The Random Eight

Mizmell tagged me for this a while ago, and EditorMom tagged me for it last week, so I figured I really ought to get this done. I offer you, eight random things about me:

1. I owned a jeep my Senior year of High School when I was 18. It was a tricked out green Jeep Wrangler named “The Gremlin.” I bought it from a guy who did all the tricking out and had purchased both the hard top and the soft top. His girlfriend made him choose between it and her. I loved my Jeep. I wanted one because I had seen the movie Red Dawn, and the kids who escape from the communists are able to do that because the older brother has a jeep.

2. It became part of the family fleet when I went to college, and I didn't own a car again until I was 30. It was a Saturn (when owning a Saturn meant something cool).

3. I am very emotional when I watch movies. I cried when I saw Hero, and (most recently) Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (I highly recommend that one!). Songs don’t make me cry. I find it interesting because the Consort is the opposite: songs make him tear up, but not movies (no matter how poignant).

4. I was in a Saturday Night Live skit. Really, I was. It was during that terrible 1981-1982 season. The father of one of the girls in my class knew someone who knew someone, and they needed a few pre-teens in Catholic school uniforms. She asked me to be a part of it because these were supposed to be French schoolgirls, and, being Belgian, I was the closest thing to French they could find. (Actually, I don’t think she knew the difference.)

5. I loved being pregnant. I loved feeling my body grow, the first tentative butterfly kicks of the baby, the maternity clothes, the care in choosing what to eat, all of it. If I hadn’t had such strong reasons for not having more, I’d have at least 6 kids by now.

6. When I was younger, I played the piano, the flute, and the violin. Now, I can read music well, I can fumble through making notes come out of the flute and the piano, but the violin fingerings have disappeared into the ether.

7. I would learn the drums if I could be a teen again. Percussion is my favorite part of music. And marching bands – I love marching bands! It’s all I can do to hold myself back from joining a band as it marches down the street during a parade.

8. I’m terrible at measuring distance. I always use the excuse that because my childhood was spent straddling the metric world of Belgium and the English measurement world of the US, I never got a good sense of either. That’s baloney. I’m just not good at gauging distance.

When I tag people for memes, they pointedly ignore me. But I love to learn things about my readers though memes. So, if anyone wants to do this one, let me know. If you don’t have a blog, you can give me your eight random facts in the comments.