tagged

Leila has tagged me with a meme, my first time too. Gosh, I feel a little nervous and want to see what the others wrote. I know some of them. In fact one of them is an old and dear friend, and it's so delightful that she and Leila have hooked up. I believe I can take credit on this blog. My own little internet experience. As is this meme.

So seven random and/or weird facts about myself.

1. I can do the whistle riff in "Me and Julio Down By the School Yard" and can almost do the tin whistle riff in "You Can Call Me Al".

I got stuck here and tried to cheat by checking the other taggees, but no one had posted their meme yet.

2. I once spent two weeks in a village on the island of Borneo with no toilets. No one would really share with me the particulars of how one managed. I brought a small trowel with me, but never saw anybody else heading out in the bush similarly armed. I think the reason was that digging in the forrest disturbs the wildlife, as I found out when I got bitten by ants and scared away a snake. Just as I was leaving, the toilets for the village arrived.

I checked I love a kiwi, who tagged Leila. We have some things in common (like whistling) but I'm only allowing myself one copycat item.

3. In highschool I played Helen in The Miracle Worker and had to use the sign alphabet. I used to practice by spelling along to conversations etc and it became a habit. I wonder what people think if they notice my hand at my side twitching into funny positions during a conversation or while I'm walking down the street.

4. When I've really liked an author I read their entire opus, or at least everything I can get ahold of. I've done this with Louisa May Alcott, Madeline L'Engle, Lloyd Alexander, John Holt, Penelope Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, and more recently Tracy Hogg.

Though I was aspiring to weird, I think I can only make random.

5. When we first moved from Liberia to California I was eight and I struggled so hard to make sense of everything. Once I was listening on the car radio to a sad love song and convinced myself the the radio static was the sound of the lovelorn singer blowing his nose while crying. I told this story to Leila once and she gave me look of shocked recognition because she'd experienced something similar (as she mentioned recently on her blog).

6. The first time I got the wind knocked out of me it was falling out of a guava tree. I don't really like guavas.

7. I have eaten (with apologies to vegetarian friends, and, I suppose, to the victims themselves) snail, termites, whale meat (fresh and fermented)and blubber, and fermented seal meat.

Now I tag seven other bloggers (though I'm not sure I have enough readers who are currently blogging to do this). I may have to some of them in person "I don't know if you checked my blog recently, I mean, not that I expect you to or anything, but I tagged you." A little bit of a backwards twist on the internet experience, but a nice one.

And now I tag: Sevda, my cousin Anna in Slovenia, Tahmina, Menchie, Sarah, Lindsay who is on a cruiseand Pipfugl in Denmark

I think moms should be allowed to include random and/or weird facts about their little ones if they like.