Trivial Pursuits

My theory is that we all have some interesting factoids about our lives. I may get braver and share more later, but here are a few of my tidbits.

I was found floating face-down in my aunt’s pool when I was three-years-old. All I remember distinctly is seeing seaweed and beautiful fish, hearing wonderful music, and swimming with a sea turtle.

I was once bitten by a horse.

I’ve accumulated about 50 stitches over a lifetime.

I’ve been knocked out cold three times, once by a German Shepherd.

I almost drowned when I fell into a washout while jogging on the beach at night.

Over the course of a lifetime I’ve had 50 white mice, three hamsters, four rabbits, several gerbils, one bird, ten dogs, and one ferret as pets. I’ve always wanted a pig.

I was in a motorcycle accident in which I landed on my head in a cornfield. The corn took all the skin off my back from the neck down to my ribcage.

A crab clamped onto my toe until it bled when I was standing in the ocean.

I had a job where I wore a hard hat and climbed steep ladders between stories of office buildings under construction, checking materials. The guys called me Site Woman.

A drunk woman punched me in the mouth, busting my lip and loosening my teeth at my first high school reunion. She was very confused . . . and very drunk.

I’ve been assaulted three times, escaping serious harm (not counting the many drubbings from my sister and cousin Norman.) Once a guy hit me over the head repeatedly with some Indian corn he had torn off a dorm door around Halloween. He was angry because when I saw him pushing a friend of mine, his date, I intervened. Kernels flew everywhere.

I’m claustrophobic and have social anxiety (I wonder why?). I also don’t like Indian corn.

My sister once slammed my head in the car door. Are you noticing the head injuries here?

I have been skinny dipping several times. Hasn’t everyone?

I once had to hitchhike to get myself to the emergency room of a hospital.

I’m a night owl and often an insomniac.

People (guys and girls) used to wake me up in the middle of night to get them in their dorm rooms when they lost their keys. It was a trick with the doorknob. I tried to teach them so I could get some sleep, but nobody could learn it.

My roommate’s father was in the Mafia. After he died, a man came to the door and gave her “Ma” an envelope full of money once a month—the Mafioso death benefit plan. She let her brother stay in our room one night while she stayed with her boyfriend. I was horrified.

My sister and I camped out across Canada and the United States for three months when I was 19 years-old.

I was in labor for 40 hours and still said please and thank you to the nurses.

I took a dare in the second grade to jump off a balcony, barefoot onto cement. I damaged my feet quite a bit, but recovered.

I’ve had bronchial pneumonia more times than I can count.

I played fast pitch softball for 10 years as a pitcher. I pitched quite a few no hitters.

I was once stalked by a violent lesbian. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

I’ve seen dead people off and on for most of my life. Only one of them was scary.

I once had a man randomly threaten to blow my head off with a shotgun when I was working at an amusement park. (What’s this infatuation with dispensing of my head?! Maybe I was Marie Antoinette in another lifetime.)

I was the rear end of a horse in a grammar school play—shades of things to come.

I once volunteered to do course work reading for a blind student. Sometimes when I was reading I made funny faces to make sure he wasn't pulling my leg. He had some really big Playboy magazines which he told me were in braille, but I never looked at them. To this day I could kick myself for not doing so. He may have really only read them for the articles!

Well, that’s all, and more than enough for now. I think everyone should give this a try. Maybe I’ll do my family next. Yah, ah, ha!