Getting To Know You

If you are on Facebook, then you know that the game du jour is the one where you post a set number of things about yourself and anyone who comments has to do the same. I did this and gave silly answers. But then I commented on someone else's post and was assigned another number. Rather than try to find nine more silly things to post, I decided to bring the 'game' over here and reveal some fun facts about me. There is no requirement to do the same if you leave a comment. I will, however, number these in the silliest way I can think of. If you get all of the references, you win um, something.

The Lonliest Number: I suffer from false memories. I don't 'suffer' exactly, but I remember things vividly that could not have happened. For example, I have a memory of standing in the living room of an apartment we lived in when I was very young. I'm looking out the front door and my mom is mowing the lawn. My sister is making snow cones in our Snoopy Sno-cone machine, wearing a Strawberry Shortcake shirt. I know we lived in this apartment, but I don't think we had much of a lawn to mow, and my sister wouldn't have a clue who Strawberry Shortcake is until several years later, in a different house, long after the Snoopy Sno-cone machine fell out of fashion. I also remember going on a trip to a tiny rundown theme park in Moosic, PA and seeing lions on a safari. We went to that park several times. There were no lions. There weren't even any house cats.

Snake Eyes: I bet my mother a million dollars that online dating only attracted crazy freaks and dangerous stalkers. I took a one week trial offer from Yahoo and proceeded to meet my husband. I have yet to pay off the bet.

Stooges, Pigs, and Amigos: I don't believe in ghosts, but I've had strange experiences that I can't explain. The summer that I was fourteen, we moved into a new house. A busy highway ran nearby, and every night that summer, I heard a terrible crash, squealing tires, and twisting metal, at the exact same time. There was never an accident reported and it stopped after a few months. When I was in my twenties, I lived in an attic apartment in a bad part of town. Lots of weird things happened there, like the windows unlatching and slamming open in the middle of the night despite there being no wind, and my phone ringing, while I was on the internet (dial up days) without kicking me offline, and the caller ID showed my own number.

Hugh Grant and Andi McDowell: I was deathly afraid of the voice of the operator who used to come on the line and tell you that the number you dialed was not in service. For some reason I always imagined her as the witch from The Wizard of Oz.

Stuart Sutcliffe: I swear, not all of these are creepy, but one more. I still remember a vivid nightmare I had in kindergarten. My teacher was not the nicest woman, something my mother can attest to. I dreamed that I had to go back into school at night to get my homework. I got lost, ended up back home, in my bed, but the characters from Sesame Street kept popping out of the wall, taunting me with my homework. Not just the Muppets, I distinctly remember Gordon, Bob, and Maria were there as well.

The 1/111th of The Beast: My father stole my first job for me. The district manager for the local newspaper was knocking on the neighbor's door to offer the boy who lived there a job as a paper boy because ours moved on to greater things, like bagging groceries. The neighbors were not home so my dad, the eternal extrovert, started chatting up the DM, ran inside, told me to come out, and next thing I knew, I was the new paper girl. I was 12. I did this until I moved on to grocery bagging at 14. I have been employed ever since and have never been fired from any job, though I admit to walking out of some.

What's In The Box?!!?: I was a painfully average student. I literally graduated the exact middle of my class. I wouldn't realize my enthusiasm for academics until my second attempt at college three years later, where I made dean's list every semester. I still hold no degree, though.

Enough: My very first office job was customer service for a beauty products distributor in 1997. I've had several jobs since then in a variety of industries, until 2010, when I started working customer service for a (much larger) beauty products distributor.

Turn Me On, Dead Man: I still remember that the telephone number to the Westwood One Radio Network's Saturday night oldies show was 800-634-5789 and I haven't heard that show in about twenty years.