So, I got tagged by Wendy to do the 6 Weird Things About Me meme. I know I did it last year too, but I have so many new readers (hi new readers! love ya!) that some of the weird things will be new to them. The rest of you, just skip ahead to the ones you haven’t read before. Okay? Here we go:

1. What I consider to be the absolutely weirdest thing about me is the Shoe Thing: When I put on my shoes, I HAVE to start with my left shoe first. Have to. If I ask someone to hand me my shoes and they hand me the right one first, I wait until they have handed me the left shoe to get started. Same thing with socks, too. Has to be the left one first.

2. I can not watch or even listen to The Exorcist. When I was in the fifth grade or so, it was on TV, and for some reason my parents thought it would be okay for me to watch it with the family. (The HELL?) I was okay until Linda Blair’s character started talking in the Devil’s Voice, and that was it. I still remember clapping my hands over my ears as I ran up to my bedroom, but I could still hear it in my head. It took me MONTHS to get that movie out of my head. I would lay in bed terrified that I would start levitating and slamming up and down on the mattress. I’ve never watched it since and have no plans to, EVER.

3. I started playing the piano when I was three. I was sixteen months old when I was adopted, and could already sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. By three I could sing pretty much any song I heard on the radio, so my Mom talked to a music teacher at the private school where she taught and arranged for me to start lessons. I played the piano pretty much every day from three until 17, when I chose to quit piano lessons to get a part-time job. When I think of all that money my parents paid for bi-weekly lessons, all the competitions they drove me too, all the money spent on piano tuning and sheet music, it makes me a little ill that I gave that up. I was good at the piano, and I should have taken it more seriously. If I had a piano now, I would start all over with the Beginner’s book and re-teach myself to play. Some day.

4. Because of all the years of piano lessons, oboe and flute lessons, and choir, I have Perfect Pitch. Play me any note on pretty much any instrument, and I can tell you what it is. For that reason, I can not STAND to hear people singing slightly out of tune. It happens all the time on those Kidz Bop CDs. I guess the producers think it’s “cute” or “authentic” to have kids singing not quite in tune, but to me it’s worse than nails on a chalkboard. It’s worse than when the lid of a styrofoam cooler is rubbing against the cooler itself. Aaauuuggghhh!

5. I have an underdeveloped Eustachian tube. In adults, it is supposed to be almost vertical, leading from the middle ear to the pharynx, which is the part of your throat directly behind your tongue. In children, and in me, it is more horizontal, which is why kids get more ear infections than adults. The purpose of the Eustachian tube is to help fluid drain from your middle ear, but in kids (and me) that fluid gets trapped, causing infections. I didn’t know that was why I got so many ear infections until I went to an Ear, Nose and Throat specialist. Turns out, I have the Eustachian tubes of a child. Lucky.

6. Okay! One more to go! Hmmm. What’s the weirdest class I ever took in college? That would be Popular Culture at M.S.U. We studied Big-Time Wrestling as a cultural phenomenon. Seriously. I can’t remember anything else about the class but that.

Want to see a weird photo? We don’t have the best roof drainage in the winter; our attic is badly insulated and our downspouts fill up with ice and then the dripping water has to spill over the sides of the gutters. I took this photo of the shrub next to the downspout:

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