First -- and perhaps last -- time I do this

Only because Bridget made me and I love her nearly as much as life itself.

Six Weird Things About Me:

1. I have an uncanny ability to identify voices, such as commercial voice-overs and lead singers of songs. Even when the voice belongs to someone relatively obscure, like a bit actor or one-hit wonder rock group.

2. When I was seven years old, my family lost everything we owned when the Susquehanna River overflowed 38-foot-high levees and flooded my hometown during Hurricane Agnes. Rescue workers rode boats over my two-story house. (Aside: Now me, I say this is merely unfortunate, and not weird. Maybe because nearly everyone I know from my hometown had the same thing happen. But my husband says this is officially weird. You decide.)

3. When I was in kindergarten I had a Miss America metal lunchbox.



One day we had a fire drill, and I asked the teacher if I could run back to the coatroom and save my Miss America lunchbox. [She said no, because my parents could buy me a new Miss America lunchbox but she couldn't buy a new me for my parents.]

4. I learned to read at a young age (three). My father taught me by sitting me on his lap with Guns & Ammo magazine, and helping me sound out words like "Win-ches-ter." Because of my precocious reading skills, my parents’ neighbors would call me over to have me read random articles from the newspaper, as a kind of parlor trick for their dinner parties. I distinctly remember reading an article about marijuana, which I mispronounced “mary jane-ah.” The dinner party guests were highly amused. (Probably having just smoken some mary-jane-ah. This was the the late 1960s, you know.)

5. I was a childhood model. My father owned a small company that produced educational filmstrips and he frequently photographed family members to use as part of the filmstrips. If you've ever seen scintillating programs like "Fun With Magnets," you may have seen me.



Yep, that's me in the knee socks. Oh, the horror! I often wonder what would have happened if the US actually adopted the metric system. Perhaps I would have a trust fund, a McMansion and no consumer debt...

6. We have a bomb shelter in our backyard.