1. i used to have a peculiar speech impediment that prevented me from being able to pronounce the word “thirsty” correctly. i heard the word thirsty in my head, but it came out of my mouth “soasty.” my brother, as brothers are wont to do, thought this was hilarious. it led to many, many repetitions of the following exchange:
me: “mom, i’m soasty.”
chris (mocking): “mom, jennie’s soasty.”
me (now furious): “i didn’t say soasty, i said soasty!”
chris (gleeful, triumphant): “that’s what i said! soasty!”
sibling squabble ensues.
2. until i was about 15, i thought that men actually literally had one less rib on the right side of their bodies than women did and that this was the physiological proof of the bible story in which god created adam and eve. i was shocked to discover that men’s and women’s rib cages are the same. it was like hard, tangible evidence that the bible didn’t contain fact. it was like finding out that the easter bunny wasn’t real.
3. another story involving my older brother: as kids, when he would get angry with me, he would yell my name in a staccato fashion: “jen-if-er-cath-a-leen-gad-da!” this was about the only time i ever heard my middle name pronounced. consequently, i learned to spell it the way i heard it: cathaleen, with an extra a tucked into the middle of cathleen. i was embarrassingly old the first time my mom pointed out to me that i was spelling my own middle name wrong.
4. i have an inch-long white scar on my chin. this is because the first time i jumped off a diving board into the deep end of the swimming pool, i took a tremendous leap and landed smack on top of my swimming teacher’s head, splitting open my chin and her eyebrow. we surfaced a tangled bloody mess and were both hauled off for stitches. i recall a blur of horrified faces, bloody paper towels being held to my chin, then staring up from the operating table, the doctor and nurse’s faces in shadow behind the bright operating light. the injury was not at all serious, but the memory of it is vivid. i wound up with a scar under my chin; my teacher got a luke perry-style slash across one eyebrow.
5. the first movie i recall seeing in a movie theater was Tron.