Time for New Odd Facts

I attract spiders.

I haven’t put up a Christmas tree—other than Tom’s little Target tree, which we never take down, it stays up year-round—in 10 years.

I want an El Camino.

I am afraid of ocean liners.

I can’t spell, I have no sense of direction, I am a hyperventilating cook, yet I have lived for over fifty years.

All my life, I’ve preferred professional football to college ball.

I don’t like chestnuts, open fire or not.

I fell so in love with the bug child in Pogo that, in the fifth grade, I cut out a pattern and sewed that little bug into life, a little stuffed bug child I made myself. Then I taught the bug child in school using chalk and a chalkboard. I don’t remember our course of study.

I have 41 (or maybe 44, Mother’s not sure) second cousins, not a one of whom I know.

I went to England on a quest for King Arthur: Tintagel, Camelot, Glastonbury Tor, the field where Mordred was killed. I have been to King Arthur sites no one in England has ever heard of.

I have an uncanny ability to recognize faces.

I have an inherited ability to recall things orally recited. By which I mean, like my blind relative who would listen to an associate read a draft letter and say, “Go back seven sentences and read that paragraph that begins with ‘Pursuant to your request’,” I can remember exactly what was said at any given time. Except I’m not blind.

I’m not telling you any more of my uncanny abilities.

I learned to water ski at 6 years of age. This is a personal embarrassment to me. I was supposed to learn at age 5, but I had my tonsils out and had to wait a year. Just embarrassing.

I have lived through 3 hurricanes, in place, with the walls rattling.

I have lived in every Deep South state except South Carolina. I do not like South Carolina. I like Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Florida (kind of), Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia. Not South Carolina.

I am a cradle Episcopalian. My daddy was an Episcopalian. His daddy was an Episcopalian. Before that, they didn’t have religion.

I was once the adoptive mother of a hedgehog. Reggie. Reggie the hedgehog. He died during my adoptive period. He was 13, he was REALLY old. But still it upsets me.

In honor of Reggie, I’m signing off.

here’s to creative synthesis . . .