where wildly different is perfectly normal
Truth be told
Truth be told

Truth be told

Oh, did I ever have a good time reading these responses to Truth?. I also learned that I should apparently take up poker or writing alibis, for no one picked the fabrication. I don’t know whether to be impressed or worried. Just as a reminder:

  1. I was once totally fluent in Spanish.
  2. When I was in high school, I went through the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago in the middle of the night.
  3. I recently became an investor in a winery in Chile.
  4. I can change clothes in public without showing enough skin to be arrested.
  5. I have eaten chicken feet and snails.
  6. I have had surgery five times, two of them before I hit my teens.
  7. In college, I was often mistaken for Bridget Fonda.
  8. Before I took up the flute in 4th grade, I was convinced I was going to be a writer.
  9. I have had my name run through the FBI database because of an unfortunate Mace incident.

God love my mom, who didn’t squeal on me, but wanted to know more about #4. Well, what happens at band camp, stays at band camp, mom. Mwah!

Yes, I was indeed once totally fluent in Spanish. When I was a junior in high school I took conversation Spanish and hosted an exchange student from Costa Rica. When she arrived I went from sorta being able to hold a conversation to flat-out dreaming in the language inside of about three days. Totally and frighteningly fluent. If I had ever thought I’d be living in Colorado I never would have lost it.

My senior year in high school, through a friend of a friend, I got to take a midnight tour of the Lincoln Park Zoo. I loved it, though to be honest, it was a lot of seeing animals sleeping. Oh, except the rhino who was pissed we disturbed his beauty sleep and charged the edge of the pen (psst…the beauty sleep isn’t working, dude). The adrenalin from that encounter got us through the rest of the visit. Oh, and when I was nine I spent the night at the Field Museum. Still one of my very favorite memories.

Chicken feet and snails taste remarkably like black beans and garlic. Of course, that’s what they were smothered in. I can eat damned near anything if it’s smothered in black beans and garlic. I’ve also eaten all manner of raw sea animals, way back before sushi was trendy and frou-frou and you knew the guy wielding the knife had some serious experience.

Yup, five surgeries. They don’t get any more fun the more you have. Two bladder surgeries before my teens, a tonsillectomy that should have been done when I was eight, not eighteen, and a couple of others.

Yes, Bridget Fonda. Have you seen Single White Female?

Bridget Fonda

Image1 I would like to state that I had the haircut first, though not the color. When the movie came to the campus theater, it got a lot of play. I’d be walking through the quad, and people would stop, stare, and slowly back away. One friend got spooked enough after seeing the movie he had a hard time being in the same room for awhile. And yes, that’s not the best picture, but it’s what I could find. And yes, that’s Tom way back when. And (sigh) yes, I really am taller than he is.

I wrote a lot of stories leading up to 4th grade, and then just abruptly stopped when I started playing the flute. I took a creative writing class, and when we had to write to an author for a class project I wrote to Judy Blume and sent her one of my stories. She actually wrote back. I do often wonder about that road not taken. At the very least, I never would have met my husband or had my boys.

Um, yeah. I did have my name run through the FBI database because of Mace. I was visiting the Capital building with my parents and brother when I was in college. It was in my purse, and I was very politely told to get.out.of.line.and.come.with.us. This was very pre-9/11, or I probably wouldn’t be here to tell the tale.

And apparently, I need to find a winery in Chile to invest in, because not a single person, not even my mom, thought I made that up. Huh. Maybe I’m better at this storytelling than I thought.

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