100 Interesting Things About Me 61 - 80

61.  I've seen Stonehenge. It was from the road, but it was Stonehenge. My ride offered to take me closer, but I was plum worn out from six weeks in the UK. Time to move on to the continent.

62.  When I was 3, I kept an entire train awake while traveling from Salt Lake to Seattle, going from passenger to passenger, shaking them and saying, "Hi, my name is Kathy." As my mother slept, I snuck off to greet passengers who -  generally speaking, were happy to meet a pleasant, cute toddler. Even if her mother thought she was a tad obnoxious.

63. When I was in grade 2, my father was in the Nederlands for a month doing research. Upon his return, he brought a pair of wooden shoes for me. To my delight, my mother used fabric paints to decorate a pinafore she made for me. To my chagrin, I could not wear this outfit to school, except on Halloween.

64. I had two pet squirrels for a science project in 8th  grade. They were hibernating in the basement. I would wake them three times a day and record their temperature and count their fast, little heartbeats. Hibernating squirrels are like sleeping babies: they look like angels. Little do you realize that upon awaking them, they revert back to obnoxious rodent behavior.

65. My father built a tree house when I was about 8.  My little friends and I used to jump down from said tree house into the wading pool below, delighting in such nonsense. Oh, how we splashed.

66. We tried to sell crab apples to our neighbors. We actually did sell a few. For a nickel each. Just to get rid of us, I suspect.

67. I was a Girl Scout for 4 years and then a Girl-Scout Leader for 9 years.

68. I worked in a chantier, a work camp, in France. It was a bit like a Kibbutz. It was in the country, near Lyons. While I was there, we residents dug trenches and mixed cement to build new concrete houses for the camp. All the other campers were French teens; I was the only English-speaking teen. I began to dream in French. For morning break, we had dry French bread and water.  For lunch we had tomatoes and tripe. On Sundays, we had a chocolate bar with our dry French bread. And we had hot chocolate. Really makes you appreciate the comforts of home. Even the simple comforts.

69. I've eaten escargot, caviar, frog's legs, squid and octopus. That's about as adventurous as I'm likely to get.

70. I don't like tomatoes. I abhor mushrooms.

71. I love dark chocolate. Any chocolate. Now, I also love lemons. I eat up to 6 a day. Lemons, other citrus and good quantities of other fruits help keep your blood vessels strong, and help to ward off strokes, heart disease, diabetes and so on.

72.  My favorite composers, musicians, groups: Beethoven, Bach, Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rossini, Tchaikovsky, Dixieland, Beatles, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Rolling Stones, Peter, Paul & Mary,  U2, Cranberries, Enya, Keane, Coldplay, Green Day, James Blount, Sarah MacLaughlin.

73.  I've worked as a reporter in four cities. As an adult, I've lived in 5 cities in two countries.

74. I went on my first trip alone at age 5, from Salt Lake to Cedar City via Greyhound, to visit my grandparents.  At the midway point, the bus driver took my hand, and treated me to lunch at the luncheonette. That was my first date.

75. My grandfather won a baby duck for me. On the train home, I placed him in a shoebox on my lap.  I spent most of that trip in the Ladies Room because he quacked so much. Unfortunately, he died before summer's end.

76. One of my favorite books is "Catcher in the Rye."  Another is "The Good Soldier" by Ford Maddox Ford. 

77. One of my undergraduate English term papers was on  "Yeats and Roethke" (45 pages, typed).

78. I prefer Hemingway's newspaper columns for The Toronto Star to his fiction. His use of language as a newspaperman far outstripped his language as a novelist. He revolutionized the language of journalism.

79. Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury" ranks high on my list of all-time favorite novels.

80. Ralph Waldo Emerson also ranks very high on my list.  The list is long.

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This is revised from the original.

Copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008 Kathryn Esplin-Oleski