The Reveal

Fringes issued a not-so-subtle reminder in comments the other day (I believe she wrote only, "Well?") that I never revealed the truths and lies from my little icebreaker post earlier this month.

So:

I once grand marshaled Logansport, Indiana's Iron Horse Festival Parade, during which event I sat on the back of the same baby blue convertible Cadillac Larry Bird sat on during a parade in the movie Blue Chips.--This is true. There are a few Logansport people who've been stopping by the blog lately, and they may know that the reason I was one of three grand marshals in said parade was because I was somehow my high school's valedictorian. I don't remember much about the parade itself--other than a man in a lawn chair yelling out to me that he knew my father real well (my parents had skipped town a year earlier)--but I remember the driver and owner of the Cadillac telling me that her car was famous: that Larry Bird had sat right where I was sitting.

I didn't learn to read until I was seven.--This is false. I don't know how old I was when I learned to read. My mom claims I could do it before I turned three, but she also "claims" she was in labor with me for, like, seventy-three hours.

I spent one season as the head coach of both a Little League team and a Youth Football League team in Champaign, Illinois.--This is true. I opted out of library science school after moving to Urbana specifically to attend said program and instead worked for AmeriCorps for a year. I spent half my time co-directing a satellite Boys & Girls Club and half my time as a case manager for homeless men in a transitional program. As part of the Boys & Girls Club assignment, my co-director, Jamaal, and I coached a Little League team and a Youth Football League team. Coaching the baseball team was pretty great, except for the fact that on "off" nights the coaches had to serve as umpires. It was a little frightening, being behind the plate without a glove. Plus, our team's only decent catcher was also our best pitcher, and when he was on the mound, no one could catch him, so the umpire got tagged repeatedly throughout the game. Thus, when it was my time to squat behind the catcher, I'm pretty sure some of the coaches were (understandably) telling the kid to let a few go through.

I attended four schools as an undergraduate, but only one as a graduate student.--This is true. At one of those four schools I only took a chemistry course, but I still for a while had to request the stinking transcript while applying for grad school programs and whatnot. As for the other three, what can I say? I was kind of sad for a few years and thought moving around may help me find some kind of happiness.

When I was nine years old I decided I wanted to break the Guinness Book of World Records record for the longest fingernails on a living human being. I spent a total of four years growing them out before my mom came at me with a pair of scissors.--This is false. But I have always been pretty frightened of having my nails clipped. I realize it's one of those things you kind of have to do, but when I was a kid, it terrified me. I actually had an aunt who became my official manicurist for a few years. She would soak my hands in warm, soapy water for fifteen minutes or so, and then go at my nails quite gently with a pair of clippers. I would turn my head away, bury it in my folded arm, thinking that if I couldn't see what she was doing, it might hurt that much less.

I suppose there are a number of things in life I still approach in pretty much that same manner.