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December 15, 2003

What You Didn't Need to Know

1.) I have a weird obsession with brushing my teeth.
2.) If I don't brush for at least five minutes every night, I freak out and start obsessing over minor plaque and tartar buildup.
3.) This is mostly because my great-grandmother (the one with severe Alzheimer's) lost all of her teeth, and when she didn't remember to put in her dentures, you could see all the rotten stubs of teeth poking out of her gums.
4.) Gross.
5.) I figure that if I'm going to inherit the Alzheimer's, I might as well do my best to keep from rotting my teeth away.
6.) Strangely enough, I don't like flossing.
7.) Go figure.
8.) I'm black, but most people wouldn't guess that by either reading my diary or hearing my voice on the phone.
9.) I guess this is because I don't "sound" black?
10.) I like to think of myself as Cher's best friend Dionne in the movie Clueless (eg: A black girl living in upper-class suburbia).
11.) This bugs some people, especially my younger sister, who is trying to train her speaking voice to sound like a mix between Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé Knowles.
12.) I wish her good luck.
13.) When people first meet me, they act surprised to hear that I don't talk "ghetto," and that I act "intelligently." They like to make distinctions between myself and all the "other" black people they know, either on television, or in real life.
14.) This pisses me off very much.
15.) It just so happens that I listen to music from Jay-Z and Ludacris to Ben Folds and John Mayer and (almost) everyone inbetween.
16.) I like paradoxes.
17.) I also like cinnamon sugar pretzels from Auntie Anne's. Those are the best.
18.) I think the term "best friends" is overused.
19.) Truth is, I've had a lot of so-called "best friends" in my life, but they all seemed to lose their friendship quality after a while.
20.) When you don't pin someone down as your best friend, it's easier not to stress out when they drop to a mere acquaintance status...
21.) Or when they mean nothing to you at all.
22.) When I stop and think about it, I really hated high school.
23.) Of course, back then I thought I loved it when I had to go through it everyday.
24.) My belly-button is an "innie."
25.) My brother's is an "outie."
26.) It looks like a pug-nosed sausage stub.
27.) I once peed all over the carpet in the first grade, and hid the puddle with an oversized book.
28.) I was so glad the teacher never said anything.
29.) I've been reading since before I was two years old.
30.) No joke.
31.) I've also been trying not to fail (nearly) every math test I've ever taken since I was five years old.
32.) No joke.
33.) This is why I practically aced the verbal portion of my SAT and absolutely bombed the math section.
34.) Damned SAT.
35.) Every month, I get awful period cramps, and I'm usually not afraid to share my pain with complete strangers.
36.) I also enjoy embarrassing my brother whenever we pass the "feminine hygiene" aisle at the store.
37.) I have one, single, solitary blonde hair standing right above my forehead.
38.) Genetics are weird.
39.) I'm taller than most women my age, which used to frighten me.
40.) People would look up at me as though it were illegal for a woman to be so tall. Everyone suggested that I'd make a good basketball player.
41.) I tried that once.
42.) And I sucked.
43.) I do believe that my body was built for Olympic curling, a sport which I have only recently discovered in the past few years.
44.) But the training schedule is far too rigorous, so I've deferred my Olympic dreams until after I've graduated from college.
45.) I want to be a sitcom writer, did I tell you that?
46.) Well, you know now.
47.) In middle school, I'd convinced myself that I wanted to be an OB/GYN (obstetrician/gynecologist) and deliver babies for a living...
48.) That was until I actually had my first visit to the gynecologist.
49.) Pain, thy name is gynecology.
50.) So I changed my career goals, appropriately enough.
51.) In high school, I secretly wanted to go a film school and study to become a director, but my parents would have never allowed that.
52.) To them, film school graduate = future Mc Donald's franchise owner.
53.) So now I'm a journalism/communication major, hoping to land a job in public relations, and then eventually--TADA!!--a sitcom writing gig.
54.) It's a long shot, I know.
55.) I'm ashamed to say that I find Billy Bob Thornton to be somewhat attractive.
56.) ...
57.) Hey, I said I was ashamed, all right?
58.) I used to be afraid of death for a long time.
59.) If someone had recently died, I wouldn't touch their things, and if I had to spend a lengthy amount of time with an older person, I'd freak out.
60.) I'm pretty much over that now. When my grandmother died, things changed.
61.) Other than my grandfather (on my mother's side), she's the only grandparent I ever really knew.
62.) I think Whoopi Goldberg looks scary. She's funny... But still scary. Almost manly, if you will.
63.) I've seen my father in the hospital so many times, I've lost count.
64.) He's got chronic heart disease.
65.) The fact that he doesn't take care of himself doesn't help matters much.
66.) Everytime he comes back from the hospital (sometimes) with an operation, he gets all teary eyed and starts sobbing to us about how he's going to change.
67.) But he doesn't.
68.) I wonder if this is because he doesn't care about himself enough to change... Or if he doesn't care enough about us.
69.) He almost died about three years ago... I remember being scared, but I don't know if I was sad. I don't even think I really knew what was going on, since my grandma was wailing around the house, speaking in tongues with her King James Bible clutched to her chest. Nothing really made sense that summer.
70.) My dad can be a royal prick.
71.) I really love my mom, though. Even if she gets on my last nerves sometimes.
72.) My parents originally meant to name me "Veronica."
73.) My mother changed my name to "April" while my father was out of the room.
74.) I'm glad she did.
75.) I don't know half the people on my mother's side of the family.
76.) I've got close to thirty first-cousins on that side alone.
77.) Top that.
78.) I was one of the biggest dorks in high school, just a rung or two above the ranks of the "untouchable" cast of people.
79.) Of course, everyone liked me enough to nominate me "Most Likely To Write a Novel" in the yearbook.
80.) After this year's Nano fiasco, that doesn't mean much.
81.) I used to win a lot of writing contests in school...
82.) One year, I entered a contest just because I really needed the money. I didn't even care about the stupid topic ("Give us your reason for not using drugs!" in the eighth grade).
83.) Guess what? I won. A whole whopping twenty-five dollars. It made me happy, though.
84.) When I was a kid, I used to love eating cake frosting out of the little plastic cans with my finger.
85.) I'm afraid they're going to have to pump all of that frosting out of my stomach one of these days.
86.) I can't stand to look at cans of frosting now.
87.) I know it sounds stupid and cliché, but reading "The Catcher in the Rye" has really changed my life. I hate phonies and liars just as much as Holden does, and I think he's one of the most hilarious characters ever.
88.) Things like Parkinson's disease should be restricted to people like Osama Bin Laden, not Michael J. Fox. He's too cool for that.
89.) I want to show up to my 20-year high school reunion being utterly successful (in whatever I end up doing, even if it is being the future franchise owner of a local Mc Donald's), and married to someone who has appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone.
90.) That way, I can look at all the former "popular" kids and say, "Sure, I was a total loser in high school, but guess what? You're still the one living in Crusty's Trailer Park Paradise."
91.) God... I crack myself up.
92.) When I was five, my best friend Sarah lived in the apartment next door.
93.) Her father would drive this yellow car home in the middle of the night, and would sometimes be dropped off by another man.
94.) How was I supposed to know Sarah's father was gay?
95.) Her parents eventually divorced and moved away, but I never really understood what had happened until years later. All I knew was that my best friend had been taken away.
96.) That's how fragile best friends are.
97.) I still use the phrase, "When I grow up," to describe my career plans to my family.
98.) Today's my mother's birthday.
99.) If you're still reading this, you're a very dedicated person.
100.) ...Or a stalker.
101.) Congratulations, we're all done.

posted at 11:09 a.m.

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