The most common words I hear when someone describes me are: “weird”, “unique”, “different”. They may not be my first, second, or third choices, but I embrace them as partially true nonetheless.
I was born with the gift of accepting self-deprecating humor quite graciously…most of the time. When you do as many ridiculous, ditsy, and embarrassing things as I do learning to laugh at oneself is absolutely imperative to keeping a positive attitude. Miraculously, and mysteriously, I still manage to come off as somewhat clever despite my ungraceful shortcomings . It’s a gift. Examples include: Cutting my lip with a pickle spear, having the serial number of my car manifold branded to my arm, or shutting a locked door that resulted in having to spend the night in the Entomology building with hundreds of gigantic cockroaches scurrying about—all happened. The spear incident was one of those moments where I had to physically check my lip in the mirror to see if I was capable of wounding myself with a pickle. I was very capable. Being branded by my car was a secondary discovery. I was relaying the story of my car breaking down and how I attempted to grab the starter switch but was burned by the manifold. As I lifted my arm to display the burn I exclaimed, “Ah, jeezus! You HAVE to be kidding me!?” Neatly branded on my forearm, in the color of freshly burned skin, “4739″ appeared clearly. Now, the lab incident: Initially, I tried picking the lock and gave up quickly in hopes of finding a spare set of keys. Every janitorial closet door I opened seemed to cast light on numerous scurrying insects, so that plan was also abandoned rather hastily. Freaked out and paranoid from all the creepy crawlers, I found an “empty” room to bunk in for the night. I was not laughing at my plight, but my professor/boss got a kick out of the note scrawled on a paper plate (it was all I could find), “Locked myself out. In a room down the hall somewhere…if you can’t find me, the roaches got me. Help!” Not hilarious to me at all, Professor.
