exposing myself

there are a lot of things that we all do or have done in our lives that no one knows about. silly things, embarrassing things, things that seemed so insignificant we never even remembered we did it, whatever. well lately, i've had a lot of these stupid things rolling around in my brain, begging to be set free. a lot of them are about things in my childhood & i apologize to my mother in advance if i disturb you in any way.  i don't want to make it into a "25 things about me" kind of list, but it could possibly resemble that in a very random, possibly warped kind of way.

so in no particular order, here we go.

~ when i was about 5, i remember lying under our basement steps w/ our sheltie (why we were under the stairs, i have no idea. maybe it was our fort), cuddled up to him whispering into his ear that someday i was going to grow up & marry him. and as i whispered into his ear, i got the sudden urge to bite that ear & i did. until he jerked away from me and growled. and then the engagement was off.

~ when i had been married for a few years, i decided that i wanted to know what it would be like to be a more granola kind of woman. so i grew out my pit hair. it only lasted for a couple months & it was in the winter, so no one ever saw it. turns out, i'm not very crunchy.

~ when i was a teenager, i had a cat named twinkle. she was a big fatty who made the house shake when she ran, so we should have called her thunder. anyway, she used to bring in huge nightcrawler worms during the night & would often deposit them in the hallway between our bedrooms & the bathroom. i think they were strategically placed so that we'd step on them with our bare feet in the dark for optimum scream effect.

~ when i was 20, i was a nanny & i didn't have health insurance. i got an ingrown toenail. i didn't have it treated for several months because i thought i couldn't afford to see a doctor, but it got so bad that i was seriously limping. when i finally caved in & went to see a podiatrist, he told me that he'd interned in inner-city chicago & the homeless people's feet weren't as disgusting as mine. and for the record, he only charged me $50. i should have gone sooner & saved that scrap of my dignity.

~ when i was in early elementary school my mom taught piano lessons after school & she would send my brother & i upstairs to his room to watch tv or play quietly. i would sneak american cheese slices in with me & then hide the wrappers under my brother's pillow so that i wouldn't get in trouble.

~ when brooke was a baby, she & i were making the short trip home from my parents' house at night. she finally gave up & fell asleep after about an hour in the car & that's when i suddenly needed to pee. bad! i tried to wait, thinking i could hold out till we got home. then i got the bright idea to just use a diaper & pee right in my seat while driving. i mean, she was wearing about a sz 3 diaper by then, so i thought maybe it could hold an adult's bladder worth of pee. i crammed that diaper down in between my legs while trying to keep the car between the lines. i tried & tried to pee in that diaper, but for the life of me, i could not release. i don't know if it was the fact that i've never peed while driving down a road before or if i couldn't let loose because i've never been strapped to my seat while peeing before, but in any case, i just could not do it. i finally pulled the car into a rinky dinky gas station & ran full speed, while carrying brooke's seat, into the filthiest bathroom i've ever been in & proceeded to wet myself, right in front of the toilet.

~ when i was growing up, i had dreams of being a fabulous singer. if american idol had existed back then i'd have gone to every audition i could get to. i sang in church every chance i got, even in the youth choir singing tenor w/ the boys. i tried singing publicly a few times as an adult & i realized that i no longer have dreams of being a singer because i kinda suck & because just thinking about it makes my nerves want to puke. i even walked off a karaoke stage once while singing an alanis song. i just sucked so bad that i couldn't even stay up there.

~ my daughter has named many of her body parts & my own. her tongue is named whimley wormtongue. her hands are fizz & fido. my right hand is soda. my feet are mr & mrs. and my breasts are doug & kevin.

~ when i was in elementary school, i went to a private christian school & every so often we'd have a school wide skate night. i always made sure that my nails were painted, just in case a boy asked me to skate. as if a little 8 yr old kid would notice in the dim lighting that my nails were decked out in "shimmering strawberry."

~ at a house we lived in when i was in jr high & high school, we ripped a hole through the back of my brother's closet. it went into an unused attic space above the garage & we turned it into a kind of clubhouse complete w/ ugly pink chair that i have no recollection of how it got in there. we had to crawl through a very small hole & that somehow made it seem sort of magical. we named that space "ompisenathimbderland."

