In an update on the game of tag, Emily and I are now “it” – having been tagged by our friends at Life In Pencil, Elizabeth and Anne. Thanks, you two pencil-necked Mizzou geeks! It’s my turn today, so I’ll go first.
We are supposed to tell 10 secrets about ourselves…which I am interpreting as little-known facts.
1. At age 20, I was shanghied by a girl at a bar in Taos, New Mexico and dragged over to meet some guy named Neil Young. I had never heard of him, he had never heard of me, we shook hands politely, and went our separate ways. It was THE Neil Young who was shooting a movie in the area at the time.
2. I taught myself to ride a two-wheeled bike at age 3, no training wheels. My dad has the Super 8 film to prove it. That was the beginning and the end of any athletic prowess on my part.
3. My family has deep roots in the USA. My brothers and I are 13th generation American, and most of my family followed manifest destiny and went west long ago. I am the oddball on the East coast.
4. A creepy flasher lured my friend and me over to his car in a small town in Missouri in the summer of 1975, on the pretext of asking for directions. When we peered in the window, he pulled a jacket off his exposed self with a flourish and said “do you girls want some of this?” My friend and I were equally shocked, but only she had the aplomb to say “No, thank you.” Back then, we were not told to tell the police or our parents about such acts, so we did neither. In fact, we didn’t even know it was a crime. It was years before we told our mothers what had happened.
5. My first airplane flight was with my dad piloting a small plane over Kansas, when I was 5. My first commercial flight was when I was in high school, flying alone to California.
6. I was flying to see my cousin in LA. She still remembers my thrill at seeing palm trees for the first time.
7. I believe it’s more important to run deep than wide. I have some friends from college and early work days, my Baby Doc Duvalier group, Friends For Life. I have one newish friend whom I met online and have seen in real life once, but we email constantly and are bosom buddies, like Anne of Green Gables and Diana. And very recently, I’ve reconnected with my most important friend from childhood. We went our separate ways halfway through high school. She and I are catching up on the last 30 odd years, and it is a joy. For some reason, most (not all) of my close friends were born from November to March, and many (not all) have names beginning with L or C. Lindsay, Linda, Leslie, Lisa, Laura, Laurie, Leonard, eLizabeth, Liz, Louesa, Carol, Caroline. It’s like an edited collection.
8. The story of Truman Capote and Harper Lee and how they led their lives is fascinating to me.
9. I was a right wing Republican as a child. I voted for Reagan. At the age of 42, I switched my registration to Democrat and promptly lost a hugely lucrative county contract. That was a bitter lesson. Of course, that wasn’t the official reason, but my own personal Deep Throat later whispered the truth to me. We were even standing near a parking garage at the time.
10. I believe that small liberal arts colleges offer students amazing experiences they could not get at a giant school, like having dinner with Eudora Welty at a professor’s house. But the out of control tuition costs, price fixing and price gouging are nothing short of criminal. Parents should have revolted long ago.
