Nine things about me that are true and one that isn't:

1. I've been run over by a car with no driver. True. One November morning during my fourth grade year, as my mom was preparing to drive me to school, she got out of the running car to scrape ice off the windshield. The chronically-broken emergency brake failed in that moment, and my mom's car started rolling down the driveway with me in it. I panicked, jumped out, and got knocked over by the car door. A tire rolled over my ankle and the car ran into a telephone pole. I got off with minor injuries, unlike my mom's car.

2. I still have two baby teeth. True. For some reason there were no permanent teeth behind two of my baby teeth to knock them out, so I've still got them, though I'm not sure which ones they are. My brother got the same genes.

3. I acquired a Romanian Communist uniform on a trip to Transylvania. True. In July 1993, I went on a trip to Romania, to the region of Transylvania. A girl I was with got mugged (a woman was actually able to unzip my friend's money belt and snag $50 before she was noticed). The woman took off and passed the money off to someone else before she was caught. The police weren't able to get the money back, so instead they gave us some available merchandise, among which there was an old Communist uniform. I got to keep that for waiting at the police station so patiently. It actually fits quite well.

4. I alphabetize my CDs. True. I'm neurotic about a few things, and this is one of them. I'm oddly sloppy and organized at the same time.

5. I played Wipe Out on bass guitar in my eighth grade talent show. True. I'd gotten a bass guitar a few months before the talent show (because I wanted one, not on account of the talent show) and found myself part of a one-time band, I think based on the qualification that I owned an instrument. We didn't practice much before the show, and, in fact, I didn't learn Wipe Out until I was backstage. To take some pressure off, I convinced myself no one could hear the bass anyway.

6. John Gotti sent me a two-page handwritten letter in response to a letter I'd written him. True. My senior year in college I wrote a paper about John Gotti's relationship to the media...it was one of these strange assignments that encourage you to come up with topics you'd never naturally think of. Anyway, I wrote John Gotti (who was already in prison by that time) to see what his take on the issue was. (In doing so, I found out that you cannot send inmates in that prison plant shavings or body hair. Not because I tried, I assure you.) I was really surprised to get a letter back from him, though it came after I'd already turned in the paper.

7. I've never had a cavity. True. This is heredity's favor to me, maybe to make up for the baby teeth. I don't take especially good care of my teeth, but for some reason that doesn't seem to matter. I've only been to the dentist to have them cleaned, and I only go every three years or so. I'm just waiting for something really bad to happen to them.

8. I once had a pet tarantula. False. I have an irrational fear of spiders, so this will not happen.

9. Five of my close relatives are preachers. True. Yes, five. Four uncles and one father, not all on the same side of the family.

10. I've never shoplifted. True. Why is it so many people guessed this to the be false one? :) For some reason, of all the fun-wrong things to do, this one never appealed to me.

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