50 Things I’ve Done

The answers to the ear­li­er quiz are here 🙂 I lim­it­ed myself to things I could put in a pub­lic post, since that one was pub­lic, as well.

1. Spent a day busk­ing in a Parisian sub­way with a cute guy I met while there dur­ing spring break of my junior year in high school.
2. Been kicked out of a high school dance for “inap­pro­pri­ate behav­ior.” I was “dirty danc­ing” with sev­er­al part­ners at once, which was appar­ent­ly much worse than the way the cou­ples around us were dirty dancing.
3. Appeared as a guest on Oprah. I was also on 20/20 Down­town, .Net, a BBC spe­cial, Unsolved Mys­ter­ies, Hard Copy, the local chan­nel 2 news, some Swedish show, and a bunch of oth­ers. I’ve done inter­views for lots of print media, too.
4. Broke a bul­ly’s nose with my flute case in 6th grade. He’d been punch­ing me on the bus every day for a week, leav­ing bone-deep bruis­es, and I final­ly snapped. I hap­pened to have got­ten my flute that day. I nev­er had anoth­er phys­i­cal prob­lem with a bul­ly after that, as the fame fol­lowed me right through high school.
5. I’ve failed to learn to sew, knit, cro­chet, tie bows (the dec­o­ra­tive kind), play chess or pok­er, or do cart­wheels, despite hav­ing tried to do each of those things at some point in the past.
6. Been mar­ried (3 times).
7. Been divorced (also 3 times).
7, Was bap­tized three times before I decid­ed that it just was­n’t going to work for me.
8. Bit­ten my den­tist as a teen, draw­ing blood (he SAID it would­n’t hurt!), lead­ing him to file down my eye­teeth a bit.
9. Decid­ed after spend­ing hours try­ing to get a game typed in from a mag­a­zine to work on a TRS-80 that pro­gram­ming would nev­er be the right career for me (I think I was 11 or 12).
10. Was paid for flirt­ing (while set­ting appoint­ments for a dat­ing service).
11. Quit a job because I would­n’t sign finan­cial state­ments I could­n’t read (they were in Japanese).
12. Was a Nation­al Mer­it Scholar.
13. Have a con­cealed car­ry permit.
14. Lived in an RV for a month.
15. Was fired for tak­ing time off to deal with the death of my daugh­ter’s father.
16. Spent five years work­ing for a fun­da­men­tal­ist Chris­t­ian for­eign mis­sions board (longer than I’ve worked any­where else).
17. Was the pres­i­dent of the first PC users’ group in the south Geor­gia town where I lived.
18. Pre­tend­ed (suc­cess­ful­ly) to be an auto­mat­ed record­ing while work­ing as a Sprint long-dis­tance oper­a­tor. For sev­er­al hours dur­ing a pow­er outage.
19. Chap­er­oned a youth group trip to Six Flags over Geor­gia when I was 19.
20. Worked for a madame in a whore­house (fix­ing her computer).
21. Taught craft class­es for a store as a teen.
22. Babysat a kid old­er than I was on a reg­u­lar basis.
23. Con­test­ed my high school’s sex-ed cur­ricu­lum on a fac­tu­al basis (they did­n’t lis­ten, but I did con­test it).
24. Played the ukelele in a school concert.
25. Served on the advi­so­ry board of a health insur­ance organization.
26. Iden­ti­fied a crim­i­nal in a police lineup.
27. Was required by my employ­er (a bank) to take lie detec­tor tests regard­ing a series of bank rob­beries (whol­ly unre­lat­ed to #26). And pissed off sev­er­al test admin­is­tra­tors for being “too relaxed,” lead­ing them to believe I was hid­ing some­thing. Appar­ent­ly not being wor­ried about the results plus biofeed­back train­ing plus nat­u­ral­ly low blood pres­sure mess­es up such tests.
28. Spent the sum­mer trav­el­ing around north­ern Alaba­ma pro­mot­ing ice cream for Mead­ow Gold Dairies when I was 14.
29. Played Mus­tard­seed in A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (because I was the only per­son who could car­ry a tune, and we had to sing Queen Tita­nia to sleep).
30. Was sent to the prin­ci­pal’s office as a 6th grad­er for hav­ing a South­ern accent. In Georgia.
31. Was offered a job by Dolores French because of my phone voice.
32. Learned word pro­cess­ing on a Cole­co Adam.
33. Was an active mem­ber of Men­sa for sev­er­al years.
34. Won a baby goat in a raffle.
35. Began telecom­mut­ing in 1990.
36. Asked Pres­i­dent Rea­gan a ques­tion dur­ing a tele­vised press conference.
37. Seri­ous­ly attempt­ed suicide.
38. Played Jes­si­ca Fletch­er from Mur­der, She Wrote in one of those inter­ac­tive mur­der mys­tery things at a Men­sa convention.
39. Been a cus­to­di­al and non-cus­to­di­al moth­er and stepmother.
40. Been a step-grandmother.
41. Fall­en in lust with a guy online, only to learn lat­er that it was his wife I was talk­ing to instead of him (he did­n’t have near­ly as much per­son­al­i­ty as she did, though he was damned good-looking).
42. Defied a doc­tor’s insis­tence that I would­n’t be able to walk if I did­n’t have a knee replace­ment with­in a year (that was, hmm, 8 years ago?)
43. Learned to play the oboe and bas­soon in high school. I doubt I could play either now. I nor­mal­ly played the flute.
44. When I marched with the per­cus­sion corps, I car­ried the big set of cym­bals because the oth­er cym­bal play­er (Mark) cried when he tried to car­ry them. No, he nev­er did live that down. I did­n’t say any­thing to him, but every­body else cer­tain­ly did.
45. Was mis­tak­en by my girl­friend for her­self. In person.
46. Took one week of train­ing in Boston on an account­ing sys­tem for an HP midrange com­put­er and one week in Rockville, MD on GE Infor­ma­tion Sys­tems’ Enter­prise serv­er. That’s the sum total of my for­mal tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion. Oh, wait, I think I had to attend some sort of ADP pay­roll train­ing for a few hours decades ago.
47. Set sev­er­al wom­en’s strength test records at a gym at my ini­tial fit­ness assess­ments back around 1986.
48. Phys­i­cal­ly car­ried a friend to the high school office to get help when he attempt­ed sui­cide, and held him and made him stay con­scious until the para­medics arrived and made me let go of him so they could use the defib­ril­la­tor. I was 13, and have had a very strong neg­a­tive reac­tion to any and all sui­cide threats since (to the point that I sim­ply did­n’t tell any­one when I tried it myself).
49. Was a suc­cess­ful mem­ber of the school math team despite hav­ing a seri­ous math phobia.
50. Won aca­d­e­m­ic awards in every sub­ject except math (I dropped it to fit cho­rus in my sched­ule). No, I was­n’t tak­ing math while I was actu­al­ly on the math team.