11. When I was a kid, we had a family friend who was a falconer with about 6 birds of prey in his flock. I went to visit him several times, and was really fascinated by his birds, especially his peregrine, which I got to hold and work with on a few occasions. 10 year old me did some research into what it takes to become a falconer and I was actually seriously considering it for awhile there.
I didn’t end up becoming a falconer, but a family friend did end up painting a portrait of me with the peregrine, which hangs in my parents’ house to this day.
12. I am horribly afraid of water I can’t see the bottom of. I nearly drowned in a lake when I was 8 or 9 when I became entangled in weeds at the bottom, and it clearly left an impact on my psyche. I love playing in water, and thanks to 8 years on a swim team I’m a very strong swimmer, but in general water makes me very uneasy. Some people find this ironic, seeing as how I’m a sailor, but I like to remind those folks that if a sailor is in the water, something has gone horribly wrong – sailing is an artful way of remaining *above* the water line.
13. I collect hats of all kinds. My childhood bedroom has a hat rack that my mom made that stretches across the entire wall on on side of my bedroom.
14. In high school I would use gouache and acrylics to paint designs on the cement courtyard ground after school closed for the day. It wasn’t kosher with the school but they had bigger problems, so most of the time they lasted until the weather wore them away. I kept waiting to get caught but I never did.
15. I wear a fox kigurumi (Japanese onesie) around the house in the winter because it’s warm and comfy. I also have been known to wear my Mongolian robes over my clothes at home as well, in lieu of actually turning on the heat. My former housemate used to come home to all sorts of fashionable weirdness from me.
16. Psychological discomfort/distress manifests with me as feeling like I need to pee when I don’t actually need to. It drives me bonkers.
17. I use smell as a means of centering and calming myself. If I can focus on a smell, I can generally calm/center myself pretty quickly. As a result, I actually daily wear a small amount of solid perfume that’s a combination of sandalwood, cedar, and juniper that is subtle enough most people seem to just attribute it to the way I generally smell.
18. Despite the fact that I heavily favor men over women as partners, my first crush was actually a girl. In fact, my first two were!
19. When I was young, I once tried to compile all the rules to Calvinball. This is what happens when you’re both nerdy and sporty.
20. I once highly offended a Catholic friend of mine in middle school when she asked me what I thought happened after we died. I replied with a very matter-of-fact “They put you in the ground and you rot, of course!” She was shocked and more than a little put off. I actually misunderstood her question – had she asked about souls, she would’ve gotten a far more complicated answer involving an explanation of reincarnation, string theory, and other stuff.