the Dalaverse

Because I'm bored, I'm stealing the Six Random Facts meme from fabu.


1. I've lived in the same house my whole life, although I've moved bedrooms. The three and a half months I spent in Oxford comprise the most consecutive nights I've slept in the same bed other than my bed at home, considering I go from school to home fairly frequently. I suspect this is why I'm a bad traveler and freak out and yell at people for no reason; my father grew up in the same house all through childhood (and college) too, and he acts the same way. Whereas my mother, who moved several times locally when she was a kid and then from the midwest to the east coast when she was in her twenties, is always the calm voice of reason.

2. I have a half-inch scar on my right thigh from an incident at the beach when I was in middle school. I don't know what cut me, because I didn't feel it or notice it until I saw the blood. This was the same year my chest got so sunburned that it blistered, took the rest of the summer to heal, and peeled for two years afterward.

3. Although I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, I have horrendous eyesight. I can see about five inches in front of my face before things start to blur, and my featherweight lenses are thicker than the ordinary glasses of nearly every person I've compared them to. But you'd never know it because I wear my contacts from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. If there is something wrong with them, I will skip work or class rather than wear my glasses -- not so much out of vanity or reduced peripheral vision (although I really don't like to drive with them), but because I literally feel thirteen years old when I put them on, and I was not a happy thirteen-year-old.

4. After my parents had tried to have a baby for years, I was born three and half weeks premature and nearly didn't make it -- I had blood in my lungs, or something (my parents told me the story a couple of years ago, but talked all over each other and were very confusing). There's no hospital baby picture of me because I was in an incubator. I believe that all of this factors into why I was spoiled as a child.

5. On my father's side, I'm distantly related to Patrick Henry. On my mother's side I'm related to Dan Quayle, but you'd best never mention it to my grandmother if you value your life.

6. My parents smoked until I was twelve, and up until recently I had a disproportionally violent reaction to anyone smoking. I would glare at random strangers in restaurants. I remember when we did DARE in grade school, the person basically said that my mom and dad were going to die horribly very soon. I sequestered myself in my room for a day-long protest, stuffing a towel under my door. After they finally quit, I had nightmares in which they were helpless against the addiction and I could do nothing to stop them smoking. I mostly got over this when I was around smokers in Oxford, and although I don't like the habit or the scent, it no longer sends me into an internal panic.


Tag: anybody else who wants to waste a good twenty minutes talking about themselves.