This one time, at band camp… September 28, 2006

It’s my 25th post! Wow, I never stick with things for so long. So I know people usually wait for the 100th post to do this, but 100 is an awful lot of things to read about me in one post.

I’m one of those people who always has a story. And these are 25 of them:

1. My best friend and I stayed up for almost 48 hours listening to a radio station that was giving away Bob Dylan concert tickets every hour or so to whatever number caller. We finally won.

2. I attended a celebrity wedding, where I met Brad Pitt and spoke like a star-struck idiot. He was very nice about it.

3. I was on a local cable TV show where I played Emma, a clairvoyant maid.

4. The morning of my wedding, one of my bridesmaids woke up to discover her dog had suffocated in the night while sleeping with her on my couch. She took one too many painkillers to comfort herself and was in and out of alertness throughout the entire wedding ceremony. We’re talking in the style of Molly Ringwald’s sister in Sixteen Candles. She is probably not going to be happy to see that I have posted this. But she has get over it. Because that was my wedding day.

5. During my first Mardi Gras, I met Noel Gallagher from Oasis on Canal Street. He licked my eye. No idea why.

6. I attended college on a scholarship that covered full tuition and a dorm room for four years. I was offered full rides to two other colleges as well. Now, I’ve been rejected three times for grad school. Fucking MFAs.

7. I used to be Pocahontas for a birthday party company in New Orleans. I attended kids’ birthday parties where I made beaded jewelry and sang songs, let the girls braid my hair, and fielded remarks from fathers and uncles that often made use of the word “poke.”

8. The Aryan/Nordic Tattooed Guy story. Already told you this one.

9. I was obsessed with the same guy a majority of my college life. I asked him out many times. He said no every single time, the worst excuse of which was “My teeth hurt.” Yeah.

10. When I was 13 years old, I went trick or treating with some friends and we got to a house with a shabby looking scarecrow on the front steps. My friends dared me to sit on its lap. I went one step further and grabbed its crotch. Turns out, the scarecrow was an actual guy trying to scare trick or treaters. I have still not lived this down. YM Magazine printed it in their embarrassing moments column, and it only got 3 stars out of 4.

11. When I used to have a job that didn’t involve diapers, I went out for drinks after work one night and drank too much. I threw up on my boss’ car. Not in it. On it. He let it slide.

12. When I was three months pregnant, I was on vacation in French Polynesia and crashed on a rented vespa. I got a second degree burn on my right leg. Bizarrely, it scarred in the shape of the island of Moorea.

13. When I was 18, I went to France for 3 weeks. While there, I went kayaking in a tiny little town in Northern France near the border with Belgium. I happened to be the 1000th customer at the kayaking rental place. They gave me a free pass, some company logo paraphernalia, and my picture was in two local papers. I still have them.

14. My favorite T-shirt features the Pac-Man video game screen. I’ve had it since 1996. Without fail, I receive compliments on it every single time I wear it. I also discovered that I could attract far more attention from men while wearing this shirt than anything low cut or tight fitting.

15. When I went to Six Flags in Atlanta, GA, I went on a ride called The Flying Dutchman. It’s that boat ride that swings back and forth and then finally goes upside down. While I was standing in line, when the boat flipped upside down, someone’s dentures fell out and landed on the waiting platform. No one claimed them.

16. My friend and I got front row & center tickets for $20 apiece to see Rent on Broadway from the lottery they do outside the theatre a half hour before every performance.

17. When I met my husband, he lived in California and I lived in New Orleans. I met him while visiting a friend in California. He didn’t call me until two months later. Then he flew to New Orleans for one night to take me out to dinner.

18. Unfortunately, on that above date, somebody got shot on the street we were walking down. It gave my husband a bad image of New Orleans.

19. Also unfortunately, on that trip to Cali when I initially met my husband, I missed a Beastie Boys concert (which was the whole reason I was in town to visit my friend that particular weekend) because we drank too much during the day, got lost a zillion times on the way to our hotel, our cab from the hotel dropped us off at the wrong place, and we wound up WALKING to the Inglewood Forum. If you do not know how unsafe an idea this was, trust me, it was.

20. When I was in downtown Las Vegas with a girlfriend, we happened upon a filming of a commercial for the “Fremont Street Experience,” and danced in it.

21. On the way home from this particular trip to Vegas, I ran out of gas on Interstate 15 in the middle of the friggin’ desert. The California Highway Patrol pushed my car to a gas station.

22. On a Southwest flight from San Diego to El Paso, the woman sitting next to me had some sort of diabetic episode, and she was traveling with her 19 month old in her lap and no one else. I wound up holding him. I also wound up standing most of that flight, because the flight attendants needed my seat to sit next to and help the woman.

23. I was at a Flock of Seagulls concert (way after their heyday) at some bar, where an old drunk woman was yelling at a Kathy Ireland cardboard stand up. I encouraged her to punch and kick said cardboard standup, which she did, an act that led to her getting kicked out of the bar. I kind of felt bad about that. Kind of.

24. When I was pregnant with The Boy, the doctor told me I was having a girl, and I had pink everything and cute dresses and all that good stuff. Fortunately, we found out a week before I had him, so I was able to procure some boy clothing to take him home from the hospital in.

25. When I turned 16 years old, my friends and I went bowling and I bowled a 212. It is the one and only time I ever bowled over a 200, and I still have no idea how I did it.