curious4. When I'm having a bad day and want comfort food, I go home and curl up with a big bowl of frozen peas that have been heated in the microwave. All I put on them is a) salt, and b) pepper. This stems from a childhood misinterpretation of what chickpeas were, when the characters in a book I loved ate "fresh hot buttered chickpeas."
3. My family was very, very poor when I was younger. As a consequence, I think that butter tastes horrible, because we always got a brick of government butter in our "please don't starve to death" box. Margarine, on the other hand, is the taste of luxury. I had a bad margarine habit for a while after getting my first job, and bought a tub every time I went to the store.
2. I am very superstitious, and very picky about my superstitions. I count crows, pick up pennies, and occasionally look for auguries in bags of M&Ms. I do not, however, freak out when I see a funeral procession, or insist on touching my collar and asking magpies how their wives are. This helps me strike a good balance. Just never get between me and a street penny.
1. I have a paralyzing phobia of pudding, which extends to all "pudding-type" substances, including custard and overly-warm milkshakes. Suddenly biting into an unexpected cream filling has been known to make me throw up on the spot. Luckily, this does not extend to the unnatural white goo inside Twinkies.
So that's five things you may or may not know about me. What do you think I may or may not know about you?
December 28 2010, 14:31:16 UTC 6 years ago
5. As an Aspie, I am very set in my ways about my daily rituals. However, I am peculiar for an Aspie in that these rituals will occasionally change at random for no apparent reason. It is impossible to force me to change them, and I cannot even force myself to change them. But every now and then, one of the rituals will just... change. On its own. No apparent reason. And will feel just as ingrained as though I'd been doing it that way for years.
An example: I used to be unable to get to sleep without music going. Then, for no reason I could figure out, I couldn't get to sleep if music was going. I also keep switching back and forth between needing the sound of the fan to get to sleep, and being unable to sleep if the fan is going. It's not even regulated by season: I'm just as likely to need the fan in winter as I am in the summer, and vice versa. If it's too cold for the fan, I point it away from me. But I still need the sound. And there have been times I had to suffer sweating at night in the summer because the sound of the fan was keeping me awake.
One last example: I am usually not a superstitious person, but every now and then will suddenly become very superstitious. But, not having paid much attention to other people's superstitions, these superstitions will be unusual. "The floor is lava" is one. I can't really think of any others offhand.
4. I used to be mad about hats when I was a kid. I had soooo many hats. (Make all the mad hatter jokes you like. No, really, go ahead.) My favorite was this hat I called my Captain Hat, it was blue, with a hard black brim, and had a life preserver embroidered on it. Whenever I wore it, I was Captain Al, and the house was my ship. I would get on the porch to steer the ship safely through a raging storm. Pretty funny, considering I've never learned how to swim, or even to float, and would probably sink like a stone and drown if I ever fell in a large enough body of water.
3. Speaking of which, I almost drowned once as a child. My Dad had to pull me out, I think he may have even gone after me. I don't remember the incident, I was only 2 or so, and all memory of anything before I was 7 is completely gone, or blocked off. (Seriously, high-quality memories start around my 7th birthday. Before that, not a goddamn thing. Not one single solitary memory.) Death keeps trying to get me, and I keep kicking him in the balls. I wasn't breathing when I was born, the doctors never figured out why. I was just too full of stubborn to stay dead.
2. I used to LOOOOOOVE tapioca pudding. Then one day, Grandma called it "fish eye pudding" and I haven't had any ever since.
1. I used to do some things, as a kid, just to see people's reactions:
I'd let my hair grow as long as I could, and then get it cut really short for the reactions.
While I loved coffee, a large part of why I drank it at every restaurant I could was because most waitresses would gape at me and be like "You gonna let hir drink that?" Then I'd add that I'd been drinking coffee since I was 5, which is completely true.
At Pizza Hut Book-It pizza parties, I took full advantage of the fact that I could barely taste crushed hot peppers at all and would grab a shaker of the things and just shake shake shake until my pizza was bright red. Everyone would gape at me like I was insane, but to this day those crushed red peppers have very little burn for me. (Unless you count heartburn.)
Funny story: because of this, when I got some kung pao shrimp once, Mom and Dad warned me about the peppers, which I could tell by touching were dried. Thinking they were like the crushed peppers (and that I would thus be barely able to taste them) I put a whole one in my mouth and started chewing. Oh, I could taste it alright. BOY could I taste it! I had to spit it out and drink lots of fluids, it was so hot. Mom and Dad felt vindicated, but really, from my point of view it was a complete surprise. Something I ate large amounts of in crushed form without a problem was super-hot in whole form? How was I to know!
December 29 2010, 20:44:56 UTC 6 years ago