randomness

1. A friend who has a nose which is neither small, large, nor crooked tagged me for a meme.
2. I am to write eight random things about myself.
3. Because I am a somewhat random and capricious person, the number of things I write may be larger than or smaller than eight, most likely larger.
4. My parents split up when I was three.
5. Starting sometime before the breakup and extending for a while after, I had repeated nightmares that revealed my fear that they were both leaving me instead of each other.
6. I grew up thinking that I was retarded.
7. I went to a competitive private high school and thought I was filling the small retarded quota that they must have had.
8. I figured out that I was fairly intelligent only after I dropped out of college and started my adult life.
9. I started on the path to vegetarianism when I was 7 or 8 and discovered how hamburgers were made.
10. I last ate chicken just before the dissection lady came to school and took apart a chicken for us.
11. The period following our science class was lunch, where they of course served chicken.
12. I became totally vegetarian in 1970.
13. I now eat fish but don't eat higher on the food chain.
14. I spent my senior year in high school living away from my family in a large house of adults.
15. My mother supported me financially while I lived away.
16. I calmed down enormously in that year and was a little shocked to watch my classmates act out when they first arrived at college.
17. I've been married twice, both times to a man named Robert.
18. I also had a boyfriend named Robert in high school.
19. My father's middle name is Robert and some people call him Bob.
20. My current, and let's hope last, husband sometimes teases me about having so many Roberts in my life and thinks I'm sensitive about it.
21. I'm not, really.
22. My mother's family loved dogs and despised cats.
23. I grew up with an affinity for cats, which my family barely tolerated.
24. I like some dogs, but I love most cats.
25. I never wanted to have children.
26. I realized my mother finally understood that when I told her about meeting a nice child and she asked "so, are you going to run out and get a kitten?"
27. For a long while, I was in so much physical pain that I didn't even realize that I was hurting.
28. It took years and a very long journey to work my way into a kinder, gentler life, for me and everyone around me.
29. I'm not perfect yet.
30. I've experienced symptoms of arthritis since I was in my early 20s and had to give up running which I was really starting to enjoy.
31. Most days, I experience pain of some sort, but at least I know it's there.
32. The arthritis is for the most part manageable, though a friend pointed out this weekend that "it's only going to get worse."
33. I'm sure he meant it in the kindest possible way.
34. And besides, he's right.
35. I used to speak French fluently and wasn't bad at Spanish.
36. I'm very rusty at both now but can sometimes carry on a conversation in one or the other language.
37. I have a small collection of art, all in 2-D.
38. I once sewed costumes for the Boston Ballet.
39. I was hired for that job over the phone.
40. For a while, I volunteered for a suicide prevention hotline.
41. To my surprise, I never once had to deal with what we delicately called a "medical emergency."
42. I did, however, have to deal with a lot of perverts who thought they'd discovered the world's greatest free sex line.
43. I never dreamed about or planned a career, but one seems to have happened when I wasn't paying attention.
44. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to change careers and went right back to what I'd been doing.
45. I'm turning 50 soon.
46. I'm actually excited and pleased about it.
47. And I'm also missing my friends who won't have the opportunity to turn 50, not ever.
48. I like dark chocolate.
49. A lot.
50. I'm not going to tag anyone, but I look forward to reading anyone else's random thoughts.