Secrets/Confessions/Random Facts About Yourself

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

I’ll add myself to the list of people who have board crushes on Olivesmarch4th. I’ve been in awe of her wisdom for some years now. It doesn’t help that, at least in the pictures I’ve seen of her, she bears a strong resemblance to the woman I most regret not asking out when I was at university.

This is one of the times when I wish I was twenty years younger. Though not the only time. I got along very well with another Doper (former Doper now, I suspect), so well that we actually met… only to discover that we were 41 and 19. We regretfully decided that it wasn’t going to work.

sigh

Why does the mind not take into account these things?

In other confessions… I am very nearsighted and have some degree of face blindness. This combination means that I frequently will not recognise someone immediately, even if I’ve known them for years. This includes my own mother.

I need time to hear a person’s voice and see their manner, so that I can deduce who they are. I’m easily thrown by surface changes, especially changes in hair style.

What happens is that I’ll see someone, let’s call them X, and I might think, “That person reminds me of X”. I will not be certain. Socially, I rely a lot on context: X is expected here at this time. Most of all, I rely on people recognising me. Only then can I be certain.

This has meant that throughout my whole life, I have never been certain who people are in social situations. Usually it takes me months of fairly frequent contact to start reliably recognising someone, assuming they don’t undergo changes. But someone I’ve met casually once or twice? I probably won’t remember you.

Last night I was going to the gym, and someone said Hi to me on the street, and I had no idea who it was. I suspect it was one of the women from the running group, but I’m not certain.

82

Thanks! You’re awesome too, definitely.

Yes and no. I had co-drivers, but we had absolutely nothing in common beyond the basics (ability to breathe, drive a truck, things like that) so we didn’t have anything to talk about. I was a truck driver at a time when there were very few female truck drivers. According to various cites (here’s one), only 4.7% of truck drivers are women. That was for the year 2000 and it’s certainly higher than that now, but probably not by much. I was driving in '80-81ish and I could go for weeks without seeing another female truck driver. Interestingly enough I didn’t encounter much sexism or discrimination. Most of the other male truck drivers I came across thought it was cool. The ones who didn’t, just didn’t say anything. I had a lot of guys say “I wish my wife would learn to drive so we could go on the road together.” It was lonely being away from home for months at a time, stuck with someone you loathe 24/7.

83

There isn’t one part of my body that is symmetrical. Even my fingers and toes are different lengths on the left hand/foot than on the right. And there isn’t one part of me that I like. (Fortunately my partner disagrees.)

84

*Something I’ve kept to myself for 23 years: I knew Challenger was going to have an accident. I had this thought 1 minute before launch, and went outside to watch (I was at Cape Canaveral AFS at the time).

Evel Knievel once called me on the phone.*

I’d like to hear more about these.

Some more from me:

  1. I didn’t kiss my wife at my wedding. She comes from a conservative Chinese family and had always discouraged me from kissing or hugging her in front of her father when we were dating. We had gone through the whole ceremony up to the exchanging rings portion when I suddenly thought, “Shit, we never discussed if we should kiss or not. Her dad is here. Uh…” She swooped in for the kiss and the same moment when I hugged her instead. The awkwardness was caught on film and was later dissected lovingly moment-by-moment by my wife’s aunts, who thought it was quite funny. There was alot of rewinding and pausing and pointing and laughing.

  2. I had this obnoxious co-worker (I’ve had alot of them) that I just couldn’t stand. He threw temper tantrums about everything and it pissed me off more than others because I was sort of in charge of him and, therefore, had to spend more time with him than anyone else did. I decided to get rid of him by slowly making him angrier and angrier until he just quit on his own. The higher-ups would pass info to me to give to him (schedule changes, etc) which I purposefully didn’t tell him. I told him they said he had to work on weekends when they didn’t. He’d ask me for some small thing in the office and I told him we didn’t have it. Finally, he just quit. Good riddance.

  3. Thinking that I saw a UFO outside my window when I was 10 caused me to break my right pinkie.

  4. A now-ex-girlfriend-then-prospective-girlfriend once asked if she could use my bathroom while we were watching a DVD together. After she left the room I wrapped a pillow around my head so I wouldn’t hear any “embarrassing” sounds that I would possibly forever associate with her if we started dating. My apartment has thin walls.

