Six Weird Things Meme - or, um, I guess I'm 'it' then.

I've always admired in others the ability to run.

(No, that's not a weird thing, we're getting to that, enjoy the ride).

(Ok, maybe it will turn out to be a weird thing but I don't know yet - I haven't written that part).

Not to run like the wind, not to win races, but to be at least competitive and not trail along at the end like an idiot who's lost his village.

I was not (can you tell?) a runner at school. I loved the swimming carnival, hated the athletics carnival. Didn't mind netball, loathed softball. Coped with tennis (other than a pathologically poor serve) but dreaded most minutes of the many hours I spent on a hockey field.

And in primary school? Once tagged, I often stayed 'it' for the rest of the chasies game. For defence, I developed a superior attitude.

"You don't still play chasies do you?" the 10 year old me might say.

I developed assorted injuries.

"I can't play, sorry, my horse trod on my foot when I was cleaning his hooves this morning." (this, by the way, may have been true: horse-riding was another excellent way to avoid running)

I flaunted my brain.

"No, I'm not playing today, I have to finish this Dostoyevsky before little lunch."

Ok. It probably wasn't Dostoyevsky, at least not until Year 9, but these are my childhood memories and I will fashion them as I see fit.

You see, there was no reason for my state.

I wasn't the fat kid. Nor was I the sickly, skinny kid.

I.Just.Couldn't.Run.

In the earlier days I would start out the race full of enthusiasm and keep up with the pack for - oh - a good five or six paces before suddenly everyone including the fat kid was ahead of me, and only the sickly, skinny kid was beside me, and then he would suck a big breathe into his possibly-tubercular lungs and lurch in front and then...

You get the picture. I can't relive every painful moment here.

Eventually my mother took pity and just wrote excuse notes for every athletics event at school. She didn't let me off hockey though, because she needed me to be busy on Saturday mornings so she could drive my two brothers to every soccer field in this wide brown land and watch them play not me and THAT is why my children STILL don't do any organised sport because I'm buggered if I'm going to be forced to choose which ones I will actually see on the field and which ones I neglect and leave unloved with a soggy tomato sandwich and a bottle of cordial in the back of some other mother's station wagon...

Ouch. Maybe I am going to relive every painful moment.

My ex-jock/could play anything/naturally-gifted-sportsman husband says anyone can run, they just need to be taught. He said that about throwing, too, until he tried to teach me. After a decade or so he has largely given up on me and concentrates on saving the next generation with impromptu running (turn in your toes) and throwing (don't blink) lessons for the kids.

There was a period in my life, between husbands, when I became a runner. It was a glorious stage and deserves a post all its own but it was running alone and that's really not what I'm talking about here.

So, what the fuck am I talking about and what does any of this have to do with the Six Weird Things Meme?

And why haven't there been any pictures yet?

Ah. That's better. See how they run?

So.

Since December I have been tagged for this same meme by four different people, bless 'em. Tagged publicly in their blog posts. Tagged for all the world to see. I'm not talking about "do it if you feel like it" group tags. There was my name and links back to here*.

And now here it is, mid-February, and I'm still 'it'.

I am flattered, y'all, deeply flattered and not a littled freaked out that, of a relatively small pool of people, such a high proportion of you wanted to see what my Weird bits are.

Sickos.

Still, you asked for it and while I may not be a runner, I'm not a quitter either.

Six Weird Things about Me

1. If I push my finger hard in my bellybutton I get a sharp pain in my upper right arm, like a needle. I think I was about nine when I discovered this: I was probably trying to forget I couldn't run. **

2. Even when I really, really, really want to, I cannot follow a recipe exactly as it is written. This is why I don't like baking.

3. I can fly in my dreams.

4. Am I the ONLY person left in the fucking UNIVERSE who remembers how to punctuate properly for direct quotations? Yes: I have paranoid delusions about punctuation.

5. My eyes change from very green to mostly blue depending on what I wear.

6. I actually like using my Epilady.


No tagging, because anyone who was going to do this meme has already done it by now.

Even the skinny, sickly ones.

mtc
Bec

*I know blogiquette says I should return the links but I can't. It's too embarrassing. The taggers know who they are - if they haven't already forgotten about it - and being who they are, they know that I just haven't been posting all that often lately.

** Try it. See if it helps you forget about running too.