up when it would rain during school hours? I hated that game. No one ever picked me except Kenny Rober, the King to my Queen of Shy, Bookworm Geekness. Kenny was afraid of my Circus Lion lunch box. We were 7, and old enough to not fear inanimate objects in the daytime. Not Kenny. Some of the cool kids would grab my lunch box and charge him with it while roaring at the tops of their lungs. Kenny always took off screaming, arms flailing and mouth open wide. So there you go. Kenny Rober, a kid afraid of a lunch box, was the only one to pick me for Heads Up Seven Up. Every time we opened our eyes to guess who pushed our thumbs down I would unceremoniously stand up, pull down the skirt of my plaid Catholic school uniform to make sure my shorts underneath didn't show, and say,

"It was Kenny. Again."

Kenny, already trembling with barely contained giggles of excitement, would explode in a fit of laughter. That was Kenny. Laughing or crying, always inappropriate.

Well, guess what? Someone other than Kenny Rober picked me for something! The lovely Carey from Lasso'd Moon Designs and The Ink Spot tagged me to write 7 weird facts about myself. I have to say I'm a little stumped. I think I divulged my 7 weird facts in the 7 first posts of my blog. Well, let me see what I can come up with that some of you may not know.

1. I took piano lessons for over ten years, and can still play from memory one of my last recital pieces.

2. I was an incredibly lazy child. If it didn't involve reading, you weren't getting much out of me. Well, Kristy Moore and I would some times choreograph roller skating dances to the Xanadu soundtrack, but that was about it. Homework? Never. School projects? Not on your life. My mother had to stand over me like a drill sergeant to make sure I finished my assignments. It's not like I was watching TV, either. The irony is that while I wasn't doing homework or chores, I was reading Bronte, Poe, Alcott, Austen, or any number of of great works of literature in my parent's library.

3. My mom used to pace my reading the same way a doctor prescribes pain medicine to a patient with a history of drug abuse. At the end of the school year we would visit the local bookstore where I was allowed to buy 5 books for the summer. No pictures allowed, small print, and each book had to be over 300 pages. She learned quickly that those series books that were popular for kids were my crack. I'd have them all finished within a week, mainly because I would stay up for 24 hours stretches until I finished the book I was currently reading. This will probably surprise my old law school friends reading this because I was, hands down, the slowest reader in class. But you know why? Because it was boooooooooring. If you took out all my daydream breaks I was still probably reading at a fast clip.

4. I have a phenomenal memory. Outstanding. No really, it's annoyingly great. Ask anyone who knows me and they'll cringe at the words "Jules" and "memory" in the same sentence. It's not as good as it used to be since I've had children (lack of sleep affects memory) but it's still pretty damn good. Phone numbers, facts, figures, conversations, appointments--it's all up there.

5. I am licensed to practice law in the state of California, but God willing, I will never have to because law = death by boredom.

6. I suffer from emetophobia. I've searched for and tried treatments for years, but to no avail. It's not so much me vomiting that scares the crap out of me, it's other people vomiting that scares the crap out of me. Totally bizarre and random phobia, you would think, but it's actually one of the most common. I'm not sure how I "got it," but some people theorize it's in response to my insane motion sickness as a child. Another theory is genetics; I simply inherited a gene that predisposes me to phobias. This gene seems to pass among females within a family. In my case, my grandmother has Aquaphobia (fear of swimming) and my mom has Cynophobia (fear of dogs).

7. I am obsessed with feet. Not in a "Hi! I'm a sick pervert!" kind of way, but in a "If you're wearing open toed shoes I'm checking out the piggies" kind of way. I find toes curious, and I am always intrigued by people with ugly toes who wear sandals or flip-flops. Not that they don't have a right to wear open toed shoes. It's just a curious choice. At my sister-in-law's bridal shower there was one guest, in particular, who had the most gnarled, deformed, toes I had seen in a while. Not all her toes had nails! She had creeper toes--toes so long they creep over the front of the shoe and brush the ground. Gross! And her polish was either chipped or applied at home! Come on! If you have ugly toes, and my man-toes are no beauties, you have to understand that professional pedicures are a must before you slip those mangy dogs into a cheap pair of black, rubber-soled slides. I have to admit: she's got moxie. No way would you catch me airing out those tootsies.

So that's it. Seven weird facts about yours truly. If I didn't lose readers with my New Year's resolutions, surely this is the proverbial nail in my coffin.

I'm supposed to tag 7 more people, but everyone I know in blog land has already been tagged, save Kara. So, Kara, guess what?

Head's Up, Seven Up!