Seven weird things.

Semi-Desperate Housewife tagged me for the Seven Weird Things meme.

This should be easy, thought I, after all I'm pretty weird. But then I realized that the truly weird things about most of us are the things that WE think are NORMAL and other people think are weird. So I've searched my memory banks for what seems totally normal to me but has struck others as odd.

The rules are as follows:
# Link to the person who tagged you
# Post the rules on your blog.
# Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
# Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
# Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged.

As a relative blogging newbie, I've never done a meme before so I feel no shame in breaking the rule that says I have to tag 7 others. Not that I wasn't psyched to be tagged, but I get a Nervous Tummy (tm) whenever I think about trying to tag 7 other bloggers. So if you are reading this and have a blog, consider yourself tagged, okay?

Now, onto the weirdness!

1. Often when I get scared or nervous, I hum the ending theme song to "Little House on the Prairie". You know, where a pigtailed Laura Ingalls is running down the golden hillside? It's the happiest, sunniest image and it works every time.

2. I have very little memory of my early childhood, including important events and family trips. However, I remember pretty much every dance I've ever had to learn (since I started performing when I was 8ish and stopped at 33, trust me when I tell you that that's A LOT). And I know pretty much all the lyrics to 20 year old songs by Richard Marx, the Bangles, and the Go-Gos. (Yes, I know how OLD I am.)

3. The year after college, I ran a small B&B in rural Maine. During the long, LONG winter months, I spent several days trying to make myself ambidextrous by tying my right arm to my side and doing everything with my left arm, including opening doors, flipping pancakes, changing beds, sweeping floors etc.. When this proved too difficult, I untied my right arm and taped my right fingers and thumb together to make a fairly useless flipper. This was more reasonable but a few guests did wander into the kitchen to find me cursing, kneading some seriously lumpy bread dough with my fairly useless left hand and my equally useless right flipper.

4. When I was a modern dancer, I liked to wear a leotard and loose pants. To keep the loose pants from flapping around at the crotch and hindering my hip extension, I would hike up my pants as high as possible- creating bunched up creases of fabric at my crotch- and roll down the waistband to a reasonable level. One word: FLATTERING. I think it's fair to say this was commonly done by my fellow dancers. Except, I wore my pants like that EVERYWHERE. My roommates at the time took to stopping me before I left the house and pulling my pants down a good couple of inches.

5. My tongue is very large. I can touch it to my nose, I can fold it in half (and have it stay there), I can roll it into a tube (and have it stay there), I can flip it over (and, YOU GUESSED IT, have it stay there). I thought briefly about posting pictures but, really, it's grotesque. Have you ever seen the underside of your tongue? Ewwwww.

6. While we're on the topic of strange body parts, I have a very, VERY squishy nose. There seems to be no cartilage in my nose so when you push it to the side, it's, well, it's VERY pushed to the side. Again, I thought about posting pictures of The Nose (in addition to my tongue, it is my stupid party trick), but realized it would probably gross you all out too much.

7. I once performed in a piece called "Bat Tales" which included a little number where I danced, dressed as a bat, to the song "Tequila!" only I had to cry out "Mosquito!" over the chorus and then pretend to eat a large, stuffed mosquito that dropped from the ceiling.

Hey man, it was a paying gig, you know?