I am incredibly shy. I come across as much more outgoing online than I am in person. I’m polite and usually pretty warm when I meet people but I’m less likely to go up and strike up a conversation with a stranger than most people are.
I talk a lot with my eyes. Unless you’ve seen a video of me posted on Facebook, you probably wouldn’t know that my eyes show a lot more of my mood and how I’m really feeling than my tone of voice does.
My guiltiest pleasure is singing along with the radio when I drive. It’s actually pretty common for me to sing along with CD’s or whatever I’m listening to on the radio when I’m in traffic, given that I have absolutely nobody around here who I feel like I have to impress. It’s how I learn music for church if we’re singing something interesting.
My son Daniel is just slightly over a foot shorter than I am. Daniel will be six in April and he is almost 4 feet tall. I’m 5’1″ so the odds are pretty good that he’ll eclipse me height-wise in the next 2 years. It also really surprises people that I’m so short because I guess I come across as taller online?
When I read, I can usually block out the world around me. One of my favorite things to do is to go curl up at a coffee shop or restaurant and get lost in a book. The only problem: I get so caught up in my reading that I will actually block out people and sound if I’m not careful. We had some parishioners in Montana who got really pissy with me over this so I have to tell people that if they want my attention and I’m not responding, they need to gently touch my hand or my shoulder.
I’m allergic to cats. Yep… I am actually allergic to cats. We found it out right after we adopted Freya and Edda and moved to Minnesota. It’s a mild allergy but Edda sleeping on my chest (her favorite spot) used to make me sniffly and my eyes feel itchy. I’m far more allergic to grass and various pollens (which is why I’m in purgatory at the moment — spring has busted out all over southern California) than I am cats though.
I am addicted to hand sanitizer. I had a preemie so I spent lots of time in the NICU after he was born and in the peds ER and PICU when he got older. When you’re around hospitals that much, you have to wash your hands and put hand sanitizer on every time you leave a room and I got into kind of an OCD habit.
For more Quick Takes, visit Kelly at This Ain’t The Lyceum.
I met someone else recently that was allergic to cats but they told me they loved their cats too much and just deal with the allergy. Didn’t you grow up with cats? Surprised it took that long for it to come out.
I can say the most interesting part of meeting online friends in person is that online you can’t really tell how short people are. So it’s always interesting to see what peoples heights are in person. 🙂
I remember meeting you in person, and you didn’t strike me as all that short (given that I’m a foot+ taller). Of course, I was lying in a hospital bed at the time, so that might have skewed my perceptions.
I can block out the world when I read as well. In fact, when I was in about 3rd grade, I got punished for ignoring my mom – I was reading and truly didn’t hear her calling me. But after that, for a whole month, I couldn’t read, except homework, when we were home together. It felt very Dante-esque to me.