Yo La Tejo

Catching up with the Memes. (Installment 3 of 3.)

This is the last meme for the time being that I needed to get caught up on, after doing the Flash Your Stash and the Knitter's Memes. Since I don't yet have the "100 Things About Me," I figured this would be a good way to get started. I'll just build on it whenever the mood strikes me! (And as my exams approach, I'm sure this list will grow very quickly.)

Twenty Things About Me

1. I was born in Monterrey, Mexico.

2. I lived there for the first 8 months of my life, then was brought to Chicago, where I lived for the next 20 or so years.

3. We would drive to Mexico once every two years for summer vacation, in our lemon yellow, wood-paneled station wagon. The seats were pleather, and I don't remember wearing seat belts, ever. We would beg to stop at Stuckey's on the way down, and we would blow our allowance on tacky little ceramic toothpick holders, or cedar doo-dads (like eyeglass holders or boxes or keychains).

4. Since I was the only sibling born in Mexico, I would lord it over my sister as we crossed the border that we were coming back to "mi tierra."

5. My sister and I would have screaming, knockdown, dragout fights while we were growing up. I can't imagine ever fighting with her now.

6. I went to Catholic school for all of grade school and some of high school. I think it's scarred me for life.

7. I was the biggest bookworm as a kid. While the rest of my eighth-grade class tore up the classroom and terrorized the 75-year-old nun who taught us, I buried myself in the corner, nose in a book. My favorite outing? A trip to the library and a Poncho's paleta on the way back.

8. My favorite books were Alice in Wonderland and Gone With the Wind. They still are.

9. My life changed when I got contact lenses at the age of 14. Suddenly, boys noticed me. Yep, it was the contact lenses.

10. I had my quinceanera in Mexico so that most of my family could attend, but I had no friends there. So my chambelan/escort was my cousin, who looked like he wished he were having his fingernails pulled out one by one, instead of being my "date."

11. I met M., my husband-to-be, in high school. His pickup line was to tell me that I looked like Madonna.

12. My secret fantasy as a teenager was to be Madonna.

13. M. and I got married at the age of 22.

14. M. and I got divorced at the age of 29.

15. I lived in New York through most of my 20s, which were some of the best and most difficult years of my life.

16. I love New York and sometimes fantasize about living there again. Then I look at the real estate section of the NY Times to cure myself of that delusion.

17. I worked in publishing until I was finally disabused of the notion that publishing is inherently a literary pursuit. It is not. It is a profit-making venture, at which people with killer sales instincts excel. And I do not.

18. For me, working in sales always reminds me of the traumatizing grade school experience of selling World's Finest Chocolates, in the cold, at the entrance to McDonald's (because the wrapper had a coupon printed on the inside). "Would you like to buy a chocolate? Would you like to buy a chocolate?" my sister and I would meekly ask, as people brushed past us, Big Macs and Happy Meals in hand. Other kids got their parents to sell their chocolates for them at work.

19. My dad worked at a Brach's candy factory.

20. My dad busted his ass at that factory so that we could all get our Catholic school educations and go to college, and he has never once questioned my decision to do something so esoteric as get a Ph.D. in literature, instead of becoming a CPA, or something sensible like that. My mom also supports my academic dawdling, nomas con que sigas adelante (as long as I keep moving ahead). Gracias, con todo mi corazon.

On this Thanksgiving weekend, I am grateful for my parents, and my family, and my friends, and that I am so blessed to be doing something that I love, in one of the best cities in the country!

posted by Olga @ 12:44 AM