Thursday, January 29, 2009

Yes I totally recycled this post from Facebook

Taking a cue from Jenny, I decided to repost my list of 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me here, so those of you without Facebook can learn more about my idiosyncrasies and childhood anecdotes. Or maybe because I'm too busy this week preparing for a thesis committee meeting to come up with anything better.


  1. I’ve broken my fingers five times. 4 playing basketball, 1 playing lacrosse. Four of them are still crooked.
  2. I’ve only been in one non-sibling fight. In 5th grade, the neighborhood bully stuck a stick in the spoke of my bike as I was pedaling by. I crashed and ripped my brand new jeans. I flew into a rage and pummeled him in front of all of the local kids. Shortly thereafter, he developed a crush on me and stood outside my bedroom window singing a song he made up called “Eileen Casserole.”
  3. When I’m alone in my car at night, I often listen to Bedtime Magic with David Allen Boucher.
  4. The best job I ever had was working at Natick Community Organic Farm.
  5. In 10th grade I won an essay contest on current events and attended the World Affairs Seminar in Whitewater, WI. It was my first time out on my own and I loved being in a new place and meeting new people. It made me want to go away to college.
  6. I am great at friendship but terrible at dating.
  7. I dislike brunch. Give me lunch or breakfast and nothing in between.
  8. I have a thing for guys with bad teeth.
  9. I think that Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks is the best music album ever made. I listen to it whenever I’m feeling blue.
  10. Before I started training for my first marathon, I had never run more than 4 miles. Whenever people say “Oh I could never run a marathon” I tell them this fact and also that Oprah did it. Unless they have no legs, then I just keep my big mouth shut.
  11. When I was a kid, I loved and wanted to be a veterinarian. But spending two years around disgusting Nicaraguan street dogs sort of turned me off of pets in general.
  12. Eyeballs creep me out. I rarely wear eye makeup and thinking about eyeballs can make me faint. If I ever had vision problems, I’d definitely wear glasses instead of contacts.
  13. When I was a kid I was terrified of the reflection of lights on a linoleum floor. If you look down at the floor while you’re at the grocery store, you’ll notice that the reflected lights seem to move with you. I thought they were chasing me and would panic and scream and cry. I had to stay on the carpeted areas of places like Filene’s, and grocery stores were my nemesis. I was a weird kid.
  14. I love having sisters but always thought it would be cool to have an older brother and that I could date his cute friends. My friends with brothers assure me that it does not work like that.
  15. I hate grad school and think not dropping out years ago was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I try to avoid talking about it or pretend that it’s fine, but I’ve been miserable for the past three years. Now you know.
  16. Several years ago I made a list of life-long goals. There were 5 items: own a mini cooper, run a marathon, climb Mount Kilimanjaro, write a novel, and fall in love. I have accomplished one of them.
  17. I was once sued for $58,000 as a result of an auto accident. I was driving my friend Jen’s father’s car and he was sued, too. The case settled but reaffirmed my belief that American society is far too litigious.
  18. The best concert I ever saw was Pink Floyd at Foxboro Stadium in 1994 with Kim when I was 15 years old. Her dad drove and mine picked us up.
  19. I am mean to my mom and feel guilty about it. She does drive me nuts, though.
  20. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to own property because I hate the feeling of being tied down. That and I prefer to pay people for stuff I don’t want to deal with, like hot water heaters.
  21. I failed kindergarten screening and had to go to pre-kindergarten with all of the delinquent Framingham youth the summer before school started. The teacher liked me because I was one of the only girls so they let me into kindergarten.
  22. I used to be jealous of the beautiful people, thinking that they had it so easy, but when I lived in Nicaragua everyone thought I was pretty and I hated it. It was like people didn’t care about me, they only wanted to talk to me or be my friend because of how I looked instead of who I was.
  23. I have no musical talent but was once sent to a camp at Tanglewood for musically inclined children because I was friends with the music teacher’s daughter. I played the recorder and all of the other kids had cellos and shit.
  24. I never set my alarm clock exactly on the hour or half hour. Or even the 15 minute mark. It’s gotta be 6:21 or something like that. I change it up every day.
  25. Picky eaters annoy me. If you aren’t allergic, just fucking eat it already.

Update: It's Friday, and if you're reading this you are obviously procrastinating. How about you add one little-known fact about yourself in the comments? It'll be fun, I promise.

12 comments:

Nitsirk said...

