Coffee and cigarettes…

The following is something of a difficult memesheep adventure, as I am by nature an exceedingly private person.

1. I have a limited form of synesthesia (inputs to one sense trigger sensations in others). For example: Purple smells like vanilla, which is a favorite scent of mine. I can feel the sound of stringed instruments up and down my spine like light fingernails. Sadly, the reverse of both of those is not true.
2. I have never broken a bone. The worst injury I’ve ever sustained was a ‘broken’ ankle, which was more that the cartilage in the joint got shredded.
3. I’m a complete lactose addict. A day without milk products is a private form of hell.
4. I have set foot on all seven continents – though my visit to Africa was measured in hours and I never saw the outside of the airport. I accomplished this without benefit of a passport.
5. My greatest fear is going either blind or deaf. Just the thought of being either of those will induce a panic attack.
6. I talk to my maternal grandfather every day. He died almost ten years ago.
   6a. Sometimes, he answers.
7. (No surprise to some…) I have Asperger Syndrome. I wasn’t formally diagnosed until I was 28. I didn’t share this information with anyone else until I was 33.
8. Someone can insult me all day long and I won’t care, but compliments of any kind cause me to pray for lightning to strike me instantly dead.
9. I use humor to hide that I am a dreadfully boring person.
10. Despite the fact I love to cook and to eat, I forget to do so at least twice a week.
11. When I was in second grade, I was listening to a book-on-tape through headphones and tried to talk to the kid next to me. Due to the headphones (the old ear-covering huge ones), I wound up being quite loud as I tried to hear myself speak. This caused the teacher to yell at me, in front of everyone for several minutes, for being too loud. I didn’t speak at all for almost a year afterward, and to this day I have to make a conscious effort to speak above a whisper.
    11a. As far as I know, the teacher never realized what she’d done.
12. The most awful thing I can think of to wish on someone is that they live in perfect health, forever.
13. The only justification I have ever used for anything I’ve done in my life is “because I can”.
14. I lose respect instantly for anyone who blames others for their own shortcomings. Likewise, I only respect those who admit their faults and work to overcome them.
15. I have a near-photographic memory. I consider this a curse, because it gets harder and harder to experience something new in life, when everything you do reminds you of something you’ve already done before. As if that weren’t enough, every memory is equally weighted – five minutes ago is just as current as fifteen years back. To give you an idea of just how fun that is: when someone asks me for my phone number, I have to consciously evaluate which one of the 12 I’ve had in my life is my current one.
    15a. However, my retrieval system is going faulty – my mental records clerk has developed ADD and Alzheimer’s, which means I can’t always remember something right when I want to do so, and often wind up remembering something wildly unconnected yet somehow relevant instead. I actually think this is why I haven’t yet gone insane… as far as I know, anyway.
16. I made a list of the proverbial Three Wishes when I was six. In thirty years, I’ve never had cause to revise them.
    1. To have just enough money to not worry about the bills, but not enough that it would change who I am.
    2. For stupidity to be painful, and that the pain be proportionate to the stupidity in question – i.e. little dumb things would be like bumping your shin, and major stupidity be like being gutshot.
    3. A good set of ear plugs.