This was inspired by that stupid game that's going around Facebook.
1. When I was small enough to fit in my Radio Flyer wagon with Katrina, we used to ride it at top speed down the hill between our houses. This activity was inspired by Calvin and Hobbes, who routinely end up flying off a cliff, which easily could have happened to us, since this hill was in the mountains and there really was a cliff at the bottom of it--not to mention that the wagon had no brakes and minimal steering, and you couldn't see cars coming around the turn at the bottom of the hill.
2. Some hobbies I had as a kid: crocheting potholders, soldering stained glass, croquet.
3. Lessons I was forced to take: ballet, ballroom dance, art, piano, tennis, and oboe.
4. When I was very little I stuck a cherry pit up my nose at the dinner table. There is a pebble lodged in my left kneecap from a bike accident.
5. I auditioned for a lot of films. The closest I came to getting a part was when I did a screen test with director Mike Nicholls and star Harrison Ford for the part of Ford's daughter in
Regarding Henry. Though another girl was chosen for the ill-fated flick, Ford did name his daughter after me: Georgia Ford was born June 30, 1990.
6. In eighth grade, Nur and I were summoned to the Head of the Upper Middle School's office to be chastised for writing and delivering a pile of hate notes to a classmate. All the notes began: "Dear ---, You're so stupid that..." Our punishment was taking a note home each, showing it to our parents, and having them sign it. I forged my father's signature.
7. When I was thirteen, I wanted to be a saint and wrote a history of Saint Georgia's Cathedral, supposedly written by someone else and published many years after my death and canonization. That same year I chose for my Confirmation name the name of a male saint (Morgan) who had been de-canonized during Vatican II.
8. I used to roll decent joints with the ultra-thin pages of my Bible.
9. I did a high-school history project on Martin Van Buren, the most obscure President I could think of.
10. I stole toys from my friend Jessica and didn't get discovered until one night I threw up in bed and my mother found the hoard under my pillow. She made me return the toys to Jessica on our next playdate and apologize, but I just shoved them in amongst Jessica's other toys and never said a word.
11. At my first college, I made an art installation out of a fishbowl, some ice and red pebbles, a black rubber strap with a silver hook, and a bloody cow heart.
12. My first show was at CBGB's. I saw Social Distortion at The Chance in Poughkeepsie and got close enough to the stage to feel flung drops of Mike Ness's sweat. I flew from New York to San Francisco to see the Pixies perform at UC Berkeley's Greek Theater.
13. Once Nur and I picked up two guys at a bar in Red Hook, went clubbing at an old warehouse, and made out with them on the street all night.
14. I passed out in my boss's unheated sauna at an end-of-year cocktail party.
15. I sang "Redneck Woman" at The Round Bar after Padgett Powell's fiction workshop.
16. At my old house, I'm told that I crawled onto the porch roof and attempted to break into my neighbor's apartment with an oar, although I have no memory of this.
17. I cooked and served rigatoni amatriciana to a roomful of gangsters and their minions. It was highly praised; all had seconds.
18. I have had hair in every shade but have never gotten a tattoo or piercing.
19. We ate so healthy in my house that we used "Herbamare" instead of salt and drank "China Cola" instead of soda. I looked forward to my parents going out, when my sister and I were old enough to avoid having a babysitter, so we could eat TV dinners.
20. My grad school classmates and I Ding-Dong-Ditched our poetry professors' house on Halloween, leaving them a Bible and some fake fingernails on the doorstep.
21. At Columbia, I smoked opium in a frat house, purchased with money that my friend, the sorority treasurer, had embezzled.
22. I once did it on a mattress in the middle of the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.
23. The summer that I was a page in the U.S. House of Representatives, my fellow Democratic pages and I stalked Patrick Kennedy obsessively. I still have a picture of his name in Cheerios that we wrote across our bedroom floor.
24. Jadh and I saw the Weeki Wachee mermaids perform in May 2007, which changed me forever, as did caravaning to Nashville for the Sufjan Stevens show, seeing Frank Black in person, and 9/11.
25. My Polish carpenter friend Walter, who was a second grandfather to me, was a beekeeper. He showed me how to walk in among the hives without face or hand coverings; to let the bees swarm around me and rest on my skin, without panicking; to reach barehanded into a hive and remove a chunk of comb. The trick, he said, was to move slowly and to feel calm. Bees can smell fear, and they will only hurt you if you act like you expect them to. This lesson has served me well all my life.
