More random tidbits (Part II)

• By the way, my dad found the porn searches in the internet history, so clearly, the guilty brother wasn't the brightest sometimes. I think some sh-- might have hit the fan that night.


• Being an immigrant, one might expect that I have strong opinions about hot buttons issues such as affirmative action and illegal alients. And as a matter of fact, I do. Against both. My parents came here, worked hard, learned English, and built lives for themselves. . . legally. I have no patience for people who can't. Or for people that come and never bother to learn English.


• The first time I changed a diaper, I was 9 years old. It was my baby brother's. The first time I changed a poopy diaper I was maybe 9 and a half? And I would have left it except that my parents stepped out for a few minutes (i.e. hours, it turned out) and the diaper started to stink and then the poop started to leak, so pretty much I had no option but to figure out how to change it and clean him up.


• My writing career peaked in the 12th grade when I won an award for Creative Writing. The prize was $100, and I think I submitted a collection of one short story and two poems. I have no idea where any of that stuff ended up, which is unfortunate. If I had known that those pieces would be the only thing that drew any attention, I would have held onto them like a kangaroo mom holds her kid (um, ok, I was hoping some funny analogy would strike me; instead I ended up with something that might not even be accurate - sorry). For a while, I could continue to call myself a "writer." I took writing classes in and after college, belonged to a somewhat elite writer's group, and acted generally snotty about my writing abilities. I even (unsuccessfully) applied to an exclusive writing fellowship at Stanford where they pay you to do nothing but write and try to publish for two years. These days, I don't write much of anything aside from legal opinions and this blog. But I'm strongly convinced that I will write the great American novel yet; its sitting inside me and will one day write itself. Absolutely positive of it.


• In the 9th grade, my girl friends and I were at the school auditorium, casually having lunch and arm wrestling each other (there's a couple of things you never thought you'd hear in one sentence, right?) one afternoon, when all of a sudden, we heard a loud snap coming from my upper arm just as my friend was forcing it down. I don't remember a ton after that, except for a lot of chaos, a frantic trip to the nurse's office, some one calling my mom, and her rushing me to the emergency room. In the end, it turned out that I didn't just have a fracture (and it wasn't because my friend was Arnold Schwarzenegger as some hilarious people would try to ask me over the next few weeks). I had a cyst in my arm, a little area where instead of bone, I had no fluid. So the arm had been weak to begin with, and that's why it fractured. Apparently its something old people get. Awesome. They put a cast on my arm and waited for it to heal, then had to go in and inject something that would help the bone grow back. I must have had an x-ray every 4-6 weeks for the remainder of high school and 3 different procedures where they drilled a hole in my arm and injected some fluid (cuz it didn't all grow back on the first shot). My orthodpedist and I became excellent friends.


• My very first car accident was when I was 19, home for the summer from college, and taking a class at the local university. I ran into a biker with my parents' car. It was completely my fault. I spaced while sitting at a traffic light and just slowly mosied up to hit him as he was crossing . Later, as I was walking into my class, I saw the guy I had run into walking into the building next door, telling his friend the story of how some crazy chick ran into him. His name was Jon and he won my heart when several days later, he called to tell me about the damage to his bike and told my mom (who answered the phone) that he was just some one in my class (you know, as opposed to the guy her daughter had hit with her car). Since then, I have been in multiple accidents, some of which have been my fault (including one in Thailand) and some which definitely have not.


• If you noticed that I never said anything about my middle school years anywhere up there, its not a mistake. Frankly, I'd like to pretend my middle school years didn't really exist as they were mostly awkward ones where only the thickness/ridiculousness of my glasses and the atrociousness of my braces/head gear really stand out. Let's move on, shall we?


• Taking my role as big sister seriously didn't stop me from cheating at cards when my brothers weren't looking or blackmailing them with things they had done that only I knew about. What kind of person would I be if I didn't seize a good opportunity when it came my way? The older of my two brothers was particularly accommodating and made sure I always had something to hold over his head.


• As a kid, and actually pretty much until the end of high school, my favorite past time was reading. If anyone is a living example of how reading under the covers with a flashlight can blind you, I'd be it. And I must have gone through every kick imaginable -- a mystery frenzy (starting with the Nancy Drews to Sherlock Holmes to pretty much whatever else came out as I got older), a girly romance phase (hey, don't knock 'em til you tried them), a fantasy flurry. You name it, I was probably into it for at least a little while. Nowadays, I've settled down with the reading, slowly working my way down to a more comfortable level of about a book or so a year.


• When we were young, my brother C and I would create schedules (hour by hour, of course) for ourselves to keep ourselves busy during the summers. I wish I'd kept some for the laughs. Not too surprisingly, I think the majority of each day was usually scheduled as "free time" or "play time" or possibly "tv time." I imagine it was quite difficult for us to squeeze anyone or anything into our busy days -- we were booked pretty solid for 3 months.

Next up: hairy travel stories, or how I came back from South America with a bug in my arm