Week the Ninth: Five Facts

It's Wednesday, the day I write on a vintage topic for Introvert Social Hour! Today's topic is five facts about me. I could tell facts all day but most of them would be boring, so I've tried to choose five things that most people don't know about me. Enjoy.

1. I'm fluent in sign language. I've never taken a class; I just had some deaf friends when I was a teenager and I picked it up from them. I'm not a certified interpreter just because I've never bothered, but I've interpreted tons of events and meetings and stuff, and I've taught classes, so I'm very confident about my mad signing skilz.

I don't have a picture of me signing but you can use your imagination, right?

2. I've broken bones three times in my life. First my right arm when I was 11 (fainted because of going out of a hot, stuffy classroom into chilly outside air and fell on it), then my left hand and fingers when I was 16 (fell out of a swing because the chain was broken; chain wrapped around my fingers and crushed them then I fell ~12 feet to the ground, landing on the same hand), and finally one toe when I was in my 30s (sandal made me trip and the toe hit a concrete step at high speed). This "fact" is only interesting, I think, because of the horrific hand incident.

No picture of my broken hand either, but this is basically how I looked for two months.

3. I've fainted two other times, in addition to the one above. Once was about 20 years ago while I was driving to work after taking painkillers. Genius, I know. Fortunately, I was in the country and I just drove into a cotton field. Also fortunately, I was maybe 300 meters/yards or so from my work so I just walked over there. Had to call a tow truck to get my car out, but I was ok. The other time was also a bad reaction to medicine, just fell over while I was walking through my house maybe 5 years ago. I was ok that time too. Again, only really interesting because of the idiotic driving thing.

This, on the other hand, is TOTALLY me. OBVIOUSLY.

4. I've never smoked (a cigarette or anything else) even once in my life. Furthermore, not only have I never smoked weed, I'd never even seen it anywhere but tv and movies until a few months ago when I saw a small amount that was confiscated from a student. I've never seen any other kind of illegal drugs either, and I've never been given or offered drugs in my life. I guess either people have always thought I'm not the type (I'm not) and/or they haven't liked me enough to offer it (they probably haven't).

5. The one time I got drunk it was a total accident and I didn't even know I was drunk. I went to a wedding in... maybe around 1993 or something like that?... and at the reception the only things they had to drink were beer (ewww) and wine coolers (sweet and tolerable). No water, no punch, nothing else. Extremely irresponsible of them, but what's done is done, I guess. Anyway, I don't drink at all, never have, but it was hot and I was thirsty so I started drinking wine coolers. I wasn't wild about them, but they were small (and did I mention it was really hot?) so I drank a lot of them.

I knew they contained alcohol, of course; hence the word "wine". But they're only, like, 5% wine and 95% sweet fruity stuff so I didn't worry too much. I guess it added up after I drank like a dozen of them. I'd never really experienced alcohol before and it didn't occur to me that it was the culprit even then, so when I started feeling dizzy and weak, I honestly thought I was getting the flu. That was confirmed in my mind when I woke up even sicker the next morning. My (future) husband had to explain to me that I was hung over, and I didn't believe him at first. I learned my lesson though. I've never done anything like that again and don't plan to in the future. Do not like.

There you go, five fun facts. That was simple enough. Remember to leave your questions and comments below 'cause I'd love to hear from you! And if you're interested, you can also find me on Twitter.

Thanks again for reading! If you haven't seen the videos that go along with this post, they are:
Jill, Kristina, Frieda, and Amy

And that's it from me on this Wednesday. Best wishes! <3