The Meme Challenge

Katrice has tagged me to tell 10 secrets about myself.

I didn't know what "meme" meant. I understand the concept as used here, but wanted to know the exact definition.

The term "meme" refers to a unit of cultural information that can be transmitted from one mind to another, such as tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.

Sounds like a BLOG to me.

Okay, I'm glad we cleared that up.

1. I love to pop bubble wrap. It reminds me of kelp on beaches, which I also relish stomping.

2. I like animals better than I like most people.

3. I've had a couple of relationships that I'm deeply ashamed of. Okay, more than a couple.

4. I'm a book junkie.

5. When I was about four, I somehow acquired the shocking knowledge that boys urinate standing up, and waited for a chance to try it. I was barely tall enough to straddle the toilet with only one foot touching the floor. Once in position, I let go and to my dismay, my peepee didn’t go into the toilet at all but ran down my leg and puddled on my shoe just as my mother came into the bathroom to check on me. She was livid but didn’t spank me because she didn’t want to get her hand all wet.

6. My mother had several evening gowns which she never wore. I loved to sneak into her closet and lie down under them. They smelled like her perfume, and sometimes I draped their long skirts around my head and played dress-up without taking them off their hangers, which was forbidden. The most beautiful one was black silk with tiny flowers on it. It had spaghetti straps and a little matching bolero jacket.

I loved it so much that I cut a tiny square out of the skirt to make a dress for my doll. The scrap turned out to be too small so I cut out another, larger one from the other side. I tried to drape the skirt around the holes so they wouldn’t show.

I’m sorry I ruined her dress because I would have liked to inherit it.

7. My friend, Bruce, and I started a 5-alarm fire when we were 11. Long Island had a drought that summer and by August, the abandoned golf course behind his house had yellow hay which was taller than we were. We sneaked out there with a pack of his mother’s Lucky Strikes, he lit one and dropped the match. The hay at our feet burst into flame and instantly, the whole golf course was burning with a loud hissing sound.

We ran until we got across the dried-up creek bed and all the way to my house where we crouched beside the living room bookcases and listened to the fire engines. The fire was so big that five different fire departments answered the call.

We expected to get arrested and go to jail for the rest of our lives, but no one ever questioned us. The neighborhood smelled like smoke for weeks.

8. I had a friend named Brenda in junior high. Brenda was large and big-breasted with hooded eyes and chewed gum constantly, which emphasized her bovine features. She smoked and shoplifted and boasted that she had gone all the way with several boys. Nobody who knew her doubted this.

The one time I slept over at her house, her father fixed himself a bowl of strawberry ice cream, two scoops, on which he had arranged chocolate sprinkles and a cherry. He brandished his dessert in my face and leered, “This is what you look like down there,” licking his lips at me.

I was terrified but didn't call my father to come get me because he’d be angry if he had to go out, and I didn’t know what to tell him, anyway. Brenda didn’t even seem embarrassed. There was no lock on her door and I lay awake all night with a full bladder, afraid to go to the bathroom down the hall.

9. I loved rhythm and blues and tried to write songs as a teenager. The problem was, all the songs I listened to were ungrammatical. While I understood that grammar was being sacrificed for the rhythm, I couldn’t bring myself to write “ain’t” or especially, double negatives. I hated that about myself but on a deep level I was afraid of sounding illiterate, so my brilliant songwriting career never happened.

10. I found a book called The Story of a Hundred Operas in our bookcase and read all of them. The most romantic was Aida, who loved her boyfriend so much that as he was sealed into his tomb alive, she jumped in to die with him.

Years later, I got to relive this fantasy when I married my first husband. The marriage ended due to a lack of necrophilia on my part.

Bonus Secret: The worst thing I ever did as a child was persuade my younger cousin, Jane, to poop behind the oil burner in our basement. She didn't want to but she worshiped me, and eventually managed to produce a small, hard turd.

I don't know why I did this. I'm not sure I even knew at the time.

I tag Odat and The Law Fairy.