paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary
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10 things no one believes
Ten Things No One Believes
1. I am incredibly unlucky.
2. When I was a baby I almost died because I could not digest milk or formula or even drink water. I was stuck in the hospital for over two weeks awaiting an operation on my tiny infant stomach with only a 30% chance of survival. My grandmother, who was a medical information buff, decided to do some research. She discovered an article claiming success in similar cases with babies drinking soy milk. She brought in her research to the doctors, who decided there was nothing to lose, bought some soy milk in a nearby city and I was home for the first time that afternoon.
3. I used to sky dive. I never got to the point of packing my own parachute without supervision or of making jumps without the static line. But I did jump out of airplanes over bean fields many, many times one summer.
4. When I was a toddler, my mother and I lived with my grandmother for a couple of months. My grandmother had a wonderful dog named Queenie, who considered me her pup. From Queenie I learned to drink out of the toilet. My grandmother was � still is�really into everyone having their own cup that they keep in their own place in the kitchen for getting drinks of water. I generally would toddle over to my cup, get it, and give it to an adult when I wanted something to drink. I kept showing up with my cup full of water, and because it was a busy household, no one questioned it. One day, while alone with my mother, she realized I was drinking water but that she was not getting it for me. She discovered my continuous source for water. My mother, in a complete panic, called the doctor and rushed me in to his office that very day for a full check-up.
5. The first record album I ever purchased with my own money was KC and the Sunshine Band, �Shake Your Bootie.�
6. I used to insist that my real name was Negus and would not answer to anything else until I was about 3, at which point, I decided that my real name was Clever Devil and requested that everyone call me that or possibly Miss Devil or Little Miss Devil. This was because my best friend, a year my senior, had discovered Oliver Twist and wanted to be called the Artful Dodger. Clever Devil was my stubborn synonym for that and to my best friend�s irritation, all of the adults thought it was, well, clever, and I received great amounts of attention.
7. When I was seven I hit my mother�s date over the head with a large book because I couldn�t figure out what he was doing to her that made her scream out in the night. She did not have another date with him after that.
8. I once got a pedestrian ticket for jaywalking.
9. At 15, I won a Madonna look-alike/dance-alike contest for my imitation of her dance from the Lucky Star video.
10. The first car I owned was a 1971 white Spitfire Triumph with a brown stripe. I purchased it cheap and completely rebuilt the engine. If I still had it, it would be a classic. But I had to sell it because I could not afford some of the major work it needed and because it was incredibly impractical. Once, it rolled backward five blocks down a steep hill, where I found it completely unharmed.
Long may you run....
9:41 p.m. - 2002-08-21
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