Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Seven Facts About Me, Part 1

OK, Feather Nester asked me to do this, so I'll let you all know seven facts about me (hence the title) that I think you might be interested in.

1. As my friends and family know, I have a bizarrely accurate memory for birthdays, movie quotes, song lyrics, and random actors. The song part has gone down as of late because I listen to current music mainly so I know what my students should not sing in class. However, if you ask me who that guy was in that movie with Michael Caine, I'll probably know who it is. DH is also strangely good at this game with movies--he can recognize faces like that. I can quote entire chunks of certain movies, as Greenlight and others will attest. My sister M. once called me from a bar to ask me an actor's name and won a bet as a result. Unfortunately, that memory prowess does not extend to bills, dates when grades are due, or where I put my glasses. I've begun to work on this: I tend to remember things that are important to me, so I need to work on making those other things more important. Suggestions welcome.

2. My left eye does not actually move to the left. I have something called Duane Syndrome, a rare congenital defect that basically means my eyes are miswired and my left eye muscles never had a chance to develop. It used to be slightly crossed in, but I had surgery at age 2 to help with this and I've worn glasses since then. As a result my right eye is my "seein' eye" and I use the left only for peripheral vision, which I have very little of. Thus when I drive, I have a gigantic blind spot and have to crane my head around before I switch into the left lane. It also makes me look cross-eyed if I cut my eyes to the left. I cannot do any of those Magic Eye puzzles because my eyes do not work in tandem. Oh, well, no magic eyes for me.

3. When I'm alone, if it's there, I will eat elbow macaroni with my fingers. The macaroni can be hot or cold.

4. Few things get me angrier than bullying of any kind. I think I've written about this before, about the time I screamed at this huge football player friend of ours in college because he made Feather Nester cry, making fun of her for failing a class. It's one act I will absolutely not tolerate in the classroom in any form; my students know this. I don't scream then--instead I go into a cold rage and get very stern, the temperature drops about five degrees, and I radiate anger until I'm almost shaking. I know this happens because the entire feeling in the room changes and my students get quiet. A professor of mine once said, "If you are intelligent and you use that intelligence to make someone slower than you feel inferior, you are the ignorant person." I could not agree more. Ditto for any kind of using of superiority to make someone feel inferior. Don't do it in front of me.

I have to run, so I'll do the rest later.

2 comments:

Princess Powerless said...

Guten Tag, die Frau!

I was browsing around and I found you via our mutual love of A Prayer for Owen Meany.

Like you, I remember pop culture stuff pretty easily. My father-in-law and I are an unstoppable Trivial Pursuit team -- I've got the Entertainment questions, he's got everything else.

I also HATE bullying! I was bullied a lot as a kid. This led me to my deepest pet peeve: Embarrassing me (or someone else) in public. I once stood in a huge line at an electronics store just to get to the front of the line and yell at the store's manager, who had berated the cashier in front of the entire store. I put down my merchandise and said, "I will never patronize this store again because you lack managerial skills. You should immediately apologize to your employee."

It felt so good - a small blow for the bullied.

I look forward to reading more of your blog. :-) PP

die Frau said...

Comment from my dad. I have no memory of this conversation, but I'm glad it happened:


With reference to #4, you have evidently forgotten that when you were quite young, in either 2nd or 3rd grade, your Father had a discussion with you about kids/people picking on others. I ”told’ you the following: if, for example, you were in the lunch room and the kids were picking on another kid that you must do one of two things. Either speak up and say that you did not agree and that what they were doing was wrong, or you had to leave because to sit there silently was a way of consenting to their mean conduct. You looked at me and determinedly said that that is what you would do. Several times after we had this discussion, I asked you how school was and you responded that once you had spoken up in defense of the person being bullied and the bully stopped and once after that you left the table abruptly—I think in tears of anger—and your leaving caused the bullying to end. I was then, and am now, very proud of those actions.