Oh, why not do what everyone else is doing? After all, the internet is the only place where inveterate introverts can become exhibitionists. As readers may have guessed, it will be difficult for me to limit myself to just 10 things that are weird about me.
1. In 8th grade, I dyed my hair plum / purple, and after that rose red (almost pink), then after that it was bleached with plum bangs. Dying your hair entails a lot of up-keep, so I shaved most of it off and sported a Taxi Driver mohawk (complemented by the obligatory blue jeans and olive field jacket -- no cowboy boots, though!). That also required a lot of maintenance, so I shaved it all off and grew my hair back normally in 10th grade.
2. My grandmother is Japanese (from Hakodate). I only classify this as "weird" since you wouldn't suspect it -- unless, I guess, you saw me play Tetris, or consume even a slight amount of alcohol.
3. I can hum and whistle at the same time, producing a drone somewhat similar to throat singing.
4. I once memorized the class schedule of all of my 6th grade classmates, out of boredom.
5. After eating, I can easily belch so loud that it shakes the walls and produces an echo within the ventilation ducts. I chalk this up to having unusual gut flora, or perhaps having normal gut flora but an unusual combination for genes involved in the digestive system.
6. Along with my two brothers, I was almost swept out to sea by a rip-tide during spring break in 2nd grade. We were only saved by some college guys who swam out to snag us.
7. Although I mastered typing fairly early (by practicing with the computer games Paws and Number / Word Munchers), I never read that much until 9th or 10th grade, so that I still read pretty slowly for my intelligence level -- for literary fiction, probably 1 page every 4 minutes. For science articles that are more straightforward, obviously less. Caffeine also helps!
8. In middle school, I used to trim my toenails improperly (making them fairly rounded instead of straight across), so over the next couple of years I had to have 3 ingrown toenails removed: the left side of one big toe, and both sides of the other big toe. The roots were permanently killed with some sort of acid so they wouldn't regrow. They don't look freaky, but not typical either.
9. Speaking of which, I found out that I have a very high tolerance for needle-related pain -- to remove an ingrown toenail, the doctor injects a local anaesthetic into THREE places of your toe at the joint below the toenail (once at the center-top, and two at the base, to form a triangle). Try having that done three times within a few years. It hurt like a bitch, but I can apparently steel myself pretty well for this type of pain at least.
10. Even if having a vindictive streak isn't unusual, for most people it doesn't extend to torturing video games. The original Nintendo system was notoriously unreliable after it had been played for awhile, and ditto the games for it. After so many game freezes, buttons that wouldn't respond, and so on, I eventually took a sledge hammer to the system itself (it was mine, not the family's). If it was just a particular game that screwed me, a couple of times I got so angry that I bored holes through the plastic cartridge with a screwdriver that I'd heated up over an open flame on the stove. (This was also during middle school -- what a tumultuous time!)
I knew someone who could hum and whistle two melodies, and would perform popular tunes contrapuntally.
ReplyDeleteRE: #10: A friend of mine, who isn't inclined to take much heed of the niceties of language, refers to this as "retard rage," because the only person it hurts is the person doing the raging. He once got so frustrated with his laptop computer that he knocked it off the table, picked it up, walked outside, dropped it on the ground, and urinated all over it, thus, as he put it, "invalidating the warranty."
ReplyDeleteA recent discovery that might be related to #10 on your list:
ReplyDelete"In the current edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience, researchers led by Sheryl S. Smith, PhD, professor of physiology and pharmacology at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, report findings demonstrating that a hormone normally released in response to stress, THP, actually reverses its effect at puberty, when it increases anxiety."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-03/sdmc-sfh030807.php
Come on, that's all you've got?
ReplyDeleteI'm outdone. I just held the old 8-bit cartridges under a stream of water from the sink for ten seconds or so. The frustration was relieved, and many of the games still work.
ReplyDeleteI used to be a Warcraft II and Starcraft addict. I finally discovered that the way to beat these games is to simply snap the CD ROMS in two. Problem is, or was, I'd just buy the game again -- only to eventually snap these in two. Today, I'm game-free. Yet, on my book shelve is a copy of WoW -- still in the bag it came in, still in its packaging box -- and sit there forever and ever it shall remain. I've been filling the void by listening to more podcast and reading more books. The nice thing about the latter is it's easy to walk away from a book -- just tap in a book mark, just ... tap it in. :D
ReplyDeleteYet, on my book shelve is a copy of WoW -- still in the bag it came in, still in its packaging box -- and sit there forever and ever it shall remain
ReplyDeleteI was given the Nintendo Wii and the new Zelda game for Christmas, and though I thought I'd be playing it during any downtime I had, the machine is set up but I've haven't played a single second. My video game schedule is pretty erratic: I rarely play video games, but a couple times each year I'll get really absorbed in one for about two or three weeks.
I hate to admit it but I played Warcraft II 'almost' every day for 10 years.
ReplyDelete1997 - 2007
R.I.P.