Sage
Staff Emeritus
- 12,533
- United States
- GTP_Sage
Inspired by a recent blog meme, list five things that people here probably don’t know about you. Cookie points if it’s something that even your real-life friends don’t know. I’ll start:
1 Though I haven’t talked about it with a doctor, I strongly believe that I have Restless Legs Syndrome (I meet all the criteria listed by the NIH). Ever since I was about 4 years old, I’ve always had a difficult time keeping my legs still, whether that be from standing too long or trying to go to sleep. It normally takes me about an hour to fall asleep because if I’m in one position for too long, I get this weird sensation in my legs and I have to switch positions. Long car trips are miserable for me because my legs get so uncomfortable. When I travel to Thailand (18 hours one way), I spend almost half the time standing up (near the bathroom or near the place where the stewardesses sit during takeoff/landing) because I can’t stay seated for very long.
The sensation is, as that Wiki page says, very difficult to describe – there’s almost no suitable adjective in the English language that I know of. It’s like a bizarre cross between itchiness, pin pricks, electrical current, and numbness. Once I move my legs, it goes away for between a few seconds to a few minutes. It’s very annoying though.
I haven’t talked to my doctor about it only because I honestly forget about it during my physical checkups – I’ve had it for so long that it’s a natural part of my life, and I compensate without even thinking about it. Also, it’s not so bad that it’s disruptive to my life, just really inconvenient.
2 Though I generally call myself an only child, I do have two half sisters. The reason I call myself an only child though is because I never grew up with them – they’re both in their early 40s (yes, our dad’s an oldie) and were already married and living in northern California before I was born. I do have a good relationship with them though, and we visit them (or they visit us) at least once a year, usually more.
3 I have a really strange obsession with lights, particularly automotive lamps. In fact, my passion for cars is originally rooted in car lamps, not the cars themselves – as a young child, I could readily identify cars based solely on their lamps, and I would always snap my head around if we’d just passed a car with interesting lamps or lamps that I hadn’t seen before. I was especially fixated on emergency vehicle lamps – I learned at an early age, entirely by observation, that the little row of yellow lights on the back of California Highway Patrol vehicles are used to show status: moving left to right means that they’re pulling someone over, moving right to left means that they’re ready to merge back onto the freeway, and when the outer lights interchange with the inner lights, they’re in pursuit or heading to an emergency situation.
I was so obsessed that I’d save the translucent Lego pieces in a separate pile, and use them to create unique lamps for my Lego cars, and I even mimicked the light scheme on CHP cars (the V pattern, alternating between red and blue and starting with red, with two white spotlights built into the blue housings).
I’m still obsessed with car lamps, though not as much as before. I like to test myself by trying to identify cars at night solely by their headlamps in my rearview mirror.
4 I was part of the Boy Scouts for many years, starting in 2nd grade, and ending around 10th grade. I enjoyed it very much, and had always planned on getting my Eagle. However, I decided to drop out when I was trying to get my Personal Fitness merit badge – one of the requirements was being involved in one’s religious organization. I felt bad enough being part of an organization where I had to proclaim reverence (to God) at every meeting; but having to actually discuss religious involvement with a merit badge counselor would’ve been too much lying for me. So I decided to drop out, under the pretense that I was “too busy” with school and Cross Country. That was also around the same time that the BSA evicted a Scout leader for being gay, and I have no desire to support an anti-atheist, homophobic organization. (For the record, the BSA has evicted at least three people for being atheists.) I wish I could’ve stayed, because otherwise it’s a fantastic organization, but the religious aspects were starting to weigh very heavily on my mind and fatiguing me.
5 And on that note, I attended the 2001 National Jamboree. One of our stops was the World Trade Center – which means that I visited the WTC just two months before the terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, at the time (when I was there), I had no clue how significant they were – in fact, I had never even heard of the WTC until I was there. I just remember the really long elevator ride to one of the top-ish floors and how scary it was to look down on NYC from there. It wasn’t until after the 9/11 attacks that I realized their significance to America.
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Thoughtful posts only, please.
