The latest viral meme to hit Facebook has taken off faster than most anything. I’ve been trying to figure out the vibrant appeal in the simplicity of “say 25 things about yourself”. I think it comes down to just listing a bunch of facts requiring that it elicits some depth after a while. Sure, some people are posting 25 popcorny tidbits of trivia, but most folks get into some really personal stuff pretty fast. Or maybe I did it wrong….
The Twenty-Five Things:
1. I wear a hair-tie on my right wrist at all times (except in the shower). But when I have to remember something, I consciously move it to my left wrist. I say what I have to remember under my breath and remember where I am so it will quickly recall the act of saying this so I can remember it later. I remember reading comics when I was young about people (usually Dagwood Bumstead, for some reason) tying a string around their finger to remember something. And it never made sense to me, mostly because I thought a written note would have to be attached for the remembering to really work. Apparently, this is something one can only understand as an adult – I’ve only been doing this the last couple years.
2. I deliberately failed a class in college as a way of proving to myself that I was no longer interested in grades (which I’d been rather focused on in high school) or future schooling. I got an 8% by skipping the final exam.
3. I have kissed 10 girls in my life. The first 9 were eldest children. The 10th – my wife, Emily – is the 4th of 5 children.
4. I proposed to Emily in front of about 300 people, almost none of them strangers.
5. Emily and I have absolutely identical wedding rings. We regularly exchange them as a party trick and/or at sentimental moments.
6. I have been actively growing my hair out since I was 18. I have been a vegetarian since I was 17. The night before I left for college, my Dad informed me for the first time that he had been a vegetarian and grown his hair out when he was just older than I was. I asked him why he never told me and he said, without a trace of irony, “I didn’t want to be too big an influence on you.”
7. When I was five, I wanted to be a paleontologist or an astronaut. Then Challenger happened and I dropped the latter. Which is why I’m now a paleontologist.
8. I hated my junior year of high school History and English teachers. They were ruining my two favorite subjects. I thought they were simply stupid people. I wrote an essay to test each of them for their stupidity. I submitted a massive term paper to the History professor on why European states, including the Netherlands, would have reconquered America had the Erie Canal not been built. I wrote a personal essay proving that I don’t exist to my English teacher. Both of these papers received A+’s.
9. I was a catcher for years in Little League and up through 8th grade, despite my lanky frame. My first speech-and-debate like activity ever was giving a presentation at the County Fair on how to be a catcher.
10. I did debate for 9 consecutive years, spending many of them thinking that I was burnt out of the activity. There is nothing in this world that I miss more or would go back to faster, if the opportunity arose.
11. When I was midway through 4th grade, I skipped four grades and enrolled in 8th grade at the local middle school. I got great grades and felt academically challenged for the first time in my life, but was subjected to massive abuse from my classmates, especially bullies who had been held back. It did not end well and remains the single most formative event in my life.
12. The next year, I skipped four more grades and enrolled in three classes at the local community college. There were these little signs all over the school that said children under 12 had to be accompanied by an adult and the administration actually enforced this, drafting my Dad to accompany his enrolled 11-year-old son to the door of my classes. The administration was similarly supportive of my efforts in other ways and I ended up withdrawing with a B average.
13. The above events contributed to me attending 13 schools before high school, plus two separate stints at being homeschooled. They have also relegated me to a life of wondering how my life would’ve turned out on a Doogie Howserish path that had been allowed fulfillment. Mostly, it makes me sad, especially when my life is ordinary in any way. And things like the Super Bowl’s cars.com ad just kill me.
14. After the second stint of homeschooling, I enrolled in the local Catholic school in (age-level) 7th grade. The year was almost a complete bust, but I made a good friend who I went on to exchange about seventy letters each way with over the course of the next five years.
15. I wrote my first novel in two and a half months in Summer 2001. I have spent the subsequent eight years failing to write my second. I have concluded from this experience that I cannot simultaneously hold a day job and write novels.
16. I hate day jobs. Conceptually and experientially. I tend to be very good at them, usually through sheer force of will, but I hate them. This tends to lead to a lot of anger, especially when I’m away from the jobs where I can really express it.
17. I am really into the number 17. So predictably so that, during college, my phone code was 1717. And Mesco and Lisha guessed this and recorded over my phone message with an inside joke reference they found hilarious. I didn’t realize they had done this for months.
18. I have survived a suicide attempt.
19. I feel an incredibly powerful and deep connection to my paternal grandmother. She is my only grandparent I never met.
20. When I was little, my favorite animals were turtles, lobsters, elephants, penguins, and rabbits. I would engage adults in detailed discussions of my five favorite animals and why it was perfectly reasonable to have five favorite animals. Later, we got ducks and another cat and it became a whole pantheon of favoritism.
21. I have never owned a credit card nor ever been in official debt of any kind (to one’s friends over a few days doesn’t count, right?). I attribute my passionate dedication to this principle to watching my parents cut up and melt their credit cards in the fireplace during the late 1980’s.
22. When most people doodle, I make up extended long division problems and work them out to relax and distract myself.
23. During most of high school and all of college, I had to play 2-10 games of Tetris before starting work on a paper.
24. I am possibly the most deadline-motivated person of my generation.
25. One of my favorite exercises as a kid was to sit quietly and think about what the concept “forever” really entailed, and especially the idea of living forever. The idea of going on and on and on was at first inaccessible, then completely terrifying, and ultimately quite peaceful and reassuring. No matter how many times I did this exercise (thousands), it always felt the exact same way, in that progression. The effects are dulled now, but I still do it sometimes.
(Cross-posted on Facebook.)
