'Til The Cows Come Home

1-25 26 Things About Me

I've avoided doing one of those "100 Things About Me" lists for quite some time, but as I'm sitting here staring at a blank post template (well, it's not blank anymore since I've just written this, but whatever) and can't think of anything else to write about today, I thought I'd give it a whirl. Several bloggers have done this in installments, and I have decided to go that route as well.

Without further delay, the first 25 things about me:

1. I was born on February 17, 1976 at roughly 10:32 p.m., in Cleveland, Ohio.
2. I am an Aquarius.
3. I was born three weeks late, and I have yet to learn how to be punctual.
4. February 17, 1976 was the first and only time I have experienced the inside of a vagina.
5. As further proof that homosexuality is genetic and not a chosen lifestyle, they had to pull me through the vagina with a pair of forceps because I didn't want to take the trip voluntarily (no offense, Mom).
6. As a result, all of the pictures of me during my first few days of life show large tong impressions on my face.
7. Before I was born, my parents had a dog named Tramp who was very partial to and protective of my sister. Tramp didn't like me. He saw me as a threat to my sister's existence. That posed a problem.
8. Tramp was eventually sent to live on a farm. I'm told it was a very pretty farm, with lots of space for him to run around.
9. I was a robust infant, to say the least. So much so that people often mistook my sister and I for twins even though she is fifteen months older than me.
10. My size and my constant craving for sweets earned me the nickname Fat Matt, bestowed upon me by my maternal grandmother (you can read that story here).
11. As a child, I had a major aversion to green vegetables, something that I still struggle with to this day.
12. Because I was often told that I wouldn't get dessert until I had eaten all of my vegetables, I would chew the vegetables and store the mush in little pockets between my teeth and my cheeks so that my parents couldn't see them when they asked me to open my mouth for verification of vegetable consumption. When they discovered my ploy, it earned me the nickname Chipmunk.
13. I had other nicknames as a child. My third grade teacher called me Chicken Feet because my mother made us line our snow boots with Shake-N-Bake bags as an extra waterproofing measure.
14. In the fourth grade, I had my first leading role in a dramatic production. It was called "This Land Is Your Land" and was the Thanksgiving pageant that year.
15. I was selected by the teacher to be Narrator #1. She let me pick my own Narrator #2.
16. I picked a girl by the name of L.S. because I had a crush on her.
17. I'm not so sure if I had a crush on her or wanted to braid her hair.
18. Coincidentally, L.S. ended up being the freshman year college roommate of my friend B.J. (yes, unfortunate initials), who was one of my closest friends during high school.
19. Years later, at the end of my senior year in high school, when B.J. became one of the first people to learn that I was gay, her reaction was to tell me, "But I always thought there could be something between us. You really want to throw opportunity away?" Yes, I really did.
20. Around that same time (fourth grade-ish), my family took a road trip to Connecticut to visit friends of the family. For the road trip, my siblings and I each got to buy a Walkman and two cassettes. I chose the latest albums from The Bangles and The Jets. That was pretty gay, even back then.
21. I played t-ball when I was in first grade.
22. I played soccer for several years in elementary school.
23. I never scored a goal, not once during all those years. But I developed a lifelong appreciation for soccer shorts.
24. With the exception of one day on the junior high cross country team, I never played team sports again.
25. Unless you count group sex as a team sport.
26. But I can't talk about that here, because my mother reads this, and we've already shocked her enough by openly discussing her vagina.

(Thanks, Jere, for catching my numbering error. That just means I have one less to do!)