Five Things You Didn’t Know About Anna

I’ve been watching these “five things about me” tag going around and around the blogosphere lately and have enjoyed reading tidbits on everyone’s lives. I especially love the things that are personal and have nothing to do with educational technology – things that are just wow, how interesting! Helen and I were tagged by Silvia Tolisano. So here are my five things…

1. The first is my gratuitous hokey fact. But it’s true. I married my very best friend. It took me awhile, before we were dating, to accept that it would be okay to date my very best friend. And then it took me awhile to realize it was okay to marry my very best friend, but that’s another story. I did. And I love and adore him. We’ve certainly had our trials in our lives and in our marriage. But I just can’t imagine life without him. As of this writing, we’ve been friends for seventeen years and married for eleven and a half of those, and have shared the ups and downs of kids for seven of those. And we’ll be married at least until forever. Okay /mush.
2. I have an unreasonable fear of natural disasters. Tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods. I think it’s a control thing. I’m not sure. But I would love to visit California, for example, and I’m still trying to gather the courage to do so, as I imagine as soon as I step off the plane, the earthquake to end all earthquakes will cause the entire state will break off from the rest of the Union and sink into the ocean. My husband laughs as I gather the children into the closet to play flashlight games everytime we get a tornado warning around here.
3. I can do the hokie pokie with my eyeballs. Basically, I can cross them, sure, but I can also leave one pointed inward and move the other in and out. Almost individual control over each eye except I can’t point both eyeballs outwards.
4. When I was in middle school – seventh grade, I think – I became a militant left-hander. I’ve always been left handed for most things, but at this time I took it to a whole new level. I had playing cards that when fanned as right-hander, none of the numbers and suits would show in the corner (fan a regular deck like a left-hander!). I had spiral notebooks bound on the right. Measuring cups, scissors. I had quotes of left-handers listed out. And a list of famous left-handers available to share with anyone who would listen (not many). But the biggie was that I wrote everything from right to left and in a complete mirror image of the “right-way.” It was actually quite easy to do. If you’re left-handed, try it out. I had accepting teachers, thank goodness, that held my papers in front of mirrors to read and to grade. My handwriting from right to left was far better than from left to right, and with just a few minutes of practice, it still is.
5. I have tinnitus. I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. I remember hating when we had to be completely quiet in school because the ringing in my ears became so loud to me that it bothered me and I wondered how the teacher could even stand it. I’d often fidget and make noise (and get in trouble) just for the white noise to block out the sound. The thing is, I didn’t realize anything was different with me. I thought there was just no such thing as actual silence. I think that’s part of what interested me in deaf education initially. Because I thought deaf people were the only ones that could “hear” true silence. It wasn’t until an audiology class in COLLEGE that I found out that I have a condition that most people don’t – at least not to this degree. I wept. I still have tinnitus and have done nothing for it medically. Just the knowing is enough to make me feel better about it and I have learned coping strategies. And I make good use of my white noise alarm clock at night. Besides, with three young kids, I barely ever have enough silence to notice the ringing.

So those are my five things. I don’t know who else to tag as most of the edublogs I’ve read have had the five things already and then the ones that haven’t don’t really know me because I seem to lurk and stalk their blogs. Okay, well, I’ll tag Tim Lauer, Dan Schmidt, Lorie Mitchell, and Tim Stahmer. I would say Stephen Downes, but he’s having some difficulty with his host right now and I’m not so sure he cares to be tagged. Well, I’m not sure ANY of those I tagged care to be tagged but oh well. I was going to cop-out and tag anyone who reads this blog that has his/her own blog that hasn’t already posted their five things. Wait, I think I’ll still do that! Please be sure to comment here so we can go read yours, too!

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