Skip to content

8 Random Things Meme

I’ve been tagged several times for this meme, but had to set it aside while I met some writing deadlines. I am amused by the misleading subject; after all, eight truly random things about anyone would either bore or horrify you (or likely, both). So my “random things” are really eight things I’d like to share with you, carefully trawled from my life’s lagoons.

  1. I’m available for hire!
  1. When I was very young (and a precocious reader, like most of you), I read The Last of the Mohicans and thought there was something wrong with me because I didn’t like it. Then I read James Thurber’s critique of James Fenimore Cooper. That was my first critical-reading “ah hah.”
  1. I go for salt over sugar most times, and I’m ecumenical—junk food as well as haute cuisine—but cheese and fish make me wild with joy, and I adore oysters, raw and cooked. If I knew the nuclear missiles were headed to Tallahassee, I’d run out for blue cheese (especially Point Reyes), salt-and-vinegar potato chips, Tater Tots, sharp crumbly cheddar, Nathan’s hot dog nuggets, brie with tart, dense sourdough French bread, smoked oysters, fresh oysters, deep-fried oysters, barbecued oysters, oyster stew, and oysters Rockefeller; and if I still had room before the mushroom cloud rose over the capitol, I’d tamp it all down with as much good caviar and Nova as I could afford, washed down by crisp, mouth-tingling capers by the spoonful.
  1. I am bad at languages and even after two years of college German and two years of living in Germany I had trouble with basic living functions, such as reading my bank statement. I didn’t know this was not uncommon until I read E.B. White.
  1. I was a Camp Fire Girl for several years. My mother still has my Bluebird vest with all the beads on it. I was a terrible sissy, though my troop leader, Mrs. Derrick, protected me from being tortured by the more sophisticated girls.
  1. I accidentally ended up in a riot at San Francisco City Hall in 1979, the night of Dan White’s verdict. My friend David got us out safely, but he was later beaten by the police in front of the Elephant Walk bar in the Castro. I put that story in my essay, “David, just as he was,” which will be published in the next issue of White Crane.
  1. Until last year, I thought “synecdoche” was pronounced “cynic-douche.” (I still have trouble with “ancillary,” which my brain is convinced should follow the same beat as “artillery.”)
  1. I love getting tagged for memes, and in general love invitations, even to functions I can’t attend.

Tag, you’re it!

Posted on this day, other years:

This was written by K.G. Schneider. Posted on Wednesday, June 6, 2007, at 5:57 am. Filed under This and That. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.