The 25 Things Thing

This chain letter of sorts has been going around facebook. Here, copied and pasted from my profile with absolutely no new content, is my 25 Things:

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1) I have a constant fear of dying and being forgotten. It’s what gets me up in the morning. That and crushes.

2) My new year’s resolution was to Get Super Hot. It’s going pretty well! My strategy thus far has been to subsist primarily on Maker’s Mark and Zone bars and to take the stairs whenever possible.

3) I recently switched to Tom’s of Maine all natural deodorant. It’s almost entirely ineffective. I think I’ve got to just risk the breast cancer and go back to Degree.

4) I had my first kiss when I was 15, in a convent in Spain.

5) At any given moment, I have about 3 or 4 really intense crushes going. I develop them to keep myself entertained.

6) I can’t watch Barack Obama speak without tearing up. It’s going to be a long eight years.

7) Someday Twitter is going to be so fun. Right now it’s an extra step in updating my facebook status. I have it so I can tell people I’m on Twitter.

8) I’m going to Africa on Tuesday. Rwanda, specifically. Not to save it or anything; just to hang out. When I told this to a girl I know who works at the U.N., she responded, “Oh my God! Why? Be very careful.”

9) My brother got married last year to the most incredible girl. I’m so lucky to have her for a sister. They’re having a baby in July—my brother told me he thinks I’m going to be the “wacky aunt.”

10) Sometimes I start to cry when I think about my mom raising three kids by herself after my dad died. It’s usually when I’ve been drinking, but still.

11) I came very close to being arrested for prostitution in Oaxaca, Mexico. I was dating a Mexican guy at the time, and the only reason that the police could conceive of for me hanging out with a guy with brown skin was that I was a whore. It took some fancy talking, but they let me go. When I got back to my homestay, the family told me that the real danger I was in was from the police.

12) I wore my hair pulled back in a really severe bun for about 4 years, from when I was 12 to 16. Whenever I wear it like that now, I revert back a little bit to being an awkward early teen.

13) I went to boarding school at a Benedictine monastery. My senior year, I took a one-on-one tutorial with one of the monks on the apparitions of the Blessed Virgin. It scared me so badly that I started saying the Rosary three times a day in my dorm room and going to Confession twice a week.

14) I was a vegan for three days in college. The worst kind—really smug and disapproving. I broke after I smelled a burger or walked past an Outback Steakhouse or something.

15) I love New York City more than I’ve ever loved a place in my life. I never want to leave. I think one of life’s most moving experiences is driving down the FDR in the middle of the night and seeing the Chrysler Building and the bridges all lit up.

16) Things I’ve talked about on first dates: genetic deformities, drugs I’ve learned about on the show Intervention, ways my pets have died.

17) I have almost no hobbies. Occasionally I knit.

18) I saw Brett Favre’s 100th game at Lambeau Field. It was November in Green Bay—It was maybe -5 degrees. My boyfriend at the time had a flask of mint schnapps Ace-bandaged to his calf that we poured into hot chocolate to keep ourselves warm. There was not an empty seat in the place.

19) I still haven’t packed for Africa.

20) Sometimes I am blown away by my own laziness.

21) I have a lifelong, abiding fear of elevators. I have a vague memory of getting stuck in a Magic Mover at the mall when I was little—maybe that’s where it comes from. Obviously I’ve had to come to terms with it, since I live in New York, but they still really scare me. I used to work in a building with “smart elevators” that shot you up a tube like Augustus Gloop in Willie Wonka. Terrifying.

22) I absolutely hate to shop. My mom buys most of my clothes on eBay.

23) My favorite food in the world is chicken lo mein. I could eat it every meal, every day.

24) I can mimic accents really well. I was in a play in London, and these people from the Royal Shakespeare Company came up to me in the pub afterwards and said that they couldn’t believe I was American. Sometimes I go into stores and talk with a Southern accent just for the hell of it. The salespeople are usually a lot nicer when I do.

25) I accidentally lit my hair on fire one night in that pub in London. Everyone started beating me on the head with books and jackets. Seriously, who puts an open candle in the window in a bar?