Heidi 101

"Fifty things you never knew about me and hoped I'd never tell you."

I lifted this idea off a post on Espresso Sarcasm. I'm sure you're all glad I've got 2 weeks to kill before I head to China. It gives me plenty of time to do stupid things like this. This post will likely be unbearably long, and I will forgive you if you don't make it through it all (or any of it). It's a little jumbled and disjointed, but then again, so am I.

1. Until I was 5, I believed the myth that all left-handers had a twin and thought my parents had sold my twin on the black market.
2. I’m ambidextrous. Though I write predominantly with my left hand, I often wrote right-handed in undergrad because of the cramped lecture desks.
3. I once had the opportunity to sing on stage with Don Ho in Hawaii, but let my 2 friends go up instead.
4. I sat 5th row center at Wimbledon.
5. Goran Ivanisevic hit me with a tennis ball during a match at the RCA championship years ago.
6. He apologized profusely.
7. I once rang in the new year in New York Times Square. My parents spotted us on the camera pan even though the shot had about 300 people in it. We have it on video to confirm it.
8. I have been on national TV twice.
9. The combined length of time for my 2 appearances is 12 seconds.
10. I have been to 34 states and 9 countries.
11. My mother has been to 49 states. She’s only missing Alaska.
12. I have a stack of report cards showing a "-" in the "can complete work without bothering other students" category.
13. Until I was 9 my nickname was “motormouth.”
14. For these reasons, I spent most of 1st through 3rd grade with my name on the board.
15. My other nickname is Fred. I cut all of my hair off at the scalp when I was 2 and people assumed I was a boy.
16. The longest I have ever kept a hairstyle is 2 years. My hair has been everything from short and black to long and blonde and most lengths in between.
17. I used to feign illness so that I could spend the day with my grandma. She would make the best grilled cheese and we would lay in bed and watch “Days of Our Lives.”
18. Grandma knew I was faking and encouraged it. She always told me that perfect attendance would only get me a paper certificate and that I had the rest of my life to earn paper certificates. I didn’t know it at the time but she was dying of cancer.
19. I rarely saw my other grandmother and when we went up for her funeral last year, she had removed my sister’s and my pictures from her collages. She had 2 of all of her other grandchildren, including the step grandchildren and my brother, but none of us.
20. One grading period in 4th grade, I failed Social Studies because I flunked 3 tests in a row.
21. My 4th grade teacher told my mother that I would never be anything because I didn’t “apply myself.”
22. Out of spite I sent her a graduation notice when I graduated Valedictorian. She sent me 20 bucks.
23. I never drank alcohol until I turned 21.
24. I was 24 before I had ever been drunk.
25. Of everything about me, people are most shocked that I have a tattoo.
26. I got my tattoo on Sept. 8, 2001, the weekend before Sept 11.
27. I am a direct descendant of Mary Queen of Scots.
28. My great-great grandfather was born in Balmoral Castle where Prince Charles likes to vacation.
29. My entire extended family on my mom’s side (from my great grandparents on down) live within 10 square miles of my house.
30. With the exception of my parents and one set of cousins, all of my aunts, uncles, cousins and their children, and my sister live within a 1 mile radius from my grandfather’s house.
31. My brother and sister are both named for people my parents respected. I am named for no one.
32. My parents met on a blind date.
33. Though they lived in different states and rarely saw each other, they were married 7 months later. They’ll be married 32 years in December.
34. My grandfather on my dad’s side invented the “pickle picking machine” and the beet harvester. He didn’t patent either because he invented them out of necessity, no to make a profit.
35. They still use the “pickle picking machine” today and the job is the equivalent in Michigan of detassling corn in Indiana.
36. Ironically, my 2 favorite vegetables are cucumbers and beets.
37. My grandfather and uncle died in a storm on Lake Superior when my dad was 3. My grandmother never spoke her family again after they didn’t attend the funeral and my father knows very little about any of his family.
38. My great-grandmother was a prostitute. She was German and not attractive in the slightest. I inherited a gold bracelet engraved with her name. It was likely a gift from one of her customers.
39. I grew up being told my last name was Belgian. A year ago we found out it is actually Romanian/Hungarian. My dad was 54 before he found out he was half-Romanian.
40. In sixth grade, I played in my county’s first ever soccer league. (We didn’t have soccer at the high school until I was a senior.) I scored half of my team’s goals for the entire season. My best friend scored the other half. Combined, we had a whopping 4 goals between us.
41. They made us both play halfback because they didn’t trust the other kids to run on both ends of the field. Since the locals didn’t understand soccer, they made us play on the football field, using the same measurements. That’s a long way to run when you’re 12 and have short legs.
42. Although I have natural athletic ability in some sports, I throw like a girl.
43. I can’t shoot a basketball for shit.
44. I played the French horn and mellophone for 7 years and have the crooked pinky fingers to prove it.
45. At my high school it was cool to be in the band because our athletic teams sucked. The football team went 0-7 my senior year but the band racked up state championships.
46. One of the creators (Vanderkolff) of the Broadway show Blast works with our band frequently and reportedly based the show on our percussion line. He co-wrote their show last year and is writing the original music for their show this year.
47. I once convinced a friend of mine that my sister and I were twins born 18 months apart.
48. I am often mistaken for my sister. On the day of her wedding, her wedding coordinator came up to me thinking I was the bride. I was wearing a bridesmaid dress at the time.
49. I couldn’t stand my brother in law until about 6 months before they were to get married. Until the day of their wedding, most people thought I was the one marrying him. They were really confused when I came in as a bridesmaid.
50. I am allergic to regular Coke in the can. Coke cans used to be made of a different material than other Coke products and my throat would swell shut if I drank it. I’m not sure if they still use different cans, but I don’t risk it.

And that's about all I can come up with. It took me a long time to even get that.