…or stuff other than writing.

Fifty Things About Me That Are Not True

Do not believe the following:

1. I play the trombone rather well.
2. I once found a silver penny in the bottom of a can of Coke.
3. I was born a redhead.
4. Left turns make me feel queasy.
5. If I am ever given a million dollars (or local currency equivalent), I’m going to spend it all on something sensible. Like plants.
6. My twin sister has six fingers on her left hand.
7. My nose was accidentally pierced when I was fourteen years old when a pine tree in our front yard froze in a sudden cold snap one winter and burst from the pressure. A splinter came flying and stuck in my nose. I wanted to put a stud in and keep the piercing, but my mom wouldn’t let me.
8. I wouldn’t know the first thing about dropping Porche engines into Volkswagens.
9. The three years I spent in Provincal France warped me.
10. When two guys suddenly proposed marriage to me within ten hours of each other, I did’t have the heart to tell either one of them “no”.
11. The one and only time I rode the subway in Japan, I ended up with my hand in a rather compromising position up against a rather distinguished businessman. To my relief, he had no reaction.
12. The second time I was on the Price is Right, I missed out on winning a new car by two numbers.
13. The first time I was off by three.
14. My Mondo collection is complete.
15. Last time I danced in a ballet production, my corp told me to break a leg. I’m sure they didn’t mean it literally.
16. When the nurse put the cast on, she put it on the correct leg, but when the doctor came in to give me a perscription for pain relief, he had a few minutes’ panic, for he thought she’d done up the wrong leg.
17. Two weeks later I twisted my ankle when my crutches slipped and I fell.
18. I once owned a horse named Star.
19. Star was a bad-tempered brute.
20. I’ve never entered a piano performance competition in which I have not won third place. (Odd, huh?)
21. When I was young, I wanted to donate my body to science.
22. When I was a little bit older, I wanted to study the science that people donated bodies to.
23. I won first place in the State Spelling Bee when in fifth grade.
24. Roast chicken makes me break out in hives.
25. If I stare at blinking Christmas tree lights for more than five minutes, my eyelids will blink in time.
26. In 1997 I accidentally swallowed a four thousand dollar diamond.
27. Delivery men once delivered a grand piano to my place by accident. I called the store to inform them of the mistake, and they said they’d rectify the situation, but nobody ever showed up to pick up the piano.
28. I was once offered a two-year full scholarship if I majored in psychology. I turned it down, of course.
29. I have a scar on my cheek where a snapped violin string hit me.
30. I’d say the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, but there’s no grass over there.
31. I make more money in a year selling little yellow signs that say “Baby Is Bored” on eBay than I do selling fiction, but not as much as I make selling non-fiction.
32. Last year was the first year that my writing income made a difference in the amount of Income Tax I paid.
33. I am obsessed with collecting antique wooden chairs.
34. When I opened the case of a friend’s non-working computer I discovered that the reason it wasn’t working was because a hornet had started a nest there.
35. Orange is my favourite colour.
36. My first car accident involved a rather large kangaroo.
37. Someone once left AU$102.55 on the front seat of my car in the parking lot of the supermarket one day. (I’d left my window open a crack to let the hot air out). They were all five-cent pieces.
38. My dentist has a scar on his forehead where he received five stitches after being hit in the head by the overhead light that I had kicked in my sudden shock of his cleaning pick digging into my gums after a mouse ran up his pants leg.
39. Mr Spock gave me nightmares as a child.
40. I am allergic to chocolate-chip cookies.
41. I am easily hypnotised by the flame of a candle, but you’ve gotta have two candles or it won’t work.
42. I still have a piece of glass embedded in my right foot after karate-kicking a childhood bully through a glass door.
43. I started an ebusiness in 1997. Someone made an offer of $50,000 to buy it from me in 2000. I took the offer, despite everyone’s advice not to. A year later, the business crashed. Who’s laughing now?
44. Coq au vin is a house specialty.
45. I helped develop the source code for an obscure little music program called Score Helper.
46. One of my stranger quirks is a phobia against spending any money due me from the trust fund. I can only spend money I’ve earned myself. Shame, really. It’s worth over 2.6 million.
47. During the 1995 expansion of the Marriott Library at the University of Utah I secretly placed three-months’ worth of hair from my hairbrush into a concrete wall so that a part of me could remain there forever.
48. Gilbert & Sullivan owe me royalties.
49. I own two dozen drink bottles won through various contest.
50. My sewing tape measure is a vintage model from when they first introduced the Metric System to the United States. I’m sure it’s considered a collector’s item, for the metric measurements are incorrect.
51. As a child, it was a dream of mine that, when I grew up, I would move to Australia and become the matriarch of an obscure Manx tribe.

And that’s not the truth!