The "25 Things" Thing

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

If you got tagged on this one, write 25 interesting facts about yourself and tag other people (and the person who sent this to you) and pass it on.

25. I was in my all-girls’ high school’s production of the musical 1776. My character got rum for the founding fathers and said “Sweet Jesus” a lot.

24. I was a History major in college. I was also one credit short of a Math minor.

23. I used to be anti-sports and anti-athletics, almost as a matter of principle. So, I’m a bit surprised that I now keep a regular gym schedule.

22. When I was in kindergarten, I was obsessed with Alice in Wonderland. I even wore an “Alice” costume to school on several occasions.

21. I was on the debate team at high school, and was pretty horrible at it. Still, it was fun to attend various meets and debate topics like “Bert and Ernie are/are not Gay” and “The National Anthem should/should not be Changed to Gangster’s Paradise.” The highlight of the debate team experience was the annual tournament at UC Berkeley. We would stay at “Grandma’s Bed and Breakfast,” eat at the vegan diner, and walk around the shops near Berkeley. And, because I wasn’t very good and didn’t qualify for finals, I had more time to do the fun stuff.

20. A few years ago, I bought a mandolin on a whim. Sadly, I never learned to play it.

19. When I was a child, one of my favorite books was The Witches. I wanted to buy white mice like the boy in the book, but my mom got me a hamster instead.

18. I was kissed in Paris, but it was totally unromantic. My friend and I were accosted by a caricaturist en route to the Louvre. He was very pushy, and I was too polite to shoo him away, so he drew my caricature. I was at least able to pay less than the asking price. When I left, he gave me a kiss.

17. During my junior year of high school, I had to memorize and recite the first few lines of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English. I can still recite it.

16. One of the biggest events at my college was ‘May Day.’ On the morning of May Day of the students would wear white dresses, dine on strawberries and cream, and head over to Merion Green. After the headmaster gave a speech, some students from each class would go around the maypole (people lined up at dawn to get on the ‘maypole list’). There were other activities during the day, including a Robin Hood play, an archery contest, and a hoops race for the Seniors. During my Senior year (which was actually a ‘Grand’ May Day), we even had an air balloon.

15. When I was a kid, I got angry with my family and decided to run away to my grandparents’ house. My sense of direction was horrid, so I ended up getting lost. My mom drove around, found me a few blocks away from our house, and took me back home.

14. My apartment is close to the Hollywood sign. Sometimes, I will look out the window and see tourists posing for pictures right outside my apartment.

13. When my sister and I were young, we created a theme park, called "Chrissieland." I even designed a map of the park in MS Paint. Chrissie wanted me to go to the next level and create "Chrissieworld," but I never ended up doing it.

12. In college I had a cactus. I placed it by the alarm clock. With obvious results.

11. I had my own theorem in high school. I was in Mr. Scheleunes’ Pre-Calculus class in eleventh grade, and I asked something along the lines of “if this is true, wouldn’t this also be true?” He called it the “Jenny Theorem,” and would use it from time to time during the class. I thought he was joking, but I later found out that (1) the “Theorem” wasn’t in any textbooks, and (2) Mr. Schleunes taught the “Jenny Theorem” to other classes, too. I kind of regret that I didn’t know this earlier, because I would have actually made the effort to remember what the “Jenny Theorem” was.

10. If I could choose a superpower, I would want it to be shapeshifting.

9. I had two hamsters during my childhood. When my first hamster, Sniffy, died, I was quite upset. I refused to believe that he had passed on, insisting that he was ‘asleep.’ It took me a while to get over the loss. When my second hamster, Sherlock, died, I was nonplussed.

8. At my high school graduation, we didn’t wear caps and gowns. Instead, we wore matching white dresses. We spent weeks picking and voting on the designs; it was like having 90 brides pick a single wedding gown. Fortunately, some of us, including me, didn’t care that much.

7. Bryn Mawr is one of the few colleges that still has a gym requirement. To get out of the requirement with a minimum of pain, I enrolled in the geekiest sports possible, like badminton, scuba diving, archery, and fencing. These sports were not without their risks, however; I got a terrible ear infection from the scuba class.

6. When I was 12, my family went on a whirlwind tour of several places, including Cairo, Egypt. I was inspired by the trip to try and make papyrus out of corn husks. Unfortunately, it didn’t really work; the “papyrus” never dried, and it smelled terrible.

5. I didn’t get my driver’s license until after my 21st birthday.

4. I was on my high school paper, the “Ultra Violet” (students at my school were called “Violets”) I wrote articles, and was also an editor (I can’t remember what section I edited). However, my biggest contribution was as an artist; I would draw various cartoons to accompany the stories and editorials. As I recall, most of my hard-hitting editorial cartoons involved a drawing of something with a question mark on top. For example, if I needed to draw a cartoon for an article about smoking, I would draw a cigarette with a smoky question mark coming out. If I needed to draw a cartoon about the book store, I’d draw a book with a bunch of question marks instead of text. It was all very insightful.

3. I was in an episode of Nickelodeon’s ‘Wild and Crazy Kids.’ The TV crew came to my summer camp and had us play a game of giant twister.

2. I went to Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, and lived on campus for the entirety of my law school career. The school itself was a bit conservative, so it had the following rules in place: (1) unmarried students could not have people of the opposite sex stay in their dorms overnight, and (2) the students, all of whom were over 21, could not keep alcohol in their dorms. I have to admit that I broke rule 2 during my final year, but only because I needed a place to store the wine I purchased during my Santa Barbara wine tasting trip. However, I did ask my roommates’ permission beforehand.

1. While I was in high school, I took a summer animation class at UCLA. My final project was a 20-second film about dragons eating doughnuts.