100 Things About Me

The 100 things project has been going on for quite some time. Basically the rules stipulate that you list 100 things about yourself in what ends up being a sort of stream of conscious testimonial. It’s a variation on those e-mail surveys we've all sent around to get to know something surprising about our friends. Here’s 100 things about me, I’d love to hear 100 things about you.

1. I live in San Francisco at the moment.
2. It's not all that.
3. Before that I lived in Chicago for 12 years.
4. I grew up in Indiana next to the largest Amish community outside of Pennsylvania.
5. I have great respect and admiration for the Amish, although my brother has issues with the Beardies and Mr. No Buttons.
6. Just because they're called Dutch Amish doesn't mean their Dutch, it was "Deutsch", as in German, like the rest of northeast Indiana and all of Ohio. Please, I've been to the Netherlands, they can't make apple pie like that.
7. My father still thinks it's hilariously funny that I was "dishonorably discharged" from gymnastics class at the age of seven for a hopeless lack of coordination.
8. Jesus, how bad could I have been? I was seven.
9. When my brother was four he threw up on my hair during a car trip through Ohio.
10. We were a half hour drive from anywhere resembling a rest stop.
11. I nearly bled to death from a cut on my butt while on a camping trip in the Shenandoah Mountains when I was nine years old.
12. It was my own fault.
13. The two worst things about the experience was the redneck emergency room filled with victims of mule kicks and slammed big-rig doors and the suspension from swimming for two months that summer until I had my stitches out.
14. I was forced to go on fewer camping trips after that.
15. In the past I have convinced my brother both that he'd been adopted and that my parents fully intended to send him to military school.
16. I told him that if he asked my mother about either she'd deny it as not to alarm him or make him feel bad.
17. I once bit a girl on the playground because she said she'd bite me first.
18. Actions speak louder than words.
19. During the mid's I was NOT actually a member of a cutthroat roller derby team in Indiana.
20. Nor was my mother.
21. Our team did not have white satin jackets with rainbow patches.
22. I once won a blue ribbon in my grade school science fair by creating a model of the human circulatory systems out of poster board, markers, aquarium tubing, red & blue food coloring, distilled water and the pump from the pool & hot tub accessory that came with my Barbie Dream House.

23. My victory was never repeated.
24. My mother doesn't cook.
25. I mean she has cooked, twice in fact, both times resulted in food poisonings.
26. My brother is allergic to everything except maybe water and brown rice on a good day. And sometimes carrots I think.
27. I lost two permant front teeth in the third grade playing grab-ass near a gigantic concrete piece of rust colored Swiss cheese.
28. If I laugh too wide you can see the titanium backing and post that hold my teeth to my jaw.
29. I'm surprised at how useful knowledge and experience gained through slumber parties has become throughout my life.
30. When I was ten years old my Girl Scout troop was excommunicated from the organization following a sleep away camp incident in which my mother, the troop leader, decided that making glittery paper bag puppets and singing songs about friendship by the campfire was stupid and let us sneak off to have a midnight hike through the woods and freak each other out with ghost stories instead.

31. If the Girl Scout elders had known about the TPing incident the previous month in which the whole troop had to crouch on the floor of the wood-paneled station wagon while she evaded the cops at 1 a.m. that decision may have been a little sooner in the making.

32. Because my parents believed in neither movie or television exposure for children I was 22 yrs old before I saw The Exorcist.
33. It wasn't all that scary.
34. My brother has lived up to the adage "it's only fun until someone loses an eye" during a gym class dodge ball session when he was fifteen years old.

35. He now has a plastic ring permanently affixed around his eyeball to hold it securely in its socket.
36. He can see just fine.
37. In fifth grade I contracted both mononucleosis and chicken pox in the course of one month.
38. The pox on my skin freaked me so badly I had to be sedated.
39. During my stay at home my Grandmother taught me how to crochet.
40. It was pretty much the only activity in which I could safely participate with an enlarged and tender spleen.
41. During the 70's through the late 80's my mother had a hair style that can only be described as a blond 'fro.
42. I reached my adult height at the age of fifteen.
43. Between the ages of seventeen and twenty I totaled four cars.
44. After the last accident I didn't drive a car again for seven years.
45. Much like the Chris & Terrys of this world, my girl name is sometimes mistaken for a boy name.
46. I once lived on an all male floor of a dorm because of this.
47. Believe me, it was far preferable to the all girl floors.
48. During that year there was a screenplay written using my name without my knowledge.
49. It was pretty racy.
50. My identity was cleverly disguised by changing the first letter of my last name to a T.
51. Twelve years later people still refer to my alter ego Taus.
52. Including e-mail nicknames.
53. I've only met one male Lynn under the age of 50.
54. I didn't hear the Grateful Dead or Led Zeppelin until I was in College.

55. I wasn't missing out on much.
56. I was caught watching a VH1 Rockumentary once in 1993 and now every gift-giving occasion for the rest of my life seems to involve Ozzy Osbourne.
57. I've watched enough Aaron Spelling productions to know that the P3 nightclub on "Charmed" is most likely either Peach Pit to the third power for Peach Pit III.
58. I have never thought of Jodi the same way after the canned ham incident.
59. I'm not the real Lynn Graham.
60. There have only been two Halloweens in which my character hasn't been evil, once when I was eight and once when I was twenty-three.
61. I don't much care for Christmas as a holiday.
62. I have had near death experiences twice.
63. Both times I thought exactly the same thing.
64. "So this is it, huh?"
65. I am very, very ticklish.
66. I have a friend who lived in a genuine haunted house for most of his life.
67. I have a friend who's slept in a bunk bed with his twin brother until he as twenty-six years old.
68. It's the same friend.
69. He has the best stories I've ever heard.
70. I can make myself laugh out loud sometimes if I think about either "Steak Man" or "naked Payday".
71. My favorite color is celadon green, not mint, not sea foam - celadon.
72. In years 1997 and 1998 I was a member of a predominately gay football league named after a homoerotic clothing catalog.
73. The league included tailgate parties and a homecoming.
74. I've had a crush on David Bowie since I was twelve.
75. That guy just keeps getting better.
76. I, at one time in my life, held a green belt in Karate and while I could still probably snap a man like a twig with my bare hands it might take a little longer now.
77. I have driven cross-county twice in the last six years.
78. Neither trip contained open-road-romance nor enlightenment.
79. My eyes are not blue with flecks of antique gold.
80. I think cuttlefish are pretty amazing.
81. You may have gone to Stanford but you can't coordinate your chromatophores to create patterns can you?
82. I think sharks and giant squid are only slightly cooler than cuttlefish.
83. Maybe because sharks have the advantage of Shark Week.
84. Not surprisingly my favorite movie is Jaws.
85. I like scotch better than whiskey but rye much more than bourbon.
86. But let's be honest, I'm not turning any of those down.
87. I would love to have a dog, instead I have three cats.
88. I'm engaged to marry someone who is a full fourteen inches taller than I am.
89. It makes for hilarious pictures.
90. I have a black thumb, I can't keep a plant alive even in California.
91. I do NOT enjoy eating the cow or pig, or especially the goat.
92. I would eat sushi everyday if I could afford it.
93. I lose all respect for grammar, punctuation and spelling when I'm in a hurry.
94. I wouldn't exactly call myself patient.
95. I know all clowns are evil.
96. I've read everything by Haruki Murakami, except his non-fiction work "Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche" and "After the Quake" twice.
97. I've seen every film by Wim Wenders including "Alice in the Cities".
98. I'm terrible at returning friend's phone calls.
99. Since moving to California my apartment contains only two pieces of non-IKEA furniture.
100. I'm not proud of that.