~ i used to intentionally keep all of my money in an upside down & backwards kind of order. i would make sure that no 2 bills were going the same way. i did this purely to drive my dad nuts.

~ when i was about 8 or 9 a friend & i decided that we needed boobs. we were in the same class at school & we decided to go about getting breasts together. we each stuffed one cotton ball  per side into our tight undershirts & wore it for a few days. then we added another and another progressively to make it seem like a natural development. because it's totally natural for 8 year olds to grow a cotton balls worth of boob tissue approximately every 4 days.

~ i like to refer to myself as "sheera, queen of power" on a regular basis.

~ i remember that after church on sundays we would sometimes get to stop at mcdonalds to eat. it was a rare treat & one we really looked forward to. my dad once said we didn't get to go very often because it was just ridiculous to charge 7 whole dollars to feed lunch to a family of 4.

~ when i was about 20 i was at a friend's house, hanging out with her & some other people, including her super cute uncle who wasn't much older than me. we watched a movie together & then when it was over, the credits rolled & there was a fun song on. i stood up & did a lil dance, having some fun & feeling groovy. that's when my friend jumped up, grabbed my arm & dragged me to the bathroom. she told me that during the movie i'd leaked my period through the back of my pants & when i'd been in there dancing, my bloody butt was on display for everyone to see. i still feel a little bit sick to think of it.

~ a few years ago i found my diary from when i was about 10 in my parents' attic. i opened it & found a page where in all capitals i'd written, "I HATE CHRIS!!!! HE IS SUCH A BITCH!!!! I WANT TO PUNCH THAT BITCH!!!" i didn't know bitch was primarily reserved for girls. (and for the record, chris is my brother's name & my husband's. this one, of course, referred to my obviously annoying brother.)

~ i have moles. i hate my moles. i had one removed by a doctor when i was about 10 & i was mesmerized to look at it floating in that jar of clear liquid with its roots hanging down. gross! when i was a teenager, i attempted a more down home form of mole removal. i tied a piece of string around it & kept it on there for a few days. it shriveled up & died & then i snipped if off w/ nail clippers. nasty, but it worked & it was free!

~ i went to college in a really tiny town way up north. i got sick & seemed to stay that way for a very long time & eventually, the school nurse sent me by van to the doctor at the tiny neighboring town called chestertown. i had a really bad sinus infection, but he made me strip down & get in a gown that opened in the front. he took my pulse in my groin. this happened on more than one occassion & he always spent a bit too much time listening to my heart from the front. i didn't really get it at the time just how inappropriate that was. later, talking to my room mates about it, we dubbed him the "chester molester."

~ i was homeschooled from grades 5-12. somewhere in there i decided i didn't want to do math anymore, so i cheated. my mom trusted me enough to let me do the work & correct it myself & just give her my grades each week. i went several months without even opening my math book and i could hardly take communion at church because i felt so guilty. my brother finally busted me. i still get hives just thinking about math!

~ when i was about 13, a friend & i walked to friendly's for dinner & ice cream. we devised a plan while walking the mile to the restaurant that we would pretend to be professional models while we were there & try to make the waitress believe that we really were. we even had fake names. one of us was cricket & i can't remember the other one. we talked about our trips to paris & milan and all of our abundant wealth. i'm sure that the waitress really believed that 2 little girls who walked there & came in sweaty & disheveled were really international models.

~ my brother's gerbil died while being gerbil-sat by a friend when we were on a month long trip. the friend didn't want to bury our rodent in case it was special to us, so she stuck it in a butter tub & froze it. by the time we got home, the ground was too frozen to dig a proper grave. it stayed in the freezer until the next summer when my brother had his high school graduation party. we made a head stone & dug a grave & even had pall bearers. there was mourning & people said nice things about herm. (it was named herm because we never knew if it was a her or a him) doesn't everyone do that at their graduation parties?


okay, that's all i've got & i'm sure it's more than enough. i apologize if i've offended your sensibilities or made you see me in a whole new light. but i'm sure you've got your deep, dark, stupid secrets too. you're probably just smart enough to keep them hidden.