Gird your loins, O Followers, for here are My Seven Things

1.  I was a child bride. On my 18th birthday, I met a young man in my Ethics class and married him nine days later.  We stayed married for roughly 12 years, and a couple of those years were even enjoyable.  Don’t misunderstand, this is a fantastically bad idea.  Eighteen is far, far too young to get married to a complete stranger–that shouldn’t happen until you are at least 40 and immigration is on the line.  But, hey…I was stupid (hello, I was 18!) and stubborn and had a noble idea about having made a promise.  That nobility lasted a lot longer than you’d have thought.  Yet, in the end, I was not the flower of uxorial virtue that I might have been.  He had his issues, too–like disappearing into the deepest heart of Africa with no intentions of ever coming home (à la Kurtz). I’m so not kidding that I wouldn’t know where to begin.  Whatever, I regret nothing.

2. This is a biggie.  I know there will be a judgment backlash and I’ll lose followers by the score, but here goes:  I want to wear a uniform. I don’t mean a cop outfit or a French maid costume (though either one would be fine with me); I’m thinking more along the lines of a single outfit (with multiple copies for cleanliness) that I wear everyday to everything–board meetings, baptisms, ball games, and the opera.  Many of you may know that I’m 6′3″.  This makes buying clothes off the rack next to impossible, and I no longer have the money/inclination to buy couture.  If you’ve ever been around me for more than ten minutes you’d know that I don’t need fashion to express myself–I seem to do plenty of expressing without it.  Summing up, there is nothing so trivially frustrating as trying to determine what to cover myself with for the day.  I want none of it.  I’d rather be curing cancer, for instance.

3.  I’ve been to 47 states. As a kid, my brother and I started a contest to see who could rack up the most states in the US.  You had to eat a meal in the state for it to count.  Also, layovers at an airport were not eligible for inclusion.  I need to get to North Dakota, Hawaii, and Alaska.  Damn it if my brother did go on a solo, covert road trip for the express purpose of nabbing North Dakota a couple years back–now he’s got 48.  If I had a trustworthy car, I’d so be on my way to Fargo….

4. Before my business took off, when we were still broke newlyweds, I hustled trivia in bars for money. That’s right.  I’m a hustler.  I also know a breathtaking amount of shit that serves little purpose other than impressing drunk 30-65 year-old men.  (Of course, you don’t impress them right away–first you’ve got to seem like an idiot so they’ll take the bait.)  Anyway, drunk older men would want to prove that their vast superiority in life experience could trump the collective knowledge of a silly, underage drunk girl.  It probably could–but they sure never beat me at trivia.  Ah well…it paid the rent.

5.  I write in books. When I was younger, this was The Heresy of Heresies to me.  When I was younger, I’d buy multiple copies of the same book–not so that I would mark in one, but so that I could carefully use the first copy secure in the knowledge that I had a virgin duplicate sitting on my shelf at all times.  (Yes, I was also that kid who got a new 64 pack of crayons, arranged them by hue, and never–not ever–wanted to “dull” them with use.)

When I was younger, I was obviously a freak.

I’ve relaxed quite a bit, I assure you.  So much, in fact, that I now limit myself to a single copy of a book, and I mark it up with abandon.  Ok, not with abandon.  I use a ruler to underline stuff, and I only use pencil to make my notes.  Copius notes.  Annotation is where it’s at, people.  One day, the world will realize that my marginalia is worth something.  If you’re really lucky, I’ll annotate a copy of your favorite book for you as a present on your birthday.

6.  I’m crazy ticklish, but you’d never know it. When I was a very tiny child, I decided that the scourge of ticklishness must be eradicated–it simply made me too vulnerable to my older brother’s every whim.  If he wanted me to get him a cookie, say, he’d threaten to tickle me if I didn’t comply.  Tickling was my kryptonite and I had to find a way to stop the madness.  So, I trained.  (Insert Rocky-like montage of a four-year-old Emily here.)   I had people tickle me intentionally.  I had them use fingers, feathers…I had them launch surprise tickle attacks.  I applied my considerable pre-school will to the problem and tamed it.  To my memory, this was the first time that I approached something in such a disciplined way.  Notably, it was also the last.

7.  I’m probably immortal. Ok, maybe not immortal, but I’m pretty tough.  Ok, maybe not tough, but I’ve beaten pretty stiff odds.  A couple years ago, my body started hating itself to such a degree that it made my continued corporeal existence untenable.  Doctors actually said, “We are going to give you some information on hospice because there is nothing more we can do.”  But you’ll never guess what happened.  After all my preparations for death (funeral arrangements, will, spiritual reckoning etc.), it never happened.  Like, not at all.  I am a walking medical anamoly.  I’m totally alive and pretty damn healthy (for the most part).  As you can imagine, this changed my outlook on things (like life) dramatically.  Maybe that can be a long, boring blog post for a later night.

Ok, ok…

Let this post serve as evidence of my intention to BLOG.  (Again.)

But, as Saint Augustine once said, “Oh Lord, give me excitement about blogging, but do not give it yet.”  Well, words to that effect, I feel sure.