Tagged: I'm It

Shannon Stevens tagged me. Walked right into my inbox and said "You're it." Or something like that. Here are the rules:

Each tagged "player" states 8 random facts/habits about himself or herself and then writes a blog entry that reveals the 8 things and posts these rules. At the end of the blog, the tagged person must list 8 newly tagged people, leaving a comment that says "you're it" and asking them to read your blog.

So here goes. 8 random facts about me:

1. I'm a huge fan of The Cosby Show. Got highly disappointed when a sociologist visiting Centenary several years ago said the show didn't do any good to upset African-American stereotypes and might even have had an opposite effect. Hrmph. I love it anyway. Hardly missed a new episode growing up, hardly miss it in syndication now, am buying the DVDs as they come out. Go on, ask me any trivia.
2. Like Shannon, I love roller coasters. Even "the old, crickety wooden ones like the Texas Giant at Six Flags." One of my favorites: The Big Bad Wolf in Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Katy Valentine and I rode that hanging coaster too many times in a row just because we could (the park was so empty that day), and we tried it out in the front, in the middle, in the back. At dusk, we learned by experience not to ride in the front car of a roller coaster once the bugs come out.
   
3. I'm afraid of big things, like the really tall statue of Ramses II that finished the eponymous touring exhibit my family visited when I was a kid (subsequently, I have learned to go slowly and searchingly through museum doors lest some huge thing in the next room shock me). Too, the ocean: I love the sound but won't go past where my toes can touch, because other big things like whales and giant octopi live there. And also like St. Stephen's in Vienna; we got lost returning to our hotel from the opera late one night and suddenly, there it was, dark and looming. We had walked into the incense-filled nave a few days before, and I pivoted a careful, scared circle to map it in my mind: immense rose window behind, the tomb of Emperor Frederick III plus various relics and mystical things in side chapels, Habsburg intestines in the crypt below.
4. Whenever I hear Willie Nelson or Prairie Home Companion, I feel a little carsick. (My dad made us listen to his one tape of Willie every time we took a road trip. As for Prairie Home Companion, it was always on during my parents' seemingly endless countryside drives on Sunday afternoons: "Look, girls, isn't that dogwood beautiful? See it, in the middle of that forest? Right there. Beautiful." We learned to quit saying "no" because it just prolonged the pause; until a few years ago, neither my sister nor I even knew what a dogwood looked like. And we're working on Willie and PHC.)
5. Every time I move, I pack all my books in alphabetical order. Not alphabetical in each box but alphabetical per box, so that a box marked "Mc" only has books authored by writers whose last names begin with "Mc" and so on. Thankfully, we don't move often (random bonus fact: I dislike moving).
6. In high school, I rarely read required books. Well, I generally began them but almost never finished. But in 10th grade, I tested very well on the books: the now-doctor April would tell me what happened just before the quizzes.
7. I didn't have play clothes growing up.
   
8. I have a scar at my hairline where my sister threw a size D battery at me. We were fighting over a tape player and when the battery compartment opened from our jostling it, she just picked up the batteries and threw them, not meaning to actually inflict injury (she was maybe 7) but just get me out of the room, I think. My mom didn't punish her: she was so scared that she didn't need it! And my dad figured I didn't need stitches, so now I've got a wad of scar tissue to remember it by.
   

So there we have it. Now to tag a few more: Strange, Two Sheds, Sic, to-be Mrs. Menefee, Kathryn, Shelby.