10 Weird Experiences

Tagged once again! This time by JulieAnn, whom I like enough to play along. Or, better yet, I have nothing else to write right now, so I'll play. I like everyone who tags me.

OK...

1. I've noticed that it seems that people who tag me do so on the "weird things" tags. What are they trying to say, exactly? Hmmmmm?

2. Before I knew Benadryl did this to me, I took two pills once in high school when I had a cold, and I fell asleep during class. I was so tired, I could have fallen asleep standing. I never took it again.

3. Before I was 16, a boy from a different town I met during a scout training week (my parents were avid Boy Scouters) mailed me a pair of cross earrings tucked inside a love letter. I knew I'd never be able to wear them, because I was Mormon and Mormons don't worship or acknowledge the cross as a sacred symbol. I also knew because he wasn't Mormon that it'd never work out. I hid the earrings and looked at them often before throwing them away.

4. I jumped the wall of a cemetery in Vienna once with some BYU Study Abroad students. It was beautiful, because there were candles burning on all the graves (which were raised box-style graves made of stone or cement - what are those called?). I'd like to go and do that again. I wonder if that chair is still hidden in the shrubs outside the wall?

5. One time I was at my grandma's house in Layton, Utah, and we were teasing my much older cousin who tried to get me while I ran by him. I yelled at him, "Missed me! Missed me! Now you gotta kiss me!" He chased me until he caught me, and I was genuinely horrified when he DID kiss me, full on the lips. Just thinking of it makes me shiver again. I steered very clear of him from then on.

6. Same cousin. One time we were visiting at Grandma's house and he was outside, working on his car, when all of a sudden he ran in the house, screaming. The radiator cap had come off, spraying him with boiling hot water. I peeked in the bathroom as he was sitting in the bathtub of cool water, covered all over in big blisters.

7. One night, my cousin Jill and I were lying in our sleeping bags out on her trampoline in Salt Lake City, telling secrets and watching falling stars. All of a sudden, something huge flew over us silently, making all the stars disappear to blackness as it crossed directly above us. We never knew what it was, but we were freaked out. I wonder now if it was an owl flying low.

8. When I was a majorette in high school, I marched in a weekend parade. My friend dropped me off at home afterward, and I was locked out. I knocked and knocked and rang the doorbell for hours, knowing my sister Val was sleeping in there, but she never heard me. I was so damn mad. And hungry! The garage door was open so I sat out there and ate Tang powder straight from the can while I waited over two hours for someone to come home. I still have no idea what she was on to be able to sleep through me banging on the door, ringing the doorbell, and throwing rocks on her bedroom window. I never wanted to kill someone so bad as I did that day. I've also never had to go to the bathroom that bad before or since.

9. I wouldn't wear shorts in public when I was a teen because I thought they were too revealing and that my legs were ugly. But is this actually "weird" when you grow up being taught by your father that tank tops and mini-skirts are what sluts and whores wear?

10. I was voted "Most Likely to Have Eight Kids" in my high school yearbook. WTF? I had six younger brothers and sisters and felt like I had already done years of mothering by the time I graduated high school. Oy.