I’m gonna be up front with you right now: I got really drunk last night, and as such am still nursing a wicked hangover. I’m hoping this inaugural edition of Top Five Tuesday comes out coherent, but if it doesn’t, at least I warned you ahead of time.
Okay, so, last week I promised that we’d kick off this new feature with 5 Embarrassing Facts About Me. Are you ready to judge and find me wanting? Here we go.
1: I Have A Doll Phobia
I’ve told people about my fear of dolls before, and I think they generally assume that I’m joking and/or exaggerating the extent of this problem. Allow me to assure you, with zero hyperbole, that I’m serious about what I’m going to say next.
My daughter still owns a doll that scares the ever-loving shit out of me, only because I’m pretty sure that if I throw it away, it will come back.
I had dolls as a kid. My grandmother delighted in giving me a new porcelain doll every year, modeled after a fairy tale princesses. These nightmares were lovingly displayed on a wooden shelf, hung directly at the foot of my bed. Every night, when the lights would go off, I’d roll over, yank the covers up over my head and lie completely still, because seriously, I KNOW THOSE DOLLS WERE WATCHING ME.
Eventually I was old enough to declare a doll ban in my bedroom, but that didn’t solve the problem completely. My mother was a collector of clown figures; one of the living rooms in our house was filled with display cases, which were in turn filled with clowns. HUNDREDS of clowns. I think we can all agree that clowns are creepy as fuck. Clown dolls? Quadruple the creep. Unfortunately for me and my very, very reasonable fears, the Clown Room was directly off the kitchen, so if I woke in the middle of the night and needed a drink, I had to run the Terrifying Shit Gauntlet to get to the fridge. I can’t tell you how many nights I would stand in the kitchen doorway, very still, and wait to see if I could catch those little bastards moving around in their cases.
Lest you think I was a child when that happened, let me disabuse you of that notion right now. I was 16.
I’m much older now, and I know dolls don’t move. I do know that. But there’s a difference between knowing something logically and believing it in your heart, and since I lack that 100% certainty, Creepy Talking Farmer Doll Girl still lives in my daughter’s bedroom, where I’m careful to avoid looking directly at her or upsetting her in any way.
I hope she can’t read.
2: I Have Terrible Taste in Music
I think people say this about themselves, and what they really mean is, “My tastes are too eclectic/indie/hipster for most to appreciate”. That’s not what I mean here. I just listen to some really shitty stuff, and love it with my whole heart. Miley Cyrus? Yeah, I’ll blast that. Nicki Minaj? Love it. I bought an Enrique Inglesias/Pitbull song the other day, and I’m not even sorry.
Don’t ever ask me for music recommendations, is what I’m saying.
3: I Mix Up My Own Identical Twins
I have 5-year-old twin boys, and for some reason God saw fit to make them carbon copies of each other. You would think, as their mother, that I would know who is who. They are, after all, my people. I made them, I live with them, they follow me into the bathroom and use my shirts as tissues when they’re pretending to hug me. We’re pretty tight.
That doesn’t stop me from calling them each by the wrong name multiple times in a day.
I’m not talking about the kind of misidentification that comes about through exhaustion and sheer numbers, where I’m calling kids by the cats’ names or running through a list of family members before I hit the right one. (Although that happens too, I must confess.) No, this is just straight-up deciding that the kid I’m looking at is the other kid, and talking to him as such until the other one wanders into view and I realize I’ve made a mistake. They even were color-coded clothes, so I *have* visual reference cues, they just…fail. Repeatedly.
I’ve also found that I really, really should have labeled their baby pictures, because a lot of the time, I have no idea who I’m looking at. “Oh yeah sure, that’s you.” “Yeah, but which one?” “Umm…which one do you think is you? OH GOOD JOB, GO PLAY.” Someday they’ll figure out I’m bullshitting them. I’ve saving for the therapy, don’t worry.
4: I Have a Thing for Old Guys
“Old and damaged” might be a better way of describing my tastes. I’ve mentioned before that I love Sons of Anarchy’s Charlie Hunnam, but if it was a throw down between him and the 48-year-old Tommy Flanagan, aka Chibs? Sorry, Charlie. Once Upon A Time’s Josh Dallas (Prince Charming) doesn’t hold a candle to Robert Carlyle (Rumple). I would sell everything I own if Vincent D’Onofrio (54, older than my dad, don’t care) showed up and asked me to.
Anybody watch NYPD Blue back in the day? If you did, you know who was considered hot on that show – Jimmy Smits, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Esai Morales. Who did I have a huge, huge crush on?
That’s right. I’ll tell you what, dude is 69 now and I would STILL hit that.
5: I Talk to Myself. A Lot.
This one is embarrassing because I’ve been caught doing it by strangers. I can’t help it – I talk to myself, out loud, about everything. If I walk away from a cashier and I’m not happy with how I handled the small talk, I will absolutely re-hash it during the car ride home. At least in the car it looks like I’m singing; walking across campus, going back over a conversation I just had with a classmate or a professor, it’s patently obvious that I’m mumbling to myself like a madwoman. Often I don’t even realize I’m doing it until I notice the weird looks I’m getting from other people.
I do it at home as well, mostly narrating whatever it is I’m doing or holding pretend conversations that I might possibly someday have, with people I’ve never met. (If Vincent D’Onofrio ever does show up, I have an aces intro conversation on deck for him.) I’ve started listening to music while I make dinner, solely because otherwise I’ll start talking about what I’m doing like I’m the next Food Network star, and it weirds my kids out.
It’s possible I’m crazy, but I prefer to think of this as a little storyteller quirk. You be the judge, I guess.
So there you go! Five Embarrassing Facts About Me. If I haven’t scared you off permanently, I’ll see you on Friday.
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