  5. The first concert I ever saw was New Kids on the Block.

  6. I once met the members of The Guys Next Door, a short-lived early-90’s boy band with an NBC show that probably no one other than me remembers. I remember them all being very nice.

85

I just got a haircut and for the first time there is definite evidence that my hairline is receding. I couldn’t bring myself to pick up Rogaine.

86

Mine aren’t secrets and not all that interesting, but they are random, so they qualify.
Whenever I call one of my friends or family members, I always have to start the conversation with “What are you doing?” Even if I call them while they’re working, I just have to ask. It’s a compulsion.

My grandmother was spending time at her sister’s house while my grandfather went bear hunting in 1982. My grandmother had a massive heart attack, and after calling 911, her sister had a heart attack, too, and they died at roughly the same time of the same thing.

On the other side of my family, my grandparents were second cousins.

I really do have that ubiquitous greatgreatgreatgrandmother that was Cherokee Indian. My father’s family settled in the mountains of western North Carolina, her name was Prairie Rose, and my family is registered with the Nation.

87

Secrets: My wife and I are on the knife edge of breaking up. She doesn’t love me “that way” anymore, and it’s killing me. There, other than a few close friends, nobody knows but the Teeming Millions.

Confessions: In some ways, I was relieved to move 3000 miles away from my life 3 years ago because I was certain I was going to end up cheating on my wife. I didn’t really want to, but I was SURE it was gonna happen. Ironic, given #1. This may be based on the fact that I have cheated in every major relationship I’ve ever been in up to now.

Random Facts: I have one testicle. I am usually the smartest guy in the room (except here) but every now and again a close friend of mine makes me feel like a total idiot. I used to resent the hell out of that, but I have gotten better.

88

So then you haven’t completely gone over to the dark side (fellow gubmint worker here).

Random facts: I can wiggle my eyebrows independently of each other, and am told I do an uncanny imitation of the “world of Warcraft” murlocs.

89

Here’s another confession of mine: I love trucking songs. I just find them such compelling portraits of American Life. I had a neighbor who was a trucker, but other than that, I have no rational reason for feeling so deeply connected to them.

I know of one trucking song about a lady trucker:

‘‘Mama Knows The Highway’’ by Hal Ketchum

Other good ones (not women drivers):

Eighteen Wheels and a Dozen Roses
Cold Shoulder
Rollin’

sigh

(I also love songs about rodeo)

Sunspace, I’m sure I don’t have to bother saying the feeling is mutual.

90

blush Thank you.

Did I mention that my brother-in-law is a trucker? :slight_smile:

91

**My little toes have almost no nails to them. They’re really fun to trim and polish because I have to be careful not to cut into the quick.

**I almost didn’t come home from my last trip to Canada. I was so fed up with my job and some other BS, I’d planned how to get daHubby and the menagerie to Ottawa and even started looking for jobs.

**Even though I HATE the commercial side of Xmas, I love to go driving about in the evenings to ooh and ahh over all the decorations on people’s houses, going shopping for our tree, etc. And at times I believe in Santa Claus.

92

I have an irrational fondness for “East Bound and Down” myself but that’s mainly because I love the movie Smokey and the Bandit rather than anything to do with trucking (the movie is not very accurate, but it’s very funny, and Sally Field is adorable). One of my co-drivers listened to country, but most of the time I listened to things like Genesis, Yes and Kate Bush. Those types of artists don’t tend to do trucking songs, sigh.

One of these days I’ll have to tell the improbable story of how I improbably became a truck driver.

93

I used to be like this, until a couple things happened:

-My younger brother had a minor episode wherein he snuck out a window in the middle of the night and took a walk. He walked a few miles, then flagged down a cop car and told the officer that he was feeling depressed and suicidal. The officer drove him back home and explained the situation, and my brother went back to bed. It doesn’t seem like as big a deal now (he’s since gotten counseling), but when I told someone about what had happened the next day, I very abruptly burst into tears. I hadn’t been expecting to feel this sad about it at all…but there you go. Then more info began to leak out: my brother said that he felt as though he had another person inside him, named “Paul.” Sometimes, he felt like he became Paul. I also heard that his teammates on the track team were bullying him. When I heard this last fact, I thought very seriously about finding these people and ending their lives in the most brutal fashion possible. (When I get violent fantasies, they’re VERY violent). To think that one of my family members was being bullied was unconscionable.

