The 7 Unusual Things About Me Tag

As I told San when she tagged me for this, I've spent more time trying to fit in and be usual than unusual. So this is going to be a bit awkward as I dredge through years of personal history to find 7 things. Some of them may not be that unusual.

1) For the 3 months after I was born I would not allow myself to be put down. If my Mother, Grandmother, or Grandfather tried I screamed until someone picked me up again. During this period Dad went off to fight in the Korean War. Can you imagine the round the clock shifts of parenting this took to keep me calm? Guess it was a good thing I was born in the upstair bedroom of Grandmother's house. There were loving arms ready to help Mom survive her post natal stressor, me.

2) Because I was cross eyed as a child I never developed depth perception. Not even after corrective surgery in 5th & 6th grades. My eyes work independantly of one another and my brain ignores the one not pointed directly at the object I'm looking at. So it goes off to look to the side. That affects peripheral vision too. I have less than the normal range. This makes many things more difficult. I'm terrible at most sports, especially those involving balls moving towards me. But for marksmanship it works out pretty well as you only use one eye to sight along a rifle barrel.

3) When I was in elementary school, this would have been in 5th grade, I became a human ball. I was so slender and light that the other kids would gather around me, pick me up, and throw me from one group to another. Or toss me in the air and watch me land. I got pretty good at using my legs as springs to take up the shock.

4) When I went through bootcamp I was happy and at peace with my world for the first time. That sounds weird even to me. Bootcamp is supposed to be hard and often a miserable experience. Instead I knew exactly what was expected of me and that worked so well for me that I found myself mentally singing happy songs while marching in formation.

5) My voice has a much greater range than I can actually use when performing with the choir. It all depends on who I'm following and how relaxed I am. When following a soprano I can sing most of the way up to the top of second soprano. When following the altos I have the full range now, that wasn't the case as a teenager in high school. When I have a really strong tenor voice right beside me I can now follow him partway down into that range. I've even tackled some of the higher bass notes. I discovered I could do this while singing along with the choir director at Krueger Middle School. Even he was impressed.

6) I tried out for a broadway style musical in college by singing a Korean War Song. It was Hut Sut Ralston on the Rillarah. The director was amazed and I got a part in the chorus. Here's a video clip from the Fibber & Molly Magee show of a quartet singing it.

7) I know songs from 4 wars. That probably isn't that unusual for people my age but I think it is kind of interesting. My grandparents taught me WWI songs, including Good Morning Mr. Zip. My Dad taught my sister and me stuff from WWII and the Korean War. I grew up during the Vietnam War so all those popular numbers from Hello Vietnam were familiar. And now I guess I have to add songs from a 5th war to my musical repertoir, the War on Terrorism. Who doesn't know that song by Toby Keith, Couresy of the Red, White, & Blue.