Otto

Time for another edition of the continuing eight facts about me (in my sad and egotistical attempt to get to 100).

#52- If you look closely at the the inside of my right calf, you will see a faint white outline about three inches long, curving slightly almost to form the letter S.

For half of my 16th year, I was headlong into a long-distance summer romance with a big city boy who sent me heartfelt letters and saved up his allowance and part-time wages to take Greyhound rides to visit me.

I went to visit him for a week, only to find not the romance promised, but rather days spent in his basement watching TV with only hints of the sunshine behind the curtains.

However, a group of us did go on an day-trip to a lake. Rather than going to the public beach, it was instead decided we would sneak through a hole in a chain-link fence to some private section of the beach.

As the sun dimmed, we traipsed back up the gravel road. I was last to crawl through the fence, and as I squeezed through, an exposed section tore through my skin.

The wound was cleaned as I gasped in the car ride to McDonalds.

My boyfriend looked down at the seeping cut, and remarked "It looks like an S. Now you'll never forget me."
His name was Steve.

And now, despite the cruel way things ended, and not having seeing each other in ten years, when I trace the line down my leg, I am forced to think of him.

#53- I shed an absurd amount for someone who still seemingly has a full head of hair. Long brown strands end up embedded in clothing and food, almost if by osmosis. It wasn't so bad when I lived in a carpeted apartment, as most of it could be easily vacuumed away. But now that my floors are all hardwood and laminate, a broom won't remove them that easily, and a weekly Swiffering revealed near living dust bunnies in every corner, made up of Princess locks. There are even a handful of hairs somehow adhered to my bathroom ceiling (did I mention that I'm 5 foot 3?)

#54- Despite a semblance of maturity, I have a ridiculously juvenile dirty mind. I giggle frantically when sportscasters use terms such as "penetrate the zone". Today, whilst in my neuroscience class, I became fixated on the fact that the pituitary gland looks an awful lot like a pair of testicles.

#55- I wanted to be a writer when I was in the fifth grade. Whenever we had a writing assignment, while the rest of the class would write a few pages, I would write a tome of several chapters, which would then be read to the class instead of a regular fiction book at reading time. Before my family moved away, I entered in what seemed like a prestigious children and teenager's writing contest. My piece was a tale of a famous pop star's (I still remember her early 90s name-- Stephanie Silvano) dog who was kidnapped for ransom, told from the point of view of the dog. It was entitled "Dognapped", and included such dramatic scenes as the distraught dog being brought into a bar (which I had my mother describe to me), and such well-crafted lines as "This is a bar? The whole time I thought he was talking about a candy bar!"

Genius. I know.

The actual award ceremony was held after we'd moved hundreds of kilometers away, but my father was able to attend, as he still had some job tasks to finish up before he completed the move. I waited with desperation for the news of my placing, and exploded with questions when he walked in the door.

He proudly, with a hug, handed me a third place certificate.

I started to sob. Everyone assumed it was tears of joy. And though I played along, they were really tears of disappointment.

#56- Again, when I was 16, I also was privy to another scar. I decided that the ideal way to express my originality was to get my bellybutton pierced. Unfortunately for me, the fact that it was still relatively rare, and that I lived in a small town, meant there was only one possible body piercer in town. She was crude and tattoed, and told me, despite my insistence that I was not currently sexually active, that I would have to have sex doggy style for the next week.

She also used an earring gun on my belly button.
(Which soon afterwards became against piercing regulations.)
It hurt like hell.
And became an infected mess for nearly 6 months.
Once it healed, and I was able to proudly show my bejeweled navel at the beach, I was left with a little circular scar around the initial point of puncture.
The worst was that, by the next summer, every other girl had it done-- minus the telltale earring gun scar.

#57- I went through a rather unfortunate tomboy stage pre-adolescence, accompanied by the mandatory short, moppish haircut that belied my true gender until puberty reared its ugly head. The unfortunate aftermath of this phase was a number of highly unflattering family and school photos strewn about the house. My best friend, who also spent a year with an unseemly henna'd red mushroom cut, and I thus decided to make up a story about our adopted brothers, Pedro (me) and Raoul (her). We told anyone who asked that Raoul and Pedro were preferred to us, and we were thus shunned from family photos for a few year period. However, in the 7th grade (aka. when we both had moved onto badly applied makeup), Pedro and Raoul sadly were infected with rabies, and, in solidarity, jumped off a bridge.

This was all meant in fun, of course, but it was comical the one time a boy I was fiercely crushing on grew exceedingly silent when I solemnly told him the tale, and looked at me with such pity.

"I'm so sorry."
"Uhhhh... I was kidding. You know rabies is curable, right?"

Awkward.

#58- I believe that mashed potatoes are approximately equivalent to heaven. I had planned to make chicken satay last night, but a sudden mashed potato craving led me to taking the Duke and I out for dinner to a local pub merely because of their mashed potato side dish. It may be my destiny to die from carbohydrate induced shock.

#59- When I was 13, a friend and I made a pact to hold off on shaving her legs. She then broke that pact, but forbade me from doing the same. I think this was in part because she was highly invested in being the pretty one, and me remaining the dowdy sidekick. I hoarded razors, eagerly awaited her family holiday. When she returned, she bemoaned my now hairless legs, whining "They were so beautiful and feathery!"

Coincidentally, upon her absence, I also had my first "boyfriend" ever, who I secretly kissed in a tent, went to a hockey game with (eek! my first date!), and never saw again.

Essentially, I hurried through the steps of entering adolescence when she wasn't looking.