7 Things I'm Willing To Share With Complete Strangers Because I'm A Blogger And I Have A Psychological Thing Where I Compulsively Overshare

So, my blog idol Una over at  The Sassy Curmudgeon gave me this lovely award the other day.

Now, in general, I really appreciate and love blog awards - because they are created by loving readers - but I also acknowledge that they're not, like, official awards. The only official ones I've gotten were the Blog of Note, which Blogger so gracefully gave to me in December, and, more recently, an award in the form of a link from The Washington Post. I mean there's no badge to go along with that one, but still, I felt like I won something because it's the fucking Washington Post. (Even though someone was really punkind and told me in my comments that my puns suck. Yeah, well, you fucking suck, fucker.)

So ANYWAY. I never really understand the point of the awards except that they make me feel good. Until Una gave me this one; this one actually comes with rules. You have to follow-up and actually write stuff: namely, 7 interesting things about yourself. I fail to see how I am in any way remotely "interesting," but I'm gonna do it anyway because, honestly, I've been hurting for material recently. So, I'm gonna scrounge through the depths of my existence and find 7 things that might generally be classified as pieces of interest. Just to set the tone, here's a freebie: for a period of time in the eighth grade, I classified Final Destination as my favorite. movie. ever. And saw it multiple times in theaters. We may now proceed.

1. When I was little I stepped on a snail in my driveway and it crunched under my shoe and I still feel a shit ton of guilt about it.
The worst part about it was that I did it just because I could. I was probably like 7 or 8 - because in my childhood memories, I'm always fucking 7 or 8 - and I distinctly remember walking up my parents' driveway and seeing this approximately monster-sized snail vaguely in the path of my feet. I thought to myself, Oooh that snail is really really big. I bet if I stepped on it, it would make a loud crunching sound and feel very satisfying under my foot. So I did. Then I felt really bad and started crying and ran upstairs to tell my mom what I did. She reassured me that it was OK, and told me not to step on any more snails. But still, to this very day, I feel so fucking guilty about it. I also can't deal with any form of animal cruelty. Like I have to cover my eyes when that Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commercial plays on the television, or I just completely leave the room. I'm sure all of this is somehow related.

2. I was madly in love with Justin Timberlake way before he became Justin Fucking Timberlake - back when he was in *NSYNC and had that tragic fro thing going on.
I have this bizarrely vivid memory of lying in my bed as a sixth grader, listening to Brian McKnight's Back At One - oh, you remember that shit - on my portable CD player and imagining that Justin was my boyfriend. I used to have fantasies about him kissing me on the *NSYNC tour bus. Mannnn I was so cool. And then in the 9th grade I actually saw *NSYNC live and in concert, and I was in the eighth fucking row. It was almost just as good as a tour bus kiss, LBO.

Christ, WTF Justin?

3. The very first thing I ever wrote was called "San Fransisco Kitty."
Also, it was a song. The very first memory I have of writing anything was writing a song dedicated to a cat who, for some unknowable reason, lived in San Fransisco. I think it even had a melody, though at 5 or 6 - branching out! - I obviously had no idea how to write music. All these things seem like an uncannily appropriate foreshadowing of my adult life, which is filled with music, gays and probably, at some unknown future time, lots and lots of cats. Sigh. Also, it's entirely possible that Schmom B. still has this original written manuscript stored away somewhere. I should ask her.


4. In high school I was really pretty trashy and owned lots of clothing emblazoned with the Playboy bunny insignia, including a visor, and I also had a belly button ring. 
I was on the dance team, and we performed with the marching band (I know, I just keep getting cooler) and my senior year our benevolent band director decided to let us all dress up for Halloween and perform the halftime show in our costumes. Naturally, I went as a Playboy bunny. I was told I had to cover my ass or I couldn't perform. Predictable, but prudeish. What the fuck, Alabama public school? I really wish I had a photo of this, but alas, this was before the days of Facebook, Twitter and digital photos in gen. So instead here is a photo of a vintage bunny, from back in the day when it was generally considered a badass occupation.

5. I once got called a compassionless cunt - oh yes, that's a direct quote - by someone I had never actually met via an online dating site.
True story. 'Nuff said.

6. I'm secretly a super sappy romantic, even though I may sometimes come across as cynical and suspicious of other people who are also super sappy romantics.
I also give the best gifts ever when I love someone. One of my exes told me at one point that he liked to collect little rocks from all the different places he visited, so I went around our hometown to all the places we had been - on our first date, our second date, his favorite bar, where we parked in cars, whatever - and gathered a few rocks from each location. I then bagged them all up individually in pretty little mini bags - which, PS, I crafted myself from mesh paper - and wrote a note for each one explaining where the rocks came from. There were probably like 10 bags in all. Hmmm. In retrospect, I sort of gave my boyfriend bags of coals for Christmas, but they were sweet bags of coal! Also in retrospect, he's a huge idiot for breaking up with me, and probs deserved actual coal.


7. I sometimes divide up the letters in text messages, IM conversations and tweets into multiples of 8, and count them as I type.
I like for things to be divided evenly into eights; I blame this on the fact that I've been a dancer since I was four, and in dance, things are typically divided up into 8-counts. Like 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8, then it starts over. Around middle school, I started counting in my head the letters I type in multiples of eight, starting over with each eight-count. I actively try to compose IM messages in even multiples of eight.  What?! I said sometimes, not all the time. Stop looking at me like that. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8.

In conclusion: I may or may not be interesting, but at the very least I am definitely a total fucking weirdo. Thanks for reminding me, Una.

Tagging a few others:

Blog Soulmate Hannah at My Soul Is A Butterfly
Successful Snarkist Jessie at 20-Nothings
Hilarious Hipster Lauren at Hipstercrite
Perfect Peter (Who also holds the distinct honor of being one of only two male bloggers I read regularly, and who also made me pick the word "perfect" to describe him here, even though I really wanted to use the word "picky") at PeterDeWolf.com