10 Things You May Not Know About Me

1. I bite my nails. I always have (except for very short periods of time where I managed to stop) and I probably always will because the truth is, I really LIKE biting my nails. I just bit my left thumbnail, and I quite enjoyed it.
2. I won Honorable Mention for two poems I wrote in 1987, from the Academy of American Poets. I never wrote another poem again (except for silly limericks and haikus).
3. I have been maintaining a journal consistently for the past 33 years. I'm 41. So, that means, I have been writing stuff like this since I was 8 years old. I never wrote "Dear Diary", and for a while, I called my journal, "Elisa", as in "Dear Elisa". I guess I liked that name when I was a child.
4. I was a cheerleader from the time I was in 8th grade until I was a senior in high school. I was captain of the squad that last year.
5. I learned to read music when I was three. My mom taught me by teaching me the piano. At seven, I was given a violin and told that that would be my instrument of choice. I hated it for something like six years, at which point my parents let me stop.
6. As a child, I wanted to be a ballerina and to take tap dance classes. My parents insisted that I take modern dance instead. I hated it.
7. I was terrible at dodge ball, kickball and especially volley ball. I was the smallest and youngest kid in the class (I started kindergarten at four years old), and I never developed any decent eye-hand coordination. I dreaded gym class all through elementary school.
8. I smoked a cigarette in the ladies room at M. Epstein in Livingston Mall with my friend Amy when we were 15 years old. I threw the lit match into the garbage can, and it went up in flames. This was an accident. I was never a pyromaniac and still am not. I never smoked again from the time I was 20 years old until I was diagnosed with breast cancer, at which point I decided that it didn't really matter if I smoked or not. After a couple of months of being a complete idiot, I never picked up a cigarette again and never will.
9. I was not Bat Mitvahed. I never attended Hebrew School. Everything I know about the Jewish religion is from self-directed study.
10. I never wanted to have a daughter. I was praying for sons all along. I never would have admitted that during pregnancy when everyone expects you to say, "I don't care what I have as long as it's healthy", and I never would have admitted it, period, if I had had a daughter.

YC

P.S. Thanks Sara for the idea!!