My friend Michelle posted one of these silly “lists” on Facebook today, and it outlined the things people may not have known about her. I pretty much knew all of the things already. Nonetheless, it inspired me, so here goes my attempt at the same silly thing:

1. I have been to a nudist camp. It was not by choice, and I didn’t really “participate.” I just kind of hid out in a tent – clothed – the whole time.
2. I got over my fears of public speaking via karaoke and working as a substitute teacher.
3. There’s really not much that makes me “deathly” afraid. Public speaking? Not a problem! Talking to strangers? No problem with that, either. But the prospect of having to attend a dinner party strikes true fear into my heart. I would make up any excuse conceivable to avoid having to go to one of these. In fact, I have done that before.
4. I have not been on a plane since I was one year old. I would probably need to get my drink on before boarding a plane now.
5. I have been scalped. I have the stitch scars in my forehead to prove it. It happened in a car accident in 1989. I was wearing a seat belt in the accident, too.
6. I enjoy writing people’s obituaries.
7. I am the most compliant, obedient person imaginable when I am sitting in a dentist’s chair. That’s because they have all the power. Oh wait…I do have a fear of something!
8. I don’t have a belly button. I had an umbilical hernia removed when I was a couple of months old and the belly button has been gone ever since. Just stitch marks there now.
9. I have witnessed two people’s deaths in my lifetime.  The first time was my grandmother dropping dead in the hallway of our house in 1989. The second time was a male co-worker in 2001 when he died on the job the same night I was working. He was an older man who was kind of…curmudgeonly, and not very well liked by most of his co-workers, but he and I strangely got along. At his visitation, his wife said to me, “He said you were one of the good ones.” That still goes down as one of the best things anyone has ever said to me.