Things You Can't Tell Just By Looking At Her

Because my favorite British redhead-cum-superheroine said that she would hose me down with breastmilk if I didn’t do this meme…

Herewith, six weird things about me:

1. I don’t drive. I could if I wanted to – that is, if I overcame my fear of operating heavy machinery, learned to drive, and acquired a license – but I don’t. The only problem is this: it’s hard to be a soccer mom on a bicycle. So I will either need to keep WonderBaby out of soccer, or learn to drive, someday.

2. I am claustrophobic. I think. I have never actually been in a tightly enclosed space, but I once saw a documentary about spelunking that made me hyperventilate.

3. I have spider-monkey toes. I could roll cigarettes with them, if I were a smoker, and the type of smoker who rolled her own tobacco, which I’m not, but still. I could, if I wanted to.

4. I was once held against my will on a Greek island. (I’ve already told this story, I know, but it is by far the weirdest Thing That You Don’t Know About Me and only six of you were reading this blog when I first told it, so I offer it again.)

5. I’m 99.9% certain that I once saw the Sasquatch. My family was camping in the area of Harrison Lake, and my sister and I were exploring around our campsite when we heard a crashing sound and looked up to see a dark, hairy, humanoid figure crashing through trees, running away from us. As a grown woman, I now realize that it might just have been a really big, hairy, naked hippie, startled out of a sylvan reverie by what no doubt appeared, through a potty haze, to be two small, hostile hamadryads. But I think that the Sasquatch story is better, so I’m sticking with it.

6. I once appeared in a music video for a Spanish heavy metal band. And a TV commercial for a chain of hair salons in Spain. And a training video for that same chain of hair salons. And a promotional video for a nightclub on the northeast coast of Spain. Which is to say that I would have been this close to being Penelope Cruz, were it not for the following indisputable facts: a) I am not a dark-eyed, ebony-haired Spanish beauty (I am, instead, a blue-eyed, fair-haired Canadian of middling attractiveness), b) I have never dated Tom Cruise, and b) Spanish heavy metal videos and chain-salon commercials are not the same as Almodovar movies.

7. I once stuck the suction-cup end of a cat toy to my forehead in an effort to amuse an ungrateful Siamese cat and ended up with a dollar-coin-sized hickey-like mark on said forehead that I could not cover up with makeup. That same year, I shot myself in the forehead (the very same forehead) with a champagne cork. My forehead has seen a lot of action. Which is why I’ve always worn bangs.

8. I’m bad at math.

I hereby smack, on the forehead, with the tag stick: Mimi, Mama Tulip, Mommy-Like Days, Karen and (I know I know I know that this is wishful thinking to the nth degree, but Joy tagged the notoriously meme-shy Mom-101 and so the bar has been raised) Amalah.

Tell you what, if everybody that I've tagged does this meme, I will adopt the doll pictured below, currently languishing in the suburban wastelands of Toronto while her owner tries to pawn her off on Craigslist ("this is a one-eyed doll and it is free 4 u"):

Save Hawaiian Cyclops Doll

If anyone else has a hankering to share their deepest, darkest, weirdest secrets while contributing to a doll rescue mission, consider yourself tagged. Let me know if you decide to help out.