An Exercise in Narcissism

Speaking of memes (see previous post), a few months back my friend ElephantsChild was tagged to write 8 Things You Might Not Know about her. I was pleased to see her get tagged, not only because I was interested to find out those secret eight things, but also because being my friend and all I thought she might tag me. And this sounded like a really fun meme!

So I waited, and waited, and waited . . . but when she finally wrote her 8 Things, she didn't tag anyone! (Something about too much time passing since she was tagged.) ElephantsChild, you let me down!

I am left with no choice but to tag myself. So here goes . . .

Eight Things You Might Not Know About Me

1) I have ten brothers and sisters. (Quick history: my dad was a widower with four children; my mom was divorced with six; they married and had me, the baby. I have 32 nieces and nephews. I've lost count of the grand-nieces and nephews.)

2) I am totally, completely afraid of flying. Just thinking about it starts my heart pounding and my palms sweating.

3) In spite of #2, my husband succeeded in getting me on a plane and flying me all the way to Grenada in 2002 (if you're not sure where that is, check a map--we're talking almost to South America, folks). We are now using an American Airlines "miles" credit card for almost all of our non-mortgage spending and hope to save up enough miles to return with the children in the near future (our 2002 trip was the honeymoon we never took, deferred to our 15-year wedding anniversary). We have already earned the equivalent of three tickets and are working on the fourth.

4) I was a cheerleader in junior high. (I know, I can't quite believe it myself. But it's true.) In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that I was attending a tiny, rural Texas school at the time--so tiny in fact that grades K-12 were all on one campus. So it's not like there was a lot of competition.

5) I once had a pet chicken named Fluffy. (And as it happens, that was also during my junior high years--boy, those were interesting times.)

6) My husband and I enjoy ballroom dancing. (We're not very good at it but have taken two classes and hope to take more.)

7) I was Valedictorian of my high school class (another disclaimer: I went to a small rural high school, too, although not quite as small as the junior high mentioned above) and a National Merit Scholar. (I hope you can forgive my tooting my own horn--but really, if you can't toot on your own blog, where can you?)

8) I have red hair. No, really, I do. I know it may look brown, but it's really red. If you'll just follow me out into the sunshine I'll prove it to you. (It actually used to be about the same color as that watering can girl's hair at the top of my blog--and almost as curly, too--but the older I get the darker and straighter it gets. Aging is no fun.)

So there you go--my little look into the pool. Since I was not tagged, I'm not tagging anyone else, but now that I've so boldly flouted the rules of this meme I encourage anyone else who has been waiting around to get tagged to follow in my footsteps and just tag yourself so your readers can learn 8 interesting things about you, too!