Me? Versatile?? You Clearly Don’t Know Me Very Well

So I procrastinated right to the wire on this week’s post.  I sat for days trying to think of something amusing that had happened recently that I could write about.  I’ve got nothing.  Now, as I sit here on Sunday afternoon on my lunch break, I am swinging back and forth between “Write about how cold you are and how much you hate winter” and “Write nothing this week”.  (Update:  And now, thanks to really slow internet, you can see that the post was not finished in time and I am putting this out a day late.  Whoops.  My bad!)

First of all, I want to mention that the lovely people at Jetsettlers Magazine contacted me a little while ago, asking if I would submit my answers to their “7 Questions” to be posted on their website.  Not being one to turn down fame, I said yes.  You can check that out here.  Be sure to take a look around and read some of the other articles, and if you’re an expat writer, they are looking for submissions too, so drop them a line.

Now that my self-indulgence is over, onto what I finally figured out for this post.  The lovely MaryAnne of Wok With Me, Baby and A Totally Impractical Guide to Shanghai recently nominated me as part of the Versatile Blogger awards (they really are awards, right?  As in, I should be receiving my brass-plated trophy any day now, unless of course China Post has decided to confiscate it, because they don’t want to reward me for spilling the beans of all the strange things that happen around here?).  Apparently, I am very good at portraying myself as versatile through my writing, because in all honesty, I think I am one of the least versatile people I have ever met.  I hate change.  I hate when plans get disrupted.  Going with the flow is not my natural tendency.

This is the closest I'll get to a trophy, isn't it?!

But I digress.  MaryAnne thinks I am versatile enough to be deserving of this honour (either that, or she couldn’t think of anyone else to nominate), so I will accept it and never let anyone know what an utter fraud I am.  Oh wait…

Anyway, I am supposed to make a list of 7 quirky things that no one knows about me, and then nominate some others to continue the chain.  Without further ado, here are 7 quirky things that no one knows about me:

1. I’m freckly.  OK, so this one probably isn’t that hard to guess (I am strawberry-blonde, after all), and if you know me in real life you probably know this one, but I have a ton of freckles.  So many so that some of my students here have occasionally thought I have a weird skin disease and were afraid to touch me.
2. People argue with me over what colour my hair is.  All.The.Time.  Seriously.  I don’t always refer to my hair as “strawberry-blonde” but I really should start (either that or call it “yellow” or “gold” like Chinese people do).  It’s inevitable that if I call myself a blonde, the person I’m talking to will disagree and say that my hair is red.  But if I claim to be a redhead, the person will instantly correct me to tell me that my hair is blonde.  Either way, a shoutout to my grandma for passing this hair along to me (love you)!!
   

   Blonde? Redhead? Strawberry-blonde? Yellow? Discuss.

3. My toes don’t lay flat.  I chalk it up to years and years of shoving my feet in figure skates, but my second toe sits up on top of my big and third toes.  A foot doctor once told me I should wear “toe spacers” to realign them and help it settle back to where it should, but they hurt and they weren’t fashionable and I quit wearing them after a couple of days.
4. I can’t play card games.  With the exception of Solitaire, Go Fish!, and War, I have no head for cards, despite being good at math.  Cribbage is a pretty straightforward game, yet I have to re-learn it every time someone wants to play.  I nearly ended up in tears, along with everyone else, when a group of friends tried to teach me Euchre.  I can’t explain why; I just don’t get them.
5. I had glasses AND braces AND red hair AND pale skin AND freckles AND was shy AND smart in school.  So yeah, I was the most popular kid in my class…NOT.
6. I can drive a semi.  Not legally, of course, but I know how.  Growing up and helping out on the farm meant learning to drive all sorts of wonderful things, but I will never forget the day teenage me had to help my dad out by driving the grain truck during harvest because my mom was busy.  There was no one else to drive it and it had to be moved.  The instructions he gave me are seared into my memory:  “This is the clutch, this one is the accelerator.  Start it in this gear and then shift here and here.  You’re a smart girl; you’ll figure it out.”  I did figure it out, which apparently surprised my dad, who obviously realized upon reflection that his instructions were far from thorough, because when he met me in the yard, his first sentence was, “Oh, good, you got it stopped.  I remembered I didn’t tell you which one the brake was and had visions of coming here to see you just driving around in circles!”  (FYI Dad, three pedals, one is the gas, one is the clutch…by elimination I figured the other must have been the brake.)  Oh, and I did get a more proper lesson the next day, just to be sure!
   

   Farm girl (photo courtesy my mom)

7. In my first year of college, in my introductory Biology lecture class, I scored 112% on our midterm exam.  The professor handed them back and was talking about the highest mark being 112% and yadda yadda yadda.  I was sort of embarrassed and tried to hide my paper, but my friend beside me saw and yelped, informing the rest of the class of 60 or so students just who the keener was (how did I manage to get over 100% you ask?  The professor removed some questions from the total due to them being unclear, but if students answered them correctly, they still received the points like bonus marks – I just happened to answer them all right. Hehe.).

So there, now that you know things about me that no one should really have to know, on to my nominations:

Sally at Unbrave Girl

Lauren at The Hoghie Hub

Sasha at Shanghai Novice

Sara at Living a Dream in China

Alexandra at hunliing.com  (She’s just started blogging on her fiance’s new site and she’s like the little sister I never had – show her some love!)