1 Though I haven’t talked about it with a doctor, I strongly believe that I have Restless Legs Syndrome (I meet all the criteria listed by the NIH). Ever since I was about 4 years old, I’ve always had a difficult time keeping my legs still, whether that be from standing too long or trying to go to sleep. It normally takes me about an hour to fall asleep because if I’m in one position for too long, I get this weird sensation in my legs and I have to switch positions. Long car trips are miserable for me because my legs get so uncomfortable. When I travel to Thailand (18 hours one way), I spend almost half the time standing up (near the bathroom or near the place where the stewardesses sit during takeoff/landing) because I can’t stay seated for very long.
The sensation is, as that Wiki page says, very difficult to describe – there’s almost no suitable adjective in the English language that I know of. It’s like a bizarre cross between itchiness, pin pricks, electrical current, and numbness. Once I move my legs, it goes away for between a few seconds to a few minutes. It’s very annoying though.
I haven’t talked to my doctor about it only because I honestly forget about it during my physical checkups – I’ve had it for so long that it’s a natural part of my life, and I compensate without even thinking about it. Also, it’s not so bad that it’s disruptive to my life, just really inconvenient.
2 Though I generally call myself an only child, I do have two half sisters. The reason I call myself an only child though is because I never grew up with them – they’re both in their early 40s (yes, our dad’s an oldie) and were already married and living in northern California before I was born. I do have a good relationship with them though, and we visit them (or they visit us) at least once a year, usually more.
3 I have a really strange obsession with lights, particularly automotive lamps. In fact, my passion for cars is originally rooted in car lamps, not the cars themselves – as a young child, I could readily identify cars based solely on their lamps, and I would always snap my head around if we’d just passed a car with interesting lamps or lamps that I hadn’t seen before. I was especially fixated on emergency vehicle lamps – I learned at an early age, entirely by observation, that the little row of yellow lights on the back of California Highway Patrol vehicles are used to show status: moving left to right means that they’re pulling someone over, moving right to left means that they’re ready to merge back onto the freeway, and when the outer lights interchange with the inner lights, they’re in pursuit or heading to an emergency situation.
I was so obsessed that I’d save the translucent Lego pieces in a separate pile, and use them to create unique lamps for my Lego cars, and I even mimicked the light scheme on CHP cars (the V pattern, alternating between red and blue and starting with red, with two white spotlights built into the blue housings).
I’m still obsessed with car lamps, though not as much as before. I like to test myself by trying to identify cars at night solely by their headlamps in my rearview mirror.
4 I was part of the Boy Scouts for many years, starting in 2nd grade, and ending around 10th grade. I enjoyed it very much, and had always planned on getting my Eagle. However, I decided to drop out when I was trying to get my Personal Fitness merit badge – one of the requirements was being involved in one’s religious organization. I felt bad enough being part of an organization where I had to proclaim reverence (to God) at every meeting; but having to actually discuss religious involvement with a merit badge counselor would’ve been too much lying for me. So I decided to drop out, under the pretense that I was “too busy” with school and Cross Country. That was also around the same time that the BSA evicted a Scout leader for being gay, and I have no desire to support an anti-atheist, homophobic organization. (For the record, the BSA has evicted at least three people for being atheists.) I wish I could’ve stayed, because otherwise it’s a fantastic organization, but the religious aspects were starting to weigh very heavily on my mind and fatiguing me.
5 And on that note, I attended the 2001 National Jamboree. One of our stops was the World Trade Center – which means that I visited the WTC just two months before the terrorist attacks. Unfortunately, at the time (when I was there), I had no clue how significant they were – in fact, I had never even heard of the WTC until I was there. I just remember the really long elevator ride to one of the top-ish floors and how scary it was to look down on NYC from there. It wasn’t until after the 9/11 attacks that I realized their significance to America.
----
Thoughtful posts only, please.
and its about a 3 km ride
i never told my real-life friends that i like Lego
I swear -- reading, counting, and the concept of the adjective-noun relationship are lost arts that aren't taught in schools anymore. If those things were being taught, my customers wouldn't have to stare dumbfoundedly at a large, flashing message on the screen of a video game telling them what to do, or ask me how many prize tickets they have left after using 10 out of their total of 30, or ask me what "disappearing ink" is.
