25 random facts about me

1. On my right hand, my ring finger is longer than my index finger. On my left hand, my index finger is longer than my ring finger.

2. For the vast majority of my life, I've felt like everyone except me knows the rules of how the world works.

3. Both my parents are afraid of bugs like I am (although they have a remarkable ability to charge to the rescue when their child is having a panic attack). However, they decided, as many parents do, to make a specific effort to prevent me from developing the same fear by hiding their fear and teaching me to respect and appreciate creepy crawlies. So one day when I was a toddler, a rather large spider started making a home outside the sliding glass doors that led to our back deck. Rather than getting rid of it, they had me look at it from the other side of the glass and talked to me about how interesting it was and how it's good and helpful because it will catch and eat bad bugs. I watched it with some interest over what seemed like a rather long period of time (although it might have been just a couple of days). Then one day, I don't remember if it was my idea or my father's, we decided to go out on the back deck to see its web from the other side. The web was taller than me. And three dimensional. I ran away screaming and my phobias started that day.

4. When I was a small child, the dresser in my bedroom turned into a monster at night. Oh sure, it just sat there very very still, but I KNEW it was going to get me. So I got the biggest and strongest of my toy smurfs - named Hefty after the strongman smurf in the cartoon - and put him on my head. With Hefty on my head, the monster would think I'm a moose and then it wouldn't get me. (Everyone knows monsters only eat little girls, not meese.) It worked! The monster didn't get me! So I did the same thing again the next night. And the next night. And basically every night of my life when I was alone in bed. I still have Hefty and, even though none of my furniture turns into monsters any more, to this day I sleep better with him on my head.

5. If the first time I try a new food it doesn't taste like what it looks like it should taste like, I dislike the food. I can't even evaluate it objectively - I'm immediately put off because it wasn't what I was expecting. I have no idea what potato salad even tastes like, but it tasted nothing like what I was expecting the first time I tried it so now I can't even bring myself to eat it.

6. I can't stand fresh in-season organic tomatoes. They have way too much flavour. My stomach turns at the idea of a bright red tomato fresh from the garden, but I don't mind the slightly orangish kind that have come up on a truck from California.

7. I've been vegetarian since the age of 13. The only thing I miss is chicken noodle soup. Imagine Organics used to make something called No-Chicken Broth that closely duplicated the flavour, but I can't find that any more so once again I'm in the market for a yummy vegetarian chicken soup.

8. I find randomness satisfying. I listen to my ipod on shuffle while I'm working, and make rules for myself that I'm allowed to take certain kinds of breaks when songs meeting certain criteria come up. I put a bunch of books in my library holds list and read them in the order they come in, never knowing what's going to come in next. When I was a kid I'd dress my barbies by closing my eyes and reaching in to the big box of clothes and pulling out a handful of stuff and then trying to make an outfit from it. I make life decisions for my Sims by rolling dice (or, rather, by using a dice server.)

9. I got my first zit at the age of 9 and found my first grey hair at the age of 19. If genetics are any indication, I'm going to have both zits and grey hair at the same time for the rest of my life.

10. I'm the shortest one in my extended family of my generation. I felt emasculated the first time one of my younger cousins surpassed my height.

11. I have never in my life successfully initiated or escalated a relationship, whether romantic or platonic. From saying "Let's be friends!" on the kindergarten playground to rounding the sexual bases to setting the precedent of sharing funny news articles with the guy in the next cube, every successful relationship upgrade has been the other person's doing. Every time I've tried, I've failed.

12. All my friends are by every objective measure completely out of my league. I am constantly astounded that they deign to associate with me.

13. When I was a teenager, I would sometimes learn about things that boys I had crushes on were into. This never once helped me make any progress with any of these boys. However, I have since had a number of good friendships develop on the foundation of interests I nurtured in adolescent attempts to impress boys.

14. I have never been to a sporting event, apart from the occasional high school basketball game that I'd go to to get out of class and then sneak out of and go home at the first available opportunity.

15. Based on my genetics, I'm going to live past 100. I'm not thrilled with this. It's a huge financial planning problem.

16. I hate travelling. In theory I want to be open to new cultures and new experiences and practice my languages, but I just hate being beholden to itineraries and check-out times. It's work to me, not relaxation. In my apartment and in my neighbourhood, I have all the comforts and pleasures I need - a computer set up just the way I like it, a bathroom stocked with every little thing I might need and an essentially unlimited supply of well-pressured hot water, any food I might want readily available - and I hate the idea of spending my valuable savings and vacation time in an environment that meets my needs less perfectly. If you told me I was never going to leave Toronto again in my life, it wouldn't bother me one bit.

17. I can wrap the fingers of one hand completely around the widest part of the other hand. In other words, I can make a circle around my right wrist with the thumb and middle finger of my left hand (and vice versa) and pull my right hand completely through the circle without the thumb and middle finger losing contact with each other. I've never met anyone else who can do this.

18. I find asking myself "What would Eddie Izzard do?" far more helpful than it rightfully should be.

19. When I first entered translation school, I was a literalist prescriptivist. However, doing my first assignment, I found I just couldn't make a workable translation following the literalist prescriptivist philosophy that I thought was necessary. Frustrated and with deadline looming, I threw my hands in the air, saying "This is hopeless! I'll never be a translator! This thing is due and I don't know what to do, so I'll just write in English what the author of the source text really means!" I got an A+ on the assignment. I looked at the prof and thought "Ha! Tricked him!" It took probably half a dozen more instances of thusly tricking profs into giving me A's before I realized that idiomatic translation was the way to go.

20. When I was 10 or 11, shortly after menarche, I had a strong biological yearning to have a baby. However, I was not yet emotionally or hormonally capable of sexual attraction. The idea of even kissing anyone repulsed me. I was about 15 by the time sex seemed theoretically appealing, and by then I was childfree.

21. I lost my last baby tooth in Grade 9 music class.

22. Even though I know fully well how linguistic innovation works, whenever I hear someone else adopt a word or phrase that they got from me, I can't quite shake the feeling that maybe they're making fun of me.

23. I once underwent a psychiatric assessment during which the doctor asked me if I have the need to keep checking if the door was locked. I had never in my life felt the need to keep checking if the door is locked. However, when I went home that night and every night since then, I've had the need to check multiple times that the door is locked. I had to develop the habit of locking it and saying out loud to myself "Door is locked" so that I'd retain the fact that it's locked and not have to keep checking it.

24. I have never had a hangover.

25. This post has been sitting in my drafts for several days and I still can't think of a 25th thing to say.