I have been tagged by the lovely Lena, and as I fear her wrath (nah, because I love talking about myself), I have decided to comply. Seven random things about myself that you neither know nor care to know:
1) I am so boring and unremarkable that no one in my immediate or extended family gave me any nicknames. My sister had several nicknames, my brother had heaps, I had zero. When I whimpered about this to my bro a few years ago, he cooked up a couple for me. One of them should have been Pathetic Patsy.
2) I have a massive head, a fact that I think most people notice but always pretend they don't. It is GARGANTUAN, people. No hats fit me, even most of the adjustable baseball caps. My poor mother needed a postpartum blood transfusion, and the doctors thought I was terminally ill with hydrocephalus. This does not translate to more brains, sadly -- just more hot air:
3) The main reason I applied for one of my favorite jobs was that it was three doors down from the office of my entrancing Spanish teacher. Long after he ceased belting "Maria" at me in the hallways and swoonifying me with his swarthy complexion and ice-green eyes, I adored that job. And that is my testimony of doing good things for dumb reasons. Hallelujah, amen.
4) I like soggy things. The Pacific Northwest, toast soaked in cocoa, gloppy cold tapioca pudding, and Life cereal that's been stewing on the counter for at least five minutes.
5) One of my nervous habits is tugging on my Brooke-Shields-meets-Sam-Donaldson eyebrows. One day in sixth grade I was particularly nervous and started attacking my right eyebrow. Later that day my friends informed me (between violent giggling fits) that I'd almost entirely wiped out that one eyebrow. Let's just say the one-eyebrow look is much worse than the no-eyebrow look and that eyebrow pencils are a precious gift from on high.
6) I am credited in the liner notes of my favorite band's third CD. Several of you know this. What you probably don't know is that I was involved in the final editing of the liner notes, and was asked to help them trim the lengthy "Thank Yous" section down to a reasonable size. I had known the band for just a couple months and clearly didn't deserve to be credited at all, but I decided to not cut my own name from the list. Why? Because I'm evil and vain and wanted my future children to think I was supercool.
7) According to Shroud of Turin loonies, I have the same blood type as Jesus. This is why I am better than you.
Okay, now I get to tag seven others. (Don't worry, Wynne, I'll leave you alone.) Howzabout Natalie, D'Arcy, Sophie (are you still there, darling?), Emily, iieee, April, and Gawain & Vesper. I guess this will conclusively prove whether or not any of these people are still reading this blog....
Friday, February 01, 2008
It's not like this whole enterprise hasn't always been self-serving.
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14 comments:
Now I'm wondering which band.
Wonder no more. Though if you've heard of them, I'll eat my (very large) hat.
So...I have to post 7 random things about myself that generally no one else knows about me? Hmmm...
Excellent! For the record, I've never noticed the massive head. Of course, now I expect to be fixated by it. I'm also curious about the blood type (not that I believe the loonies).
Gawain -- Yes, that's exactly it. And get Vesper to do it, too, if you can.
Lena -- If I had curly hair, I think the grandeur of the head would be impossible to miss. As for the blood, it's AB+. Blood type of the gods.
Marie, you crack me up!! I love your blog as much as I do you. You are hardly boring and unremarkable, your family just couldn't possibly find a nickname that suited your personality. Typically nicknames are to mock the less fortunate, such as mine, I was called Grace. Ahh, thats a lovely name, UNLESS its because you were clumsy and your dad called you Grace hoping that you would eventually become graceful. It never happened. So really, with your God-like blood type and your killer witty personality, I think I will just call you B&%^$@. How's that? JUST KIDDING! love ya!!
Marie! THANK YOU for giving me something to actually blog about! See, all I needed was an assignment. :)
And I am ALL about doing things for stupid reasons, such as taking a job to be close to a hot boy/Spanish teacher, but usually I just do them to get a laugh. Which is why I was once caught dancing with a ginormous box of Lucky Charms at Wal-Mart. By a hot boy, of course.
