25 Random Things About Me–Judy’s List

#26--I love autumn colors

I below to a Facebook blogging group, The Circulation Desk, and we’ve been enjoying a group challenge where everyone writes “25 random things” that others might not know (started by artist Franziska San Pedro). I’m now joining in with my post and—true to me—I’ve probably squeezed extras into my 25.

1. My cat growing up was named Sheri (short for Sheherazade). I was so attached to her I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to have a cat again.
2. When my current cat, Fretta, showed up as a hungry, pregnant stray on our deck, my husband was the one who was determined to feed her. I was too afraid. I said, “Do you understand what this means?” Needless to say, she came back the next day. That was 15 years ago.
3. I didn’t learn how to swim until college. My instructor, Coach Boomer, taught me the key: how to exhale completely before taking another breath.
4. I gave my first lecture in sixth grade, when I kept an unruly class attentive as I talked about the mythology of Greek and Roman gods. It was a morning class. We did not know that at that very time, President Kennedy was being shot in Dallas.
5. I have two master’s degrees and a Ph.D. School has always been my psychological comfort zone! Is it any wonder I ended up teaching at universities for several decades?
6. I taught myself to type in 4^th grade after I found a small “How to Type” manual in my grandfather’s attic. I practiced all the traditional exercises – fff jjj ggg hhh – on my mother’s manual Smith-Corona, and I started typing up school assignments soon thereafter. From then on I typed a lot, and fast. In college the “e” key fell off my typewriter because of so much use.
7. One year I participated in a typing contest called “Blazing Fingers.” It was in support of multiple sclerosis. I made it to the semi-finals, typing 102 wpm (adjusted for 2 mistakes) on an early-model electric typewriter. I won a small calculator and earned the cause a modest amount of money from people who had pledged cents on the number of words typed.
8. If I have to choose, I’ll say Paris is the most beautiful city I’ve visited, and Florence is the most gratifying artistically.
9. One summer I worked in London as a temporary secretary at different offices. At one office I had the assignment of going to a store to buy cookies and biscuits for tea.
10. I can stand up in front of any size group and speak comfortably—and with pleasure—but I have horrible performance anxiety when it comes to music. I did o.k. hiding in the second violin section in junior high but was a disaster as an oboist (I played several instruments at different stages).
11. I grew up overweight at a time when there weren’t many fat kids. The annual school weigh-in remains a torturous memory of elementary school.
12. My best summer memories are of Camp Ridge Ho, a Girl Scout camp in upstate New York. I can still sing a lot of the camp songs.
13. I met my husband through a newspaper ad, before there were on-line ads. My ad ran one week, and that was the only week he looked at the ads. He wrote me a letter and sent it in the postal mail.
14. Acorns evoke a deep, pleasurable emotional connection to my childhood.
15. I loved – loved – studying Latin! (Learning any language is fun, but Latin is fantastic!)
16. My cat has kidney disease. Every other day I give her subcutaneous fluids by inserting a needle and letting fluid drip from an IV bag. This is expensive and time consuming, and she never says thank you.
17. Most likely I will die before we ever know what kind of intelligent life is out there in the vast universe. This has long been a source of disappointment for me.
18. One summer at camp some girls accused me of killing God. They then prayed very loudly for my soul. It wasn’t until they taunted me for being fat that I was really bothered.
19. I love a good snowstorm, even when it creates havoc.
20. I decided to stop drinking alcohol because it affected me so quickly and strongly. It was a one-time decision that required no particular effort. I decided to stop eating sugar and flour because it was making my life miserable and destroying me physically. It took me over 40 years.
21. I wash out used plastic bags and hang them on clips in my shower so I can reuse them.
22. My grandparents and my father were devoted Yankees fans. When the Yankees played in postseason, my father called me at the end of every game. I didn’t tell him I had become a Mariners fan and that the Mariners pretty well hated the Yankees (especially when A-Rod donned the pinstripes).
23.  I regret that I never told my sister how much I admired her for standing up for social justice.
24. I wasn’t particularly happy academically in high school, and I left after my junior year to go to college. I never completed the requirements for high school graduation. But the school couldn’t quite grasp that I was gone (I did tell them!) and they issued a diploma the next year anyway.
25. No matter how many times I read Little Women, I cry when Beth dies.

Questions for Reflection: How does this kind of list deepen or alter your understanding of someone? What goes on your list?

Writing Prompts: As I read a list like this, I realize ______” (then keep writing); “My list begins with ______” (then keep writing a full list!).

Tagged as: 25 random things, Franziska San Pedro, Judy Stone-Goldman, The Circulation Desk