The disease that is Internet Memes hit me. After getting 'tagged' by a number of Facebook friends to write 25 interesting things about myself, I submitted and came up with the following list.
This post gets reproduced on Facebook, and I'm not tagging people there to force them to write their own lists, but rather people who I think might find this list interesting.
1. Most of my life’s major decisions have been influenced by video games. Those decisions include the following: to go to school at UT, to major in Japanese, to move to Japan, my line of work upon getting back from Japan, and pretty much every social engagement I chose to join all the way through high school.
2. I played a whooooooole lot outside as a child – I still have huge thighs from biking around my hilly neighborhood – and yet in high school I decided I was an indoor type. Now I’m trying to get outside more.
3. I’ve had damn near perfect health my whole life. Except for getting my tonsils removed, I’ve never been to the hospital, broken a bone, gotten braces, worn glasses or contacts, or had any debilitating diseases. My vision is finally starting to go, though.
4. I’m generally more comfortable around girls than guys. I have plenty of dude friends, don’t get me wrong, but when I roll in to somewhere from out of town I usually call twice as many girls to say I’ve shown up. I think this comes from being completely sheltered from them all through grade school. By the time I got out, girls were this fascinating thing that I just had to explore – not in a dirty way – and I’ve never once felt like I’ve made up for all that time I lost. I think it’s the reason I want a daughter.
5. Why was I so sheltered? Small private school. There’s no escape from anyone, you can’t have any secrets, and you can’t trust anyone in such a tight, gossipy environment. As a result I’m very good at coming up with complicated cover stories for things I don’t want people to know about.
6. I always have someone figured out within a minute of meeting them, and I get all my cues from what’s said rather than what I see. This comes from talking to so many anonymous people on the Internet.
7. I’m a minor hypochondriac, and I think I know why – it goes back to the ‘perfect health’ thing. Soon as something goes wrong I assume it’s the worst possible thing, one of those horrible things that nobody could have ever seen coming. I’m getting better about it, thankfully.
8. All of my “what I want to be when I grow up” jobs involved being the center of attention: weatherman, stand-up comedian, radio DJ, actor.
9. I don’t want to see that new superhero movie with you. I’m not bothered.
10. Nor do I really like movies in general, though I’m starting to branch out into more foreign movies that I really, really love.
11. I made the mistake of taking interests in things that ex-girlfriends turned me on to, even after really bad breakups. Some were for the worse (law school), and some for the better (hip-hop music, Korean).
12. I hide it well, but I have expensive tastes. If I had the cash, I’d dress in all things Banana Republic and Kenneth Cole and eat at snazzy restaurants every day.
13. I was hopelessly in love with my Japanese TA and was genuinely broken-hearted when she came into class with a ring on her finger. Ever since, I’ve checked women for the ring.
14. I trained in some form of martial arts all the way from age 5 to graduating from high school. A few kids at school threatened to start fights, and after staring me down for a while in silence, always backed down.
15. I was a huuuuuuge science dork as a kid. I danced to the Bill Nye theme song.
16. I also memorized the “Countries of the World” song from Animaniacs.
17. I was a major choir boy in high school. I sing baritone, by the way.
18. I was 18 and went to South Padre with a couple friends from school. We had an older woman buy us some Coronas in exchange for a lift back to her apartment. Turned out she was the alcohol / drug counselor for the local school district, or so she said.
19. I just plain can’t stand Vietnamese food. Sorry, Vietnamese buddies. It’s not you, it’s your people’s food.
20. I take the beach over the mountains. The endlessness of the ocean is really calming for me.
21. I’m pretty jittery about flying, and yet I feel the most alive when I’m traveling. It feels like I can focus on the things that matter the most, maybe because my time in one particular place becomes really scarce and valuable.
22. The first time I tried sushi was stressful as hell. I was eating scary, squishy, fishy things left and right all for this girl I was head over heels for. Now I’m the biggest sushi eater I know.
23. My main man Eric is someone I’ve known since I was 4, and throughout grade school I dissed him, avoided him, and picked on him. But amazingly, he’s still around. This isn’t about me, but Eric’s a bang-up guy.
24. I am a freaking Michelin-star chef with a George Foreman grill.
25. I hate those girls who scream a lot when they’re drunk.