Marie, we have so much in common! Well, at least we both have big heads and were in love with foreign language professors (mine spoke French and Italian...oh la la, I still think about him seven years later). I tried to give myself a nickname once, but pretended other people had given it to me. I would say, "My nickname is ___________" and even then it never caught on. However, my sibling has only ever been known by her nickname, and it inspires gifts and laughs and hugs and joy! Curses!
I wanted to blog today, but I didn't know what about, so thanks! I'll start composing now...spice girls will be mentioned!
Thanks for sparing me. I loved reading yours, though!
And I never did notice the head size. There is something very unique about the back of your head, though--it still bothers me that I recognized the BACK OF YOUR HEAD from somewhere--as if I had met it somewhere previously--a past life? A past class in which you sat in front of me?--but I can never figure out WHERE. Seriously. Keeps me up nights.
And nicknames? C'mon, technically, Marie is a nickname...isn't it? Sort of? (And really, they aren't all that they're cracked up to be. Ask me. I got called "Whinny" and "Pooh" for far too many years by people I didn't like. Why didn't anyone ever call me "Batso" or "Rudolph"?) But if you still want a nickname, I'll give you one.
What do you think? Do you dare?
Well, apparently I still have some persuasive powers left in these saggy old bones yet. Vesper fulfilled our tagging assignment as well.
Dang! When I clicked on your link to that band's website, I lost the clever comment I had typed!
Will you lend me one of their CD's for a couple days? And why have you modestly not urged me to listen to their albums? It wasn't even clear to me that they're your favorite band. I feel that you're lacking in imperfections, but I believe you should be less self-effacing, and more selfish.
Jen -- I only got funny when I realized I was never going to be pretty. By that point I had passed the Too Old For New Nicknames Threshhold. I will now call you Grace.
April -- I would love to know what it was about dancing with a box of Lucky Charms that was calculated to win the heart of this boy.
D'Arcy -- I never even thought to give myself a nickname. This is perhaps why I was never offered one -- only "dimwit" sprang to mind, and they thought that would be mean?
Wynne -- Marie is my middle name, but I think of it as my first name since 1) it was originally my only name, until they changed the birth certificate and 2) I've never been called anything but Marie by anyone. So if anything's my nickname, it would be my first name, which my bro occasionally calls me when he wants to make me mad. As for the back of my head, yes, you're right -- it's odd. Like the rest of my head, it's very wide at the very top and tapers down quite dramatically to my neck. It's also quite flat on the top. And then of course there's the cowlick back there that resembles the San Andreas Faultline. I really don't know how I survived puberty going to ballet three times a week and having to expose the odd contours of my head to ridicule (okay, so no one ridiculed me, but I know that but for the restraints of polite society they would have burned me as a witch). As for do I want you to give me a nickname -- yes! please! am I too late?
Gawain -- Thanks for talking her into it -- you guys are hilarious and lovable and I'm glad you have a blog so I can peek inside your wacky love nest.
Dad -- The only reason you might not know that they're my favorite band is that I discovered them while away at college, so it was only my roommates and coworkers (and Ryan and Leah) who had to listen to my endless gushing. And I did think myself too old for such gushing, so I tried to get it under wraps after the first giddy encounter left me feeling sorta silly. They're not Great by all standards. They tend to get mixed reviews, and few of the people I've pushed their albums on have said they loved the music. But they're to me what you hope your spouse will be -- perfect for your particular quirks, even if the rest of humanity scratches their heads when you extol their virtues.
Does Maria count as a nickname?~Sharon
Sharon -- It only counts when you (and my dreamy Spanish teacher) say it. When everyone else says it, it means, "I'm going to call you Maria because a) I think Marie is stupid as a solo name and sounds like a grandma or b) I can't really remember what your name is, exactly." However, it's less of a nickname than, say, "Ace," because it doesn't reference any particular personality quirk or fond memory associated with me. That is the essence of my gripe with my family on the whole nickname thing. It implies that they're largely indifferent to the crossing of our life paths and that the only reason they continue to call me is some sort of biological/evolutionary imperative.
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