Thirteen ways of looking at a weirdo
Tuesday, January 16th, 2007Way back in December, Thea tagged me for the “Six Weird Things About Yourself” meme. Confession: I kind of actively “forgot” about being tagged, not out of malice, but simply because I’m no great fan of memes.
So sue me.
But today I figured, well, no harm in being a sport. And since pretty much every other knitting blogger has already done this little quiz, I think I can feel perfectly justified in not tagging anyone else. The madness will end with me.
And that’s the way I like it.
I’m also going to take the liberty of freely “interpreting” this request because (a) I’m late in responding so I feel I owe Thea a little extra and (b) I was never quite like the other children anyway, so weirdness is a natural part of the package. So I’d like to coopt and rename this meme, “Things about Me: A Baker’s Dozen”:
Thing 1. I can be a little pedantic, e.g., “Before one can list ‘weird’ things about oneself, one must first define precisely what is meant by the term ‘weird’ in this particular context.”
In my defense, almost all academics I know are like this to some degree. I cite, for instance, my friend Nasser, with whom I had the following conversation at a party:
Nasser: Unfortunately, you really are kind of neurotic.
Me: Well, that’s a fine example of the pot calling the kettle black!
Nasser: Perhaps. But what is so often overlooked in the comparative, proverbial discourse about the pot and the kettle is the veracity of the pot’s assertion. Regardless of the state of the pot, the kettle is, most assuredly, black!
See what I mean?
Thing 2. My favorite book is Anna Karenina and I went through a phase during which I would read it once a year, around the end of March.
I also went through a phase like that with Beowulf, another great piece of literature that remains a favorite, but as far as I can tell, only with me.
Thing 3. I love both to run (particularly outdoors and with my dog) and to lift weights. In the past two days, I have done both. Overdone both, in fact, which is why I currently reek of IcyHot.
When I was thirty-two, however, I was afflicted with a serious and completely unexpected pulmonary illness. I remember lying in bed during the worst six weeks of it thinking, “I’ll never run or go to the gym again.”
The recovery timeline was about two years, like a 19th-century malady but sadly without the spa time that was de rigeur in the actual 19th century. I still have reduced lung capacity, a circumstance that will probably never fully correct itself, but I am able to run! What seemed a given before now seems like a gift.
In a way I could never have expected, everything in my life became more vivid and more blessed than it had been before my illness.
Thing 4. I once dated a guy who sincerely believed that he was the reincarnation of Sir Walter Raleigh. He told me that on our third date. That was our last date.
Thing 5. My favorite cartoon of virtually all time ran in The New Yorker about three years ago and was drawn by B.E. Kaplan. It features two ducks sitting on the surface of a pond together, one of whom looks exhausted and downcast. In the caption, his duck chum says, “Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re inviting all of this duck hunting into your life right now.”
Thing 6. Sometimes there’s a hell of a lot of duck hunting in my life.
Thing 7. I love my dog all out of proportion. When Shelley dies, I fear that I will take to my bed. At least until someone has the presence of mind to get a puppy, plop it on my chest, as say, “She’s yours. You better get up and train her or she’ll be a hellion.”
Thing 8. Before I met Alex, I experienced a romantic disaster of such heart-rending magnitude that I quietly and without announcing it to anyone decided that I was finished with men. I recalled Vronsky’s dramatic declaration after Anna’s death in—you guessed it—Anna Karenina: “I may be of some good as a soldier, but I’m finished as a man!”
Laugh it up all you want, but I felt his pain. I abandoned my rather indulgent life in NYC and I went to graduate school in California with the plan of becoming my own species of scholar/nun and living a simple, ascetic life. Wearing a lot of brown. Maybe shaving my head. Trading in my hot pink spike heels for Birckenstocks and thick socks. Exchanging my NYC club-hopping ways for the silence of the library. I would be some good perhaps as a scholar, but I was finished as a woman!
None of that worked out. It was like trying to put a flamingo into a chicken coop.
Thing 9. The existence of Alex and his presence in my life comes as a constant, pleasurable shock to me. I’ve known him for almost five years and he still seems perfect. I often think that I could not possibly adore him this much if I had found him earlier in my life.
Thing 10. It is difficult for me to tell him how much I adore him as often as I should because in the marrow of my bones, I’m a hardcore WASP. The WASP hardcore does not express feelings.
We mix martinis and get heart disease.
Thing 11. Relatedly, I have a Calvinist streak about a mile wide, but I make every effort to hide it. Sometimes I’m successful. This aspect of my temperament is constantly at war with my Blahnik-wearing, club-hopping, overspending, sybaritic side.
This tension in my personality manifests itself as a palpable restlessness that has plagued me all my life, although I think the edges of that restlessness have rounded off as I’ve gotten older.
Thing 12. When I lived in NYC—seven whole years—I never knit a stitch. It didn’t seem like a knitting town to me. I guess.
Thing 13. If I had known how much fun it was going to be to have a blog, I would have started one a lot earlier.