I hear ya on #15. You are not alone. After a certain point though you feel like you have wasted so much time already that you may as well get the damn PhD.

I also saw Pink Floyd in '94 but I was 18 and I drove myself and a friend. I sat next to a 50-some odd year old guy who offered me pot. It was weird.

eileen said...

Just realized that I was 16 and not 15 for that concert, but I guess still we only had our learner's permits.

Yikes, #15 seems like a total Debby Downer now that I'm rereading it. Unfortunately, that doesn't make it any less true.

Anonymous said...

screw #15. reading #7 hurt my soul. wtf?!??!

Anonymous said...

I always knew you were one of my most interesting friends (and that's not interesting in a bad way as some people use it!) but now you're totally the coolest person I know. Now, can you give me pointers on how you actually got your butt to run a marathon when you never ran more than 4 miles before....that's a goal of mine and I'm right where you were! :) AND you should definitely write that novel....

J.R. said...

25 reasons why I love you. And I am "allergic" to fruit, so stop picking on pickky eaters.

eileen said...

Sorry, Tina, everyone loves brunch but I'm just too impatient. I need to eat within and hour after waking up, so I always cave and have breakfast and by the time I meet up with friends I want a sandwich or salad but am stuck ordering off a bruch menu. Boooo.

Lori- thanks for clarifying your usage of interesting :) I'll tell you more about the marathon stuff but you could totally do it. Training is a time commitment but it was pretty easy for me to stay motivated, because every time I upped my milage I'd be like "wow, I just ran 7 miles and I never thought I could do that!" so it was a nice sense of accomplishment every week.

J.R., I would describe your feelings towards fruit as borderline phobic.

Anonymous said...

eileen, i kind of agree with you on the brunch thing. Also,there is often such a long wait, it ends up being like 3:00 when you are done with brunch and the entire day feels shot. I tends to work out only when you slept in and have nothing else to do with your day.

KcM said...

As I said over at Facebook, ditto on #15. Most sane people I know seem to feel the same way. Grad school, where the kind wither and the awful thrive.

Let's see -- summer of '94, after my freshman year -- so I was 19 at that Foxboro PF show. Fact of the day: I listened to The Wall every single day of eighth grade, like it was exercise or prescription medication or something. Along with DM's Black Celebration it was definitely the cornerstone of my teen emo phase.

#9: BotT may be my favorite Dylan album too -- hard to pick just one! I listened to it constantly back in the day -- when I was younger and more callow, I guess it sorta seemed like the worldly "post-divorce" thing to do. But, now that I'm older and more fragile (thanks, years of grad school isolation!), sometimes it's just too raw for me to listen to. (Songs like "You're a Big Girl Now" cut really close to the bone.) When depressed, I now tend to incline toward Time Out of Mind (i.e. the "I'm old enough to know the world is f**ked anyway" album) or Blonde on Blonde (the "sister, I'm too good for you anyway -- you were draggin' down my scene" LP.)

Also, regarding #8 (and speaking of emo): When my last serious gf dumped me, oh two and a half years ago or so, I ended up writing her one of those pleading "why, why, why" e-mails, looking for a reason to make sense of everything. Her listed reasons? I'm boring, drink beer instead of wine, and have bad teeth.

The life lesson here: If/when you get dumped, never, ever ask for the real reasons. Just accept the "you're wonderful, it's not you, it's me" pablum and don't look back. That being said, it is somewhat comforting to discover there is in fact a bad-teeth constituency out there! (Guess there had to be, or the English would've had to close up shop as a civilization centuries ago.)

Sarah said...

HAHA I love #25. I find picky eaters INFURIATING.

Here is my random fact: up until a few weeks ago I had never burped in my life. I mean as a baby I am sure I did but in my adult life I have never been able to burp. Then randomly at dinner a few weeks ago I did. I had no idea what it was. I was like "I think I just hiccuped" but Adam informed me it was a burp! Good times!

eileen said...

Kevin- It's so true that people seem to feel a pathological need to know why when someone breaks up with them, but you're right, the real reasons are best left unsaid.

Sarah- Congratulations on your first burp!

Mrs. V said...

Maria has discovered she has a phobia for profanity and I have discovered I curse more since menopause.....so here we are, staring each other down, which is why I LOVED, "...just fucking eat it already!!!"

Little known fact about myself? Hell no, I am taking them all to my grave!!!

buddymollys said...

um, if you wanted an older brother, why didn't you just say so?! :)