7 random things tag

Margo tagged me for this, an even though I should be studying for my Evidence final tomorrow, I'll do it. I'll do it BECAUSE I should be studying for my evidence final tomorrow. Apologies if I have told you some or all of these things before.

Here are 7 random things about me:

1. I have really big feet. They are long and thin and flat, fanning out from my narrow heels and small, weak ankles. I am not a tall person--only 5'6"--but I have size 10-10 1/2 feet. Size 10 men's, that is. That's, like, a 12 in women's shoes, which by the time they get to that size are no longer for women-born women. I once contributed an article having to do with sexuality to a book on shoes, and pointed out in my author bio that I had to buy pumps at stores frequented by transvestites, models, or both. The editor of the collection thought this was hilarious--perhaps because my rather stocky ("husky," as my mom used to tactfully put it) embodiment would never conjure either of these two figures to mind.

2. I have almost no food dislikes. I'll happily consume almost anything. This includes liver, hot peppers, wasabi, anchovies, sashimi, ceviche, snails, mussels, herring. Anything. I like my red meat and fish raw or nearly raw. I adore vegetables and salads--huge salads. The one exception is crackers in milk. When we were small and my mother was working nights as a nurse, my stepfather sometimes put saltines in milk and gave it to us. Apparently he was fed this as a child and thought we would like it, poor man. However, I used to view this "meal" as yet another sign of his sadistic nature, and to this day the thought of faintly salty crackers dissolving in a bowl of cold milk fills me with impotent rage.

3. TV drives me crazy, but this has less to do I think with a critique of its intellectual content than it does with the autonomy issues that arise in the context of family viewing. GF loves TV. I prefer movies. I often watch TV with her, though, and like it. She often accedes to our movie dates with friends. Still, we have an uneasy truce.

TV today is good--brilliant, even. There are shows--lots of shows--I watch regularly. Heroes, Battlestar, Kid Nation, Project Runway--the good and the bad together. But when that thing goes on in your house, you are supposed to drop what you are doing in your life until the commercial break, when you are allowed to talk, get up, get food or drinks, pee. If you leave the scene during the show, the people watching it--and we often have friends come over to watch TV-- feel as if you are not being properly communal. I hate that.

I used to have to watch TV with my mother, and that's probably where some of my resentment comes in. If she was watching "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" or "China Beach" alone, look out--she'd lasso you to come sit with her, at least until the next commercial break. She just wanted company, but as a teenager, I wanted to do my own thing. Of course you don't turn down a request like that, but I remember feeling sullen. Of course, now I'd give anything just to sit beside her for an hour, watching M.A.S.H.. I wonder how she would feel about the sluttiness of Grey's Anatomy.

4. I'm a completely unfashionable person with a keen appreciation for fashion and hair--especially hair. A college girlfriend taught me how to cut hair, and usually I follow hair trends with keen interest, even briefly considering beauty school after I didn't get tenure. Flat feet, weak ankles, and a fondness for cargo pants made me rethink standing on my feet all day trying to look hip while touching the heads of strangers, but I reserve the right to drop my ridiculous intellectual pretenses at any time and just "do" hair.

5. I can teach animals how to do things. I grew up as a rural Four-H kid with horses, and I have owned several dogs, so training animals is second nature. At a dinner party not long ago I taught a friend's dog to "shake" for table scraps, much to their pride and consternation. Apparently he is still hard at it.

6. I am freakishly strong and my sister is too. An ex once characterized us as The Strongest Women Alive. We are both bruisers, like the big clumsy sisters in the Mary Poppins books. I can lift enough weight in a gym to make men stare, and I have seen my sister carry her gigantic six-year-old up and down New Hampshire's White Mountains in a backpack while hardly breaking a sweat.

7. I can draw. When I was a kid I used to draw self-portraits, and if I can get someone to sit for me I can usually draw them pretty well. I seldom take the time for this any more, which is too bad, since it is deeply pleasurable. I painted a nude of GF in oils which I hung in the livingroom, prompting her to ask why when I got inspired did her ass end up on the wall. This is a great question but the painting is still hanging in there. I look at it sometimes when we are watching TV.

And now, back to Evidence.

Which leads me to a final random fact, this one about Evidence, for those of you not in the law loop. Remember all those TV shows with courtroom scenes where lawyers would jump up and say, "Objection! Hearsay!" I used to think that they meant, "Oh, someone is just saying that! They can't prove it!" Which makes me wonder about all the "law" things we see on TV and in the movies that are never defined for us. I think there are a lot of them, and I think it's a little scary that we THINK we know what they are about, but don't. Which is to say, I'm really glad I'm going to law school, even though it it often hellish, because now I get to find out what the heck is really going on. I feel this a lot when I read the newspaper and I understand the point of a story about the death penalty, say, or felony murder.

Random Evidence Fact: Hearsay is an out of court statement offered to prove the truth of the matter asserted. We don't like hearsay because we can't evaluate the truth or falseness of a statement made out of court. We want the person who made it to say it in court, and be cross-examined about it. Which is not to say we don't let in hearsay--in fact there are a lot of hearsay exceptions that are allowed in, such as emotional responses("Oh my God! He drove right into that tree!"). But for the most part we are suspicious of it.

File that away for your next episode of Boston Legal.