-My father got into a biking accident in September. He got a concussion (he was wearing a helmet) and a severely broken clavicle. He also got a broken rib, which ended up puncturing his lung. While he was at the hospital, I sat at home feeling completely helpless…I had this image in my head of him being in some sort of coma. So when I called my boyfriend later, I recounted it all, and, again, ended up bursting into tears. I just couldn’t bear to think of my father suffering like that. He’s better now, but the memory still jars me.

So I guess my not thinking much about my family was me taking them for granted? I dunno. But I now know that no matter how indifferent I might think I am, I really would miss them terribly if they were gone.

94

Sometimes, if I have a big lunch, I’ll just skip dinner and go straight to dessert. Each day there always has to be dessert, that’s the most important “meal” of the day for me. Despite this, I’m actually outrageously skinny.

I love the fall holiday decorations. I love how around this time of year everyone puts up lights and garland and the mall has Christmas music playing. It’s fashionable to hate that stuff, yeah, but it’s something I look forward to every year. I know that if you work in retail or go to retail shops often it would probably get annoying, but that’s not an issue for me, so I can enjoy my infrequent exposure to it.

I don’t like sushi. I sometimes feel it’s one of my biggest character flaws, the way everyone else I know raves about it. I just don’t get it. I know people who dislike mexican food, who dislike seafood, who dislike meat, who dislike dairy…but everyone loves sushi. It’s not that I hate it, it’s just not something I’ll ever go out of my way to eat. I try, though, I really do. I just wish I could see what it is about it that makes people so enthralled with it.

95

I hate hate HATE Christmas, but I do love Christmas lights. Subtle is beautiful and I love it, but secretly, the more lights, the more colors, the flashier, the better. I don’t do any Christmas decorations myself, but I like to see other people’s handiwork.

And I too hate sushi. Yuck.

96

Having grown up with a parent like this, I implore you - please, please, PLEASE find some way of correcting yourself on this one. It’s not healthy for you, and especially not healthy for her. The emotional and psychological damage may be subtler, but it is nevertheless there - and the sooner you work to put a stop to it and heal the existing wounds, the better for you both.

97

Probably closest “secret” I’ve shared on this thread (prit near everything else is more “random facts” as most people who know me know them) - my wife’s parents were first cousins. And no genetic abnormalities at all in subsequent generations.

Try to separate these via paragraphs or something next time - it took me a while to figure out what the hell sentences 2 and 3 had to do with sentence 1. :slight_smile:

I don’t love them, but I like them more than probably most people. I have a CD of road songs with has “Convoy” on it and the kids LOVE that song (they call it “Rockin Thru the Night” tho)

98

Are you sure someone isn’t stealing your water?

Now tell us the part about it being the wrong number - which would still be impressive! :slight_smile:

Secret/s - are for keeping.

Confession/s - A member of my family(cousin) is in prison for murder.

Random Fact/s I have a 1 - 0 amateur boxing record without even fighting a round.

99

To follow-up on Evel Knievel: I was working as a police dispatcher (while going to college, before getting my first deputy job) at the now-defunct City of Cape Canaveral Police Department (which is entirely separate from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station).

I got a call about 1am that went something like:
GUY ON PHONE: (slight slurring) This is Evel Knievel, and I’m at Port Canaveral on the Evel Eye One, and there’s a guy that’s come on my boat and I want him off!
ME: uh, repeat that?
GUY ON PHONE: (pretty much repeats the same sentence, but louder)
ME: sure, we’ll send someone right out.

Now, you have to remember that we got LOTS of weird calls, not only from our regular weirdos but from TDY weirdos visiting our area. This wasn’t that unusual a call. But I did my duty…by pawning it off on someone else. Since Port Canaveral is outside the city limits, I forwarded it to the Sheriff’s Office.

Imagine my surprise when the responding deputy stopped by a couple of hours later with a signed Evel Knievel poster.

100

Snarky side of me asks “So how did you get set up with Don King?” while regular side of me wants to know the facts behind the case here.