Memo

To:  the fuzzy baby bunnies

From:  Velocibadgergirl

RE:  running into the street

Don't, okay? Just...don't. Because to be quite honest, just about the very last thing I need when I'm driving home, full to bursting after drinking a grande chai and a cup of ice water, thinking sadly of my poor dear friend Heather and how she saw a cat get hit by a car last night, and about that time that I saw a deer get mowed down by a truck...well, just about the last thing I need at that moment is for you to bound merrily across the dark street, aiming straight for my car. And sure, the other lane was empty, so when I swerved across the center line to avoid crushing you beneath my tires I didn't get squished, and true, the stab of dread that went through my stomach when I saw you didn't actually make me pee my pants...but I still am pretty unhappy with your ill-advised actions of earlier this evening. In the future, for your sake and mine, cut it the hell out.



Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming

SSFB at Starting Fresh tagged me for the Eight Things meme.

Here are the rules:  Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. Write a post about your own random things. Post these rules. At the end of your blog, tag 8 people and post their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment and tell them they're tagged.

1. When I was a baby, my mom's car caught fire while she was driving it and I was in the back seat. The way she tells it, she was getting ready to turn into the gas station at the end of our block (which actually had attendants back then), when the gas station guys came running out into the street, yelling at her to stop and not to pull into the station. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw a trail of fire following her down the street.

It must've been an electrical short, because all the door locks and power windows ceased to work, but she managed to get herself and me (in my gargantuan 1980s carseat) out of the car. One of the gas station men went back to the car for her purse. A firetruck came and the firemen put out the fire, and when my dad came home for lunch, he turned the corner and saw my mom's burned-up car sitting in the middle of the street and then (probably the longest split second of his life later) saw us sitting safely on the curb.

To this day, when my mom goes shopping for a car, she asks the salesman what will happen if the car catches fire--will the door locks automatically open, or will they remain frozen in the last position they were in before the fire? The salesmen inevitably laugh and ask, "What are the odds of that ever happening?" Then Mom says, "Well, it happened once, and I'm not eager to repeat the experience," and buys a vehicle with manual locks and roll-down windows.



2. I have a terrible sense of direction. If I don't have exact written-out step-by-step instructions on how to get somewhere, I will get lost. Sometimes, I'll get lost if I do have exact step-by-step instructions. I always count on having to turn around at least once on a long drive somewhere that I've never been before.



3. As part of my job I speak in front of a few hundred schoolchildren and several dozen members of the public each month with no problems, but in high school and early college I had nearly paralyzing stage fright. I have no idea how I got over it.



4. I have a freakishly good short-term memory. When I was in college, I took a Shakespeare class with a mythically strict professor. Besides reading at least one play per week (if not 1.5 - 2), we had to take weekly quizzes which required us to remember tiny little details of plot and dialogue. We also had a choice between three avenues of Horribly Hard Work:  1. Memorize and recite 50 lines from a selected list of scenes and present two oral reports to the class. 2. Memorize and recite 150 lines from a selected list of scenes and present one oral report to the class. 3. Memorize and recite 250 lines from a selected list of scenes.

Trusting my memory, I chose option 3. We had to recite 50 lines at a time, and we had to choose our lines from the list she gave us. Also, she knew every section on the list so well that if you missed literally one word, one contraction, she'd notice and you'd have to begin the line again. If you so much as substituted a for for a but, your line didn't count. If you could start the line again and get it right, she'd count it, but if you left out a word and honestly didn't know it, you'd have to come back another time and try again. Luckily, she didn't make us look at her while we were reciting, or I'd have forgotten all of my lines. I would write my sets of lines out on notecards and carry them around, studying in fits and starts for about a week. Then, on the morning of each recitation, I went to the liberal arts building about 45 minutes before my appointment and I'd sit by myself and say the lines over and over and over in my head. They'd stick long enough that I could recite them perfectly, and then by lunch, they'd be gone.

Four years later, out of my 250 lines, all I can remember is "To be, or not to be, that is the question: / Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer / the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, / Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, / And by opposing, end them" and "To sleep, perchance to dream--ay, there's the rub" from Hamlet; "Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?" (Macbeth); and "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers" (Henry V).

I actually finished my recitations before anyone else in the class, and as a completely unexpected prize, my professor gave me a pen, a ruler, a keychain, and a postcard with Shakespeare's portrait on them, and a completely hilarious eraser with "Ay, there's the rub," printed on it. I still have the eraser.



5. During the summer of 2003, I spent 6 1/2 weeks at a geologic field camp in Montana. We were out in the field from 8 AM to 5 PM six days a week, with no restrooms of any kind (not even outhouses). Thanks to that experience, I can basically pee anywhere, anytime. I once peed in an alley behind a boarded-up liquor store in Canada at 4 AM after ill-advisedly leaving a closing bar without visiting the bathroom and then realizing too late that a seven block walk to your hotel is way too long when you're about to die from needing to pee and one of the chicks you're with is so drunk she's taking one step every two minutes.



6. I've never been drunk, ever. I haven't really found any kind of alcohol that I like enough to drink until I'm drunk. Even the stuff I can pretend to like (raspberry Smirnoff, for example) fills up my stomach long before I've had enough to even get a buzz. I sometimes wonder if I'm missing out, but I figure I save lots of money this way.



7. I don't eat anything made from pigs. I watched a terrible video at an anti-CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation, a.k.a. factory farm) conference in college about the horrific way the pigs are treated at giant hog farms, and I haven't been able to stomach anything containing pig since then. I have also learned my lesson and stopped attending conferences that might involve traumatic animal videos. I miss bacon, but I just can't bring myself to go back to eating pigs. It's been something like 6 years since I gave it up, and I don't know that I'll ever go back.



8. In March of 2002 I went to Washington, DC, with five other members of the campus environmental club (including the bibliophile and J-Dog) to participate in a Public Lands Action Summit hosted by the Sierra Student Coalition. We lobbied our representatives on Capitol Hill, asking them to keep the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge closed to oil drilling. Sometimes I miss those days so much it aches. We were so full of fire and righteous indignation, and we really did want to change the world.



Tagging:

Danger

Miss M

That Chick

Mrs. Squirrel

Megs

Alyndabear

Mama Snee

Antonia at Whoopee