And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going

Jay tagged me for a meme:

1) Link to the person that tagged you.
2) Post the rules on your blog.
3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
4) Tag at least three people at the end of your post and link to their blogs.
5) Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6) Let the fun begin!

I'm sure the unimportant things about me are legion, but I'm having trouble coming up with any, especially since I came up with seven random facts just three months ago. I'll tell you one thing, after this post I'm keeping a notepad handy, so when I get tagged for five trivial things about myself in May I will be ready!

1) I was pigeon-toed as a child. For a few years I slept in a brace, part of which was saddle shoes connected by a metal bar. It was a horrifying contraption, and looked more Victorian than Me Decade--sort of like something Colin in The Secret Garden would have to wear. I am still pigeon-toed, and thus skeptical--although by no means dismissive--of medical interventions.

2) I have had a huge celebrity crush on Andrew McCarthy ever since Heaven Help Us, although St. Elmo's Fire fanned the spark into a flame. I made my father take me and a friend to a Broadway play about the Vietnam war that closed in previews because it featured Andrew McCarthy (and also Matt Dillon, a bonus!). I am sorry to report that I will be adding another embarrassing television show to my lineup, because apparently Andrew is playing the Mr. Big figure on the new Candace Bushnell-based series, "Lipstick Jungle." How do we tell Lipstick Jungle from Cashmere Mafia? Beats me, but LJ is the one with Andrew McCarthy. I'm sure it will be more fun than watching him be an evil CIA guy on E-Ring. Don't worry, R., there are only seven episodes in the can.

3) Before I open a soda can, I always tap the pop-top opening with my fingernail, in the obsessive compulsive belief that it will keep the soda from spraying all over me. This has become totally unconscious on my part.

4) I have memorized many poems in my time, but the only one I can reliably produce in its entirety is Housman's To An Athlete Dying Young. And even then, sometimes I forget the stanza that begins "Eyes the shady night has shut..."

5) When I was six my mother let me eat my dinner on a tray in front of "The Brady Bunch" instead of in the dining room with the family, but she made me promise never to reveal this to her best friend.

6) I am a terrible bowler. And whenever I tell people this, they say, "Oh yeah, me too." And then we go bowling, and they say, "...oh. Oh. You are a bad bowler."

Because Jay, Mama and Mary have already done this, I only have two bloggers left whom I "know" sufficiently well to tag: thus, Ergo and C-Belle, you're in for it. Perhaps you should do nine each?

PS The title is meant to convey that I have decided not to give up blogging for Lent this year.