Personally, I'd Skip This One If I Were You

My beef with the "list n things about yourself" blog meme is that it forces me to the uncomfortable realization that I am not nearly as fascinating as I think I am. And no way do I have a story to top this one:

The part of the dance where we were all grounded, dancing on the floor: that part went well. Then we slowly built up to the section where I had to stand on the chair. I was hoping that if I found the right spot to stand on, just the right spot, I would be able to balance and support my partner while she stood on her chair…

So we took each other’s hands, and I glanced down cautiously as we both stepped up–

And the chair wobbled so violently I let go of her hand and stepped right back down.

Okay, I didn’t quite step; I more tripped down and luckily landed on my feet. The rest of the dancers snickered as they continued the dance. I’m sure that somehow my very brown face found a way to turn very red as all the 8th graders in the gymnasium EXPLODED in laughter. (We didn’t have an auditorium.) My partner, rather than do her part of the dance without me, decided to point and laugh at me while she was up in the chair. At that point I wanted to knock over her chair, but there was a dance to finish. So once that portion was over, I danced in tears while I realized people kept laughing and laughing, and I couldn’t figure out why until we finished our number and began taking our chairs offstage.

Read to find out the why. I have to say that if I were Sylvia's age, tactfully stated here as simply Much Much Younger Than I Am, I would NOT have the nerve to post that. I may still be sulking over events from junior high, actually. Woman has courage to spare.

And now, the rules:

1) Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2) Share 7 facts about yourself.
3) Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4) Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Hoo boy:

1. Growing up I had such a Pollyanna view of the world (I know, I know, massive privilege) that when I first heard these lyrics from The Clash:

Kick over the wall
Cause governments to fall
How can you refuse it?
Let fury have the hour
Anger can be power
D'ya know that you can use it?

--I thought they were being sarcastic. They couldn't be serious! Everyone knew that only flowers and puppies and rainbows and hemp could ever bring whirled peas. Anger was for fat old white men. This was what growing up in the 1970s as a Mormon could do to a person; also, let's not forget that I was very stupid. OH HAI, BRAINROT.

2. I learned about sex in the second grade from a girl I'll just call Dirty Daphne. You know every elementary school had That One Kid; Dirty Daphne was That One Kid, the one your mom told you to stay away from.

Anyway, she told me and my friend Magdala all about how adults Did It. And Magdala and I were skeptical. The next day we confessed to each other that we'd each gone home and poked around and . . . and Dirty Daphne just had to be wrong about the mechanics of it all. She just had to be. Because yeah, there was sort of an entry down there but OMG, NO WAY, because neither of us could admit so much as a fingertip into it. I don't think it ever occurred to either of us that maybe that was because we were all of seven years old.

Dirty Daphne's early tip-off made things awkward for me three years later, when my mother determined that I should have all the facts. By then I'd had three years of scouring encylopedias and medical books and anything else I could get my hands on, so if there was one thing I was in possession of by then, it was the facts. And not just the basic facts; I knew all about sexually transmitted infections and could explain everything from ectopic pregnancies to premature ejaculation. But there was no stopping my mother, who had determined that this was her responsibility to explain to me, no matter what all I thought I knew.

What she ought to have told me was how powerfully all those nerve endings could mess a person up. Which brings me to:

3. The only time I got heavy into using PGP encryption was when I was conducting an affair in an office in which it was widely known that the boss of the mail server snooped. And I only used PGP because I knew it drove this guy NUTS.

The guy I was carrying on with--the two of us weren't saying anything that outrageous to each other in these emails because duh, company email? So there wasn't anything in these emails the snoopy admin guy shouldn't have seen, and it would have done me no harm for him to have read them, but I used PGP anyway because it was so satisfying to see him stomp into my office, open his mouth to ask why the PGP, shut it again, go red in the face, mutter something unintelligible by way of excuse, and stomp right back out. He couldn't say anything, see, because then he would have had to admit to reading emails, and the head guy at this office frowned on that, even though every admin with access to the mail server does it.

My advice: If you're going to fuck someone you work with, use PGP. It's fun for the whole dysfunctional office family! They'll know you're fucking, but they'll never be able to prove it!

4. I sometimes reference on this blog an abusive ex-boyfriend, but I'll give the guy one thing: He taught me to cook. That's a life skill. I could have done without all the other shit that came with that, but at least I can feed myself stuff besides burritos and ramen now. So thanks for that, asshole.

5. There's not one commercially produced CD in my (admittedly meager) collection that I can play all the way through; there's at least one song I loathe on every single disc. I love iTunes for letting me get around that problem, but I wish it had been available 20 years ago, back when I had the time and the inclination to be obsessive about music, because now I don't care. I like plain old silence better than any music.

6. When I first moved to Arizona from California, around the age of 12, I was so freaked out by the whole thing that I developed horrible insomnia, and damn if I don't still have it. I used to crawl into bed and go right out before that. I can still fall asleep fast if I go to bed when the sun's coming up, but that's no way to live, believe me.

7. I have no ambition and (discounting a phase in my teenage years when I had the usual embarrassing teenager dreams of being a rock star) I never have had. I don't see why I have to be anything special, I don't have the talent to be anything special, and as for materialism, there's no point to my acquiring lots of stuff when I'll only lose most of it (and I will). I just want enough money to keep afloat, and I have the nerve to think that achieving this shouldn't be as tricky for people to do as it is.

And now for seven fresh victims! This is the fun part:

Donna
Sheila
Wolfa
Shannon
Michele
Genni
Sheezlebub