Okay, I’ll play. I got “tagged” by another blog, by Henri and since I’ve seen this done on other people’s blogs, I guess it’s a fun thing to do: tell eight things that most people don’t know about me. 

1. My mother thinks that I had a past life, because when I was four years old, I was watching her plant zinnias one by one, and then said very calmly to her, “That’s not the way we used to do it in the army.”

2. Despite being reasonably intelligent, I am the only person I know who never, ever knows what is going to happen in a movie. Little children can see the way something is going to end, and I’m still stunned. 

3. One of the craziest things I ever did was getting married when I was 18 years old–in a hippie wedding that took place on the beach in Santa Barbara in the middle of winter. I wore a long white dress that I made myself, and a veil from a friend who had gotten divorced. I came through the woods to Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, played on a tape recorder.

4. The marriage was a mistake, just like everyone told me it would be. But I got two wonderful kids from it, so it can’t be written off as a total mistake, can it?

5. I can always get a parking spot when I want one, right where I need it to be. I just say that it’s going to happen and it does. I am now trying that out with other things I need–like, say, houses in Italy.

6. I am the only one in my family who does not think it is wrong to cheat at solitaire.

7. I have never learned to whistle or to blow bubbles with chewing gum, despite repeated lessons from many, many experts, both children and adults.

8. I love to go on the spin-around rides in amusement parks, like the swings, and I adore Ferris wheels and things that put me way up high, but I hate the speedy ones, like roller coasters.