Five Things

[tahnan]

Here're five things you probably didn't know about me:

When I was five, I broke my arm at Disneyworld. One of the nurses gave me stickers of Disney characters to decorate my casts with, and I didn't have to wait in line for "It's a Small World." I only have vague memories of this; I'm reconstructing it from what I can recall and from photos.

When I was ten, I went to sailing camp in North Carolina over the summer, as I had before. I learned the difference between a square knot and a granny knot, and how to tie a bowline. In fact, I sailed by myself in a one-person sailboat a number of times; I even raced once.

When I was fifteen, I was doing policy debate in high school forensics, and I kissed a girl for the first time on a debate trip. We were in Calhoun, Georgia, and she was from Carrollton; her name was Jen, and I'm kicking myself for forgetting her last name. Things were off-and-on serious between us for the next few months, until winter break, when we weren't seeing each other every weekend, so we drifted apart.

When I was twenty, having dropped out of college, I made a promise to myself that I would read every Pulitzer-Prize-winning play by the time I was 25. I'd only managed to read or see two before that point (Harvey and A Chorus Line). I didn't succeed, by a long shot--I never read Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth, nor anything from the previous ten years--but I think I made it through about half of them.

When I was twenty-five, I decided to see if I could in fact pass a college statistics course without showing up other than to turn in homeworks and take tests. I needed it for my undergrad math degree, but the teacher was so terrible that I decided I could do better on my own with the textbook. As it happens, I took the class pass-fail (at Brown, you can take any class pass-fail), so I don't know how well I did, but I did pass.

Of course, I should note that four of those five are utter bullshit from start to finish. But what did you expect?

Comments

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

I think you posted this in the wrong place.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

But something in there is true!

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

You are a disturbingly convincing liar. Unless the made-up part is actually the penultimate sentence.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

See the above link from In Parentheses. Though it should be noted that, of the things on that page, the first is not something I said (or, maybe I did?), the second is something I did say, and now you can go to a website on the internet and see that it's true! And the third, well, the third was the result of me saying that the play "Street Scene" contained a Jewish ethnic slur along the lines of "Hasta gesta fish in the Bowery?", which everyone thought I was making up. But clearly wasn't.

It's a useful trick for a professor: the ability to say anything with enough authority that it's believable, regardless of whether it's true.

[leighjen.livejournal.com]

Oh oh oh oh! I know which one is true!

Of course, I didn't believe you the first time you told me.

[colorwheel.livejournal.com]

you blow me right away.

[jadelennox]

You know, I parsed those last two words as a time frame explaining when the first three words happened.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

That was deliberate of her, actually. After O'Reilly and Colbert did each other each other's shows, Colbert reported on the post-appearance coverage on Fox, in which another commentator analyzed his body language, etc. Colbert also showed a clip in which O'Reilly asked, "Is there anything else you want to say?" and Colbert said, "Thank you for not mentioning the thing that we agreed you wouldn't mention", followed by O'Reilly telling the aforementioned commentator, "He blew me right away."

Colbert proceeded to act incredibly hurt, insist that there had been dinner first, etc.

[jenaflynn.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping that the Stats class one is true. It gives me hope.

[arfur]

the last is utterly believable.

hm...