Nineteen Things You May Not Know about Me

I turn nineteen this week, so this seemed like a good opportunity to share random trivia about my life. I know that when my family and close friends read this post, they'll think, I know all of this, but that's fine, because if I were writing things even they did not know about, I would have to retitle this post as 'obscure, oddly specific facts about my life' or 'things absolutely no one needs to know about me.'

1. When I was about fifteen months old, I made my earliest childhood memory when I found a stuffed panda near the bottom of my sister's stuffed animal collection and fell in love. My thoughts went exactly like this: I have never seen a black and white bear before. That's weird. I LOVE HIM. My sister let me have him, I named him Opos, and he became one of my most prized possessions. My lifelong interest in pandas began because of this one.

2. Because of my deep love for my stuffed animals, I cried at the end of Toy Story 3. Years later, during Christmas dinner, when I was trying to tell my family about that ending, I got so choked up that I couldn't get the words out, and began to cry. I was embarrassed, but it's funny now.

3. Charlotte's Web was the first novel I ever experienced, because Mom read it aloud to me when I was in preschool. I have loved that story always, and only grow in my appreciation as time passes and I grow into some of the deeper themes that moved me in childhood but never applied to my life. If anyone quoted the last line of this book at my funeral, I would sob, except I would already be dead.

4. "Be My Escape" was the first Relient K song I ever knew. It was on Wow Hits 2006, and when my sister and I shared a room, we would sometimes listen to it on repeat. That song is full of childhood nostalgia for me, and when I saw Relient K in concert a couple years ago, that was the final song they sang. It was an amazing experience.

5. I like to quote from The Lord of the Rings during everyday life. Clothes shopping in department stores is a wonderful opportunity to quote Elrond: "Why do you linger here when there is no hope?"

6. I used to keep a list of the movies, Doctor Who episodes, and books which made me cry. The list was mainly just Doctor Who episodes.

7. Back when my sister and I shared a room, I would tell her "Teefty stories" every night. These were tales about my stuffed horse, her brother (Panda Opos), and their family and friends. It annoyed my sister out of her mind, but she would contribute to the stories and give me ideas nonetheless, which only encouraged me further.

8. One of my dreams is to make it through life without ever possessing a smartphone.

9. I used to abhor writing. It was extremely stressful, always made me feel inadequate, and was a constant source of frustration. Just about every time I attempted fiction, I would tell myself that I would never try to write again, but it was a compulsive need and I could not give it up. Now, I'd like to think that I persevered until I learned how to write well, but the truth is that I had no other option.

10. In the spring of 2010, I was involved in wedding planning for two Webkinz pigs, Miss Patty Poundcake and Oscar Bacon. The first pig belonged to family friends, and the second was my brother's. My mom had an extremely 80's book called The Christian Wedding which became my companion as I wrote an entire script for the wedding, decided on stuffed animals for different roles, designed program handouts, and planned down to the last detail.

11. Those friends and I pretended that Miss Patty Poundcake was a country singer. I wrote a series of songs for her first album, which was all about donuts and included hits like "Throw the Diet Plan in the Trash Can" and "Love Song to a Donut." One song included the classic line, "Eating donuts is no chore; lick the crumbs up off the floor!"

12. In 2010, Valentine's Day was on a Sunday, and that inspired me to write a story called Candy Hearts: the Folly of Teenage Love, featuring people from my youth group as the characters. I was evil, but the story was hilarious.

13. I excelled in AWANA at my church when I was younger and got all kinds of extra credit awards after I finished my workbook way early each year. At the time, I felt like this was the only thing I was really good at, and it was an incredible feeling. I have lots of fond memories of those years, and appreciate all the adults who volunteered to make that program happen.

14. I made up "Minerva South," a favorite story, with the friends who owned the other Webkinz pig. We would put on dress-up clothes and act out different scenarios for the characters: Minerva South, known as Nervy to her family, was a reckless, wild, and irresponsible country girl, and her cousin Elizabeth Montgomery was an elegant, sheltered, and sophisticated child from the city. They would visit each other and be confused and scandalized by the unfamiliar way of life. For years, we would play this whenever we got together, and I wrote a novel about Elizabeth visiting the country family. I took this through a number of rewrites, and the first iteration was one of the first long writing projects I ever completed. 

15. If I had a time machine, I would go to the concert in my city where Switchfoot and Relient K performed together. It happened before I was a fan of both bands, and I really wish I could have the experience, so if anyone wants to round up a TARDIS for me, I'd be very appreciative.

16. One of my greatest life regrets is throwing away the My Little Pony story I wrote in fourth grade and illustrated with sparkly crayons.

17. I have a Word document titled 'Toothpaste Monster.'

18. My parents, good books, and VeggieTales videos all contributed to giving me an expansive vocabulary, but I recently realized that another influence was learning hymns in family devotions. Because I grew up with these songs, I take the eloquent phrasing and million dollar words as an ordinary part of life, but when I stop to think about it, I realize how much those hymns affected my language skills.

19. When I was younger, I used to have incredibly vivid and detailed dreams every night. This is partly because of health problems, and now that some of those issues are fixed, I sleep better through the night and do not have dreams like that anymore. For the years I did have them, however, I enjoyed them very much, and would torment my sister by giving her detailed recitals of everything that happened in my bizarre dreams. She would wail to our mother that she now understood why Joseph's brothers were so desperate to get rid of him. Eventually, I grew up enough that I began writing my dreams down every morning. Before I did my schoolwork, I would write a total play-by-play of everything I remembered, and those dream notebooks are priceless to me.

It seems odd to end a list with nineteen points instead of rounding it up twenty, so here's a fun fact to grow on: I have memorized the monologue from "I Love My Lips." In addition to being a lot of fun, it's an ideal way to show just how evangelical and homeschooled one is. When some friends were here in August, we did the whole thing together, and it was a spectacular bonding moment.