eSoup Tagged

Verna Wilder did me the honor of tagging me last week and saying some wonderfully kind things. Thank you for thinking of me, Verna!

By the way, for those of you who don't know what "tagging" means, a few words of explanation... Very simple : each person who is tagged has to reveal five personal things that most people don't know about them. Then this person has to tag five others.

So, here's mine:

1. I'm a former theater person. For about 5 years I worked in the theater doing everything from bartending to putting together and taking apart sets for the plays. One of my favorite jobs I had was as a spotlight operator. It was the most peaceful, un-stressful, entertaining job you can imagine. Imagine being in a gorgeous theater sitting quietly in the dark 50 feet above a rapt audience sitting in their Sunday best eyes rivetted to the stage. All I had to do was listen for my cues, then aim the spotlight, gently turn the light on, and then glue my beam of light to whichever actor I was assigned to. It was kind of meditative being so tuned into the movements of one person. In the times when my spotlight wasn't on, I played Pass The Pigs with one of my fellow spotlight operators, and watched folks in the audience who had no idea that they were being observed.
2. I think my true calling in life is to be an artist. I started painting when I was a kid, then when I was forced--ahem...I mean strongly encouraged--to go to college, I figured I might as well study painting. So, I did study art with a specialty in painting for 4 years, then realized that there was not a huge demand in the work force for abstract expressionist painters, so I started switching majors (studied psychology and philosophy for a bit), before finally landing in the English department. One thing I've come to grips with is that you don't necessarily have to do the thing that is your calling as your money making job. In fact, if it's something like art that you're passionate about, it's probably better not to try to monetize it, cuz that just messes with your head.
3. Musical obsessions: Metallica and Bob Dylan. When I was in my teens and in college, I was obsessed with Bob Dylan. I remember my little sister and I would play our version of Jeopardy--she would read a line from the Bob Dylan song book, and I would tell her what song it was from. More recently, I started getting into Metallica, which suprised some folks seeing as though my previous obsession was Dylan. Still, I'm in awe of the musical prowess and the amazingly complex arrangements and ferocity that are the hallmark of the great Metallica songs. This is what I tell people who don't know much about them: If you need to make a soundtrack for the apocolypse, Metallica is your band. For some reason, this really attracts me to them.
4. I believe in and am deathly afraid of ghosts. If you want to scare the bejesus out of me, just mouth the words "The Sixth Sense". This is why I have such a hard time with movies about ghosts and why, as much as I want to watch them, I can't be exposed to them if I want to be able to sleep at night. When I saw the movie The Sixth Sense, it messed me up for years--I'm not kidding you. Only recently am I able to even say the title of the movie without shivering in fear. Now, that's the hallmark of a great spooky movie!
5. I enjoyed living in a garage. I don't mean a garage apartment, I mean a real garage where people park their cars. This strange living arrangement came about when I was in college and suddenly decided I wanted to save money and live at home. Well, I showed up, but there was  no room in my mom's house--my two younger sisters had taken the spare bedrooms, leaving me with either the couch in the den or the garage. I decided to make the best of the garage. I cleaned it out, we stopped parking cars in there, I set up my queen size bed in a cozy corner and arranged some bookcases strategically around my area to give me some privacy. It was actually really nice. Extremely dark at night and quiet, like a cave. The only down side was it was so nice to sleep there that it was hard to wake up. I could just sleep til noon and not even realize it. Ahh, good times!

So, there ya go. I'm actually supposed to tag 5 more folks, but I've noticed that everyone I can think of has already been been through one round, so I'll just let things rest and end it here ;-).