The Diplodocus

Argh.  Thanks a lot, Spencer.  Now I have to come out of semi-hiatus to answer the ever popular meme “Five Things You May Not Know About Me.”  Like Catherine, this is difficult for me.  Partially because I have to wonder what people don’t know, seeing as I’m pretty open and forthcoming.  But there are a few things, I suppose.

1. I was once a very, very picky eater.  So picky that at times Mom would make two different meals just to not deal with my whining.  A saint, that woman.  What wouldn’t I eat?  Raw tomatoes.  Mustard.  Salami.  Bengali style fried fish (still struggling with that one).  Rye bread.  Cauliflower.  Cabbage.  And, get this, spicy food.  Seriously.  I think things started to change right around high school, when I started to work in food service and got real fat.  Now I’ll eat almost anything (or at least try it once) with the notable exceptions of dog, cat, canned tuna, and horse.  I’m still on the fence about the last one.

2. Despite living in D.C. and using the Metro for years, I still can’t commit the Red line to memory.  I always have to look at a map to figure out if I need to go towards Glenmont or Shady Grove.  Which one goes to Silver Spring?  Which one goes to Cleveland Park?  I’m still blanking, and I had a regular tutoring gig in Cleveland Park at one point in time.

3. Keeping on the theme of direction, I suspect I’m slightly dyslexic.  Left and right still baffle me.  The cardinal directions are easy, but unless I concentrate really hard or hold my hands up to do the “L” thing, I struggle with directions.  The weirder thing is that I can always remember them in French, Bangla, and Urdu/Hindi.   But English is hard.

4. Once, a long time ago, I was a math whiz.  I actually started college as a math major, with dreams of being a professor in my head.  The odd geometric proof or calculus problem still excites me, and I’m fairly good with numbers.  But if you went back in time and told 16-year-old me that I was going to major in English and Philosophy, I would have laughed.

5. If sufficiently isolated, either alone or with close friends, I’ll totally cry during movies.  There are specific types of films that make me cry more than others, but in general I can be a bit more sentimental than I care to admit.  “Road to Perdition” had me practically bawling, for example.

Here’s a bonus for the hell of it: I’m a horrible, horrible communicator.  I stink at keeping in touch with people, though I’m actively trying to change that.  Too often I find myself living in the moment and forgetting.  That is pretty dangerous when adversity rears its ugly head (now, for example).

I guess I have to tag five previously untagged people, huh?  Obviously, Marisa (do you still read this blog, babe?).    And to get some more Foreign Service people in on this, Laura.  And Furnish.  And Phil.  And has Tommy been tagged?  I’m not sure.