Ten Things About Me

[netmouse]

Ten random things about me that most people don't know:

1. I was a competitive soccer player from age 8 to age 15, when I was taken out of the game by a knee injury. The exceptionally frustrating part was that I had the best coach I ever had, that season, a young polish fellow named Piotr, who pushed me out of Defensive Sweep into a Forward position for just one game before I got injured. I scored twice.

(I also played indoor soccer much later as an adult. That was fun too. In a similar timeframe, I finally had physical therapy for that knee, so it doesn't give way every year any more.)

2. My favorite two foods are salmon and hot dogs/bologna. I used to steal hot dogs out of other peoples' fridges when I was a kid. I prefer farmed salmon to wild caught except any sort of Scottish smoked salmon is good.

3. My favorite color is blue, but not turquoise blue, which I get a lot since turquoise is my birthstone. Just your basic cobalt blue.

4. Those are probably the only things I could properly call favorites. Those computer security questions that ask for your favorite ____ drive me nuts.

5. I usually know which way North, South, East, and West are, and thus I navigate by street names and cardinal directions. This is not the female stereotype, so people frequently start giving me directions based on landmarks, which I find pretty annoying when it happens.

6. I have a BA in History.

7. For a year in high school I could almost never remember the word "intimidate" when I wanted to use it.

8. I very rarely drink alcohol to any degree; in college the activity that most often put me in a state similar to being drunk was staying up really late at night. High school friends will probably not be surprised by this, as I had a very strict curfew and very regular sleep schedule, and when I stayed up late sometimes asked people not to tell me what time it was so I wouldn't crash and turn into a sleepy pumpkin.

9. Only one time have I been extremely drunk, during a party with fellow theater folks at Grinnell at the end of my 1st semester. It was a wonderful, fun experience with friends I trusted who took care of me, I felt great the next day, and I never intend to try it again.

10. The only nickname I had in high school (that I recall) was Smurfette. Thank you, Joseph Conat. Emily Stuckey was the darker side of Smurfette. An acting class substitute teacher once threw pens at us when she didn't think we were realistically re-enacting a typical morning greeting between us: I skipped cheerfully into the room and Emily responded to my enthusiastic "Good morning" with a desultory, "Hi", then turned and demanded to know why the teacher was throwing pens at us. The rest of the class assured the sub that this was really how we were.

bonus factoid: I could skip *really* fast in high school, and it was often my preferred way to travel, especially in crowds, partly because it did not seem to trigger my exercise-induced asthma, while running did, and partly because when skipping I could completely change direction almost instantly even when going fast.


(This was a Facebook post a while ago that someone just commented on, and it occurred to me I should post it here too.)

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

4. One of the security questions that drives me nuts is "mother's maiden name." My mother uses both her father's name and my father's name, so anyone who knows her has that security question right there (and she has been a public figure in some limited ways, so it would be pretty easy to find out). Other mothers don't use married names at all. If we get to have a kid, my kid's mother's maiden name will be my kid's mother's fucking name. So yes, I get around that by making note of what crazy answers I've given when it's something like my bank or my PayPal where security actually matters. (And I have noted to my mother that if I am hit by a bus, she should not assume that she knows her own name for purposes of computer security.) But still the question annoys me.

I am also annoyed by "name of best friend in x grade." Total orderings of friends are not my game. I will often refer to a limited set of people as "my best friend from blah," because that is a socially known category, because I can get people to register them as "person of great importance to me from period of past x." But, for example, I have two people who are, in casual conversation, my best friend from the sixth grade.

I think letting people set up their own computer security questions is only slightly harder and really works best.

PS I was also a crazy-fast skipper. It was a really efficient mode of locomotion.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

My mother's maiden name is my middle name, so it's not a secret. I use the question as basically a second password, and I never use the real answer.

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

I tend to navigate by landmarks, so I tend to give directions that way -- not because I assume the other person does based on their gender. I don't, actually, think I have any particular gendered stereotype about that one. I tend to like supplying both street names and landmarks, because often street signs are small and hard to read at anything like driving speed in time to make turns.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

I frequently also mention landmarks when I'm giving directions. But I never start out that way. It's when people start with "You know the Mr. Pizza place" or something, and I'm like, "no, I don't like Pizza. I don't know where any pizza places are." Perhaps it also just underlines how weird I am...

[dagibbs.livejournal.com]

Right... I'm not great at landmarks that way.

[cos]

4. For "your favorite __" security questions, I think of them as "your reference ___". I've picked one of each common category to be my reference item of that category for the purpose of security questions.

5. People from certain places, including both of the places I'm from (Israel, and the northeastern US), neither navigate nor give directions by cardinal directions because doing so makes no sense in these places. To people from such places, it usually wouldn't occur to give you directions by cardinal directions, regardless of gender.

bonus: Around 2nd/3rd grade, skipping was how I evaded the "no running" rule in school hallways.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Skipping was good for so many things!