I've been tagged.

I've been tagged.

I've been tagged for my very first meme by HollowSquirrel. Since I've been tagged, I have to write an entry with five facts about myself. It took me a while to think of five sort of interesting things about me that you don't already know. Stay tuned to find out how I became an overachieving clown-hating drug dealer who enters contests like crazy and wants to be an astronaut with perfect attendance.

1. Being the product of two teachers, education and school was very important when I was growing up. I don't know if I'm actually proud of this, but I had perfect attendance at school all the way from kindergarten through my 8th grade year. That's nine years of never missing a day of school. Partially this was because school was just so freaking important, and if I missed a day I thought I'd be so behind that I'd obviously fail, and partially this was because I had a really awesome immune system. If I did happen to get sick, my illness was either very short-lived or on the weekends or during summer break. Lucky me.
   
   Once I hit high school, I only missed a handful of days. The first half-day that I missed was because a prior knee surgery went awry. I had some pins (that were supposed to be permanent) in my knee to hold a bone graft in place, and as I was walking down the hallway to geometry class, one of the pins shifted and came out of my knee. It was a sad day to miss my very first half-day, but I wasn't exactly able to sit through class with a pin poking out of my body. The second half-day was for my grandmother's funeral. Then I got all rebellious and missed seven straight days of school my senior year, but this was because I won a free trip overseas and I wasn't about to pass that up.



2. This particular free trip was to England and Wales. It was a contest that I entered through our local newspaper and Parade Magazine. Over 100 teens from across the country got to take this amazing trip, and as a senior in high school, this was the first time I ever stepped foot on an airplane. It was definitely scary, but also a really great experience.



3. Speaking of entering contests, when I was in the 7th grade, I was fairly obsessed with outer space and thought I wanted to grow up to be an astronaut. (I know I'm really sharing my nerdly tendencies with this meme!) I entered a contest sponsored by this astronaut to go to Space Camp. Yes, yours truly attended Space Camp. And let's just leave it at that.



4. Like most people, I'm pretty terrified of clowns. When I was in high school and part of college, I worked at a grocery store in my hometown. One day this man dressed up as a clown came in to buy something. I can clearly remember that there were no customers in the store and everyone else working that day happened to be in the back. It was just me and this scary clown guy. I rang him up and told him his amount, and he reached into his pocket for his money. This is when I totally expected him to pull a gun on me or squirt me with water or something. Instead, he pulled out a handful of unused balloons and put them all on the counter. There were like 20 of them. He stared at me, waiting on me to smile or something. And I stared at him, totally unamused and pretty much just frightened. I just wanted him to pay with real money, not balloons, and get as far away from me as possible. This story still creeps me out.



5. My husband and I met during our first year at Northwest. We both went to community colleges before that, so we met during my junior year and his sophomore year. We lived in the same dorm building on the same floor, so we really couldn't miss each other. Nick and I had just barely started to get to know each other as friends during our first week at school. At the same time, my roommate and I had this crazy next-door neighbor guy who apparently was trolling the halls, asking people if anyone knew where he could buy some pot. He had some serious issues.
   
   Crazy Neighbor Dude came across Nick and his roommate and asked them, and of course they both said they couldn't help him out in that department. Later on, Nick was telling me the story about Crazy Neighbor Dude, and I was totally joking and being sarcastic when I said something along the lines of, "Why is he wandering all over the halls? He should know to just come next door and I'd hook him up." I thought this was pretty funny coming out of little old overachieving-valedictorian-perfect attendance me. Nick didn't read into my sarcasm, and not really knowing me that well, believed me. And told Crazy Neighbor Dude. And Crazy Neighbor Dude came into my room one day, shut the door, sat down next to me, and said he heard I could help him out. I thought maybe he needed to borrow our Febreze or needed help on his homework or something. But no, he needed drugs. From ME OF ALL PEOPLE. So yeah, that's sort of how Nick swept me off my feet. By telling weirdos that I'm a drug dealer.