50 Weird Things About MCF

We all have our idiosyncrasies, things that set us apart from other people and make us unique. Some can be scary, while others aren't as bad as we think, and in sharing them we learn we have more in common with other human beings than we realize. Taking a cue from Janet's most recent Tell it to Me Tuesday, I present 50 things I find weird about myself. Read on, if you dare...

1. My left thumb is precisely .25” shorter than my right one.

2. My thumbs resemble toes.

3. I had an ex-girlfriend frequently say I reminded her of John Cusack. I've tended to compare myself to people like Rob Schneider or Paul Giamatti. I'm honestly not sure which of us had the truer image of me.

4. I'm 31 years old and I still live with my parents.

5. I still have every homework assignment and notebook from college all the way back to kindergarten.

6. I've never traveled further North than Massachusetts, further West than Pennsylvania, further South than North Carolina, or further East than Montauk Point. I've flown precisely twice in my life.

7. Embarrassing songs I have committed to memory include but are not limited to Ice, Ice, Baby, Bohemian Rhapsody, and Nightmare on My Street.

8. Never a morning person, when I was in college I'd force myself to wake up with “inspirational” phrases like ”Time to make the donuts”, ”I am the Pumpkin King!”, or “Get up, and get moving, and change your life!” That last one was from a commercial I heard a lot growing up and the phrase was followed by “...with travel and tourism training!”.

9. It's going to bother me for days that I couldn't find a link for that last phrase in #8.

10. When I was five, I fell off a tree stump and landed on a piece of glass, splitting my lip up to my right nostril. The scar has faded over the years and save for the fact that any time I grow a mustache it will have a thin part, I don't think people notice it all that much. Nevertheless, in my mind, I think it's as bad as Ralph Fienne's hairlip in Red Dragon.

11. When I was twenty-five, I was admitted to a hospital and diagnosed with a rare intestinal birth defect known as a Meckel's Diverticulum. Doctors were baffled because this particular rare birth defect only affects 2% of the population, and is normally found in infants. Even the official paperwork on the surgery to correct the problem was labeled “exploratory”, since they didn't know what they were going to find.

12. I once memorized the entire 1984 starting lineup of Autobots.

13. I now feel compelled to list them: Bumblebee, Cliffjumper, Brawn, Gears, Windcharger, Huffer, Bluestreak, Prowl, Ironhide, Ratchet, Hound, Mirage, Jazz, Sideswipe, Sunstreaker, Trailbreaker, Wheeljack, and Optimus Prime.

14. While the Autobot Bluestreak was a silver sportscar named for his rapid manner of speaking, I secretly think of my blue Mazda 626 as “Bluestreak” when I refer to it in my head. I sometimes wish I drove a real Transformer.

15. I'm extremely competitive long after I've lost. I became a professional artist because my friends in elementary school could draw really well. I joined the company gym with friends who are no longer with our company. Rey's younger brother once called me a “n00b” for making a strategy mistake in the original incarnation of the online game Carnage Blender. I started over with a new character, and played the game for five years until the original version shut down to make way for the sequel, and my records were deleted. Meanwhile, Rey and his brother both stopped playing after a few months.

16. During my school years, I'd greet anybody and everybody I passed in the hallway with an enthusiastic “ayyyyy!” and thumbs-up, because I thought The Fonz and Nick from Family Ties were cool.

17. In my adult years, I lower my eyes and don't acknowledge people I don't know very well in the hall, unless they greet me first, so I know I have their approval to talk to them.

18. Friends tell me I have low self-esteem, but I don't always recognize when I'm being self-deprecating.

19. I have a vast knowledge of obscure actors.

20. I've lived on an island for 31 years and never learned how to swim. My high school had a huge indoor pool and we were required to take lessons. Somehow I passed, but without the life-jacket they allowed for the buoyancy-challenged, I know I would have sank.

21. In college whenever I went to a local Chinese restaurant with my friends, I'd order french fries and chicken nuggets from their American menu.

22. When I finally went to a Chinese place with my friends that didn't have American options, I asked a waiter for “Chicken with Broccoli; hold the broccoli.”

23. When I go to Chinese restaurants now, I order Sweet and Sour Chicken. Always.

24. When I dance I look like I'm having a seizure.

25. The first year I discovered Coldstone, the only flavor I ever ordered was their Oreo Overload. It took friends prodding me about never trying anything new to get me to order something different, and I eventually I tried almost all the flavors.

26. I have a strong aversion to change and trying new things, even when doing so might improve parts of my life I'm unhappy or bored with.

27. I appeared on several episodes of a New York City public access karaoke television show produced by a friend of mine. My most embarrassing moment would be the episode in which a frog hand-puppet tries to make out with a very drunk MCF passed out on a couch.

28. I and two other extreme caucasians once filmed a video of Slam at an amusement park. When my friend loaned me the only existing tape, I showed it to all my college friends before returning it to him.

29. I'll often allow myself to be the object of ridicule to entertain or amuse those around me. Teachers in elementary school used to say I craved any attention, even negative.

30. In third grade we had a fun movie project in which we drew on translucent film. I had an audio cassette to accompany my film, complete with sound effects. Unfortunately I left it unattended, and when I returned to class and the teacher showed the film, the cassette cut in halfway through to my entire class uproariously laughing, something they all recorded while I was out of the room. The weird thing is, I still have that tape...

31. I consistently mispronounce the word “monster”, thanks to The Munsters

32. On weekends I play in Italian festival bands and fire department bands, mostly with guys my dad's age.

33. Public restrooms: okay for #1; never for #2.

34. When I would fantasize about a girl I had a crush on in school, I'd usually save them from robbers or supervillains and end up in the hospital with the girl sitting at my bedside waiting for me to recover, because I thought that was the only way they'd talk to me. Getting trapped with them in an elevator or a cave-in were also popular daydreams.

35. I don't see the appeal of Julia Roberts.

36. During the eight years that I seriously collected comic books in high school and college, I amassed over 4,000 issues. There was a time in my life when I could sadly cite in which issue number various plot developments occurred.

37. I don't like valet parking. It's not that I mind tipping, or have a nice car that I'm worried about getting damaged. I just feel guilty having someone else do something I'm perfectly capable of doing myself.

38. If corn and mashed potatoes are on my plate, I will combine them before consuming them.

39. I like bacon and sausage, but not ham.

40. I didn't eat lettuce until I was 21.

41. I wash clean dishes before I put food on them, but rarely dust in my room.

42. My fourth grade music teacher made me remove toilet paper by hand after I flushed an entire roll and clogged the toilet in our classroom, just to see what would happen. Fortunately, paper was all I'd fed the bowl that day. As I got older I learned not to conduct such experiments.

43. In real life, I'm a man of very few words, and I write far more than I speak.

44. I once thought, without question or doubt, that Eddie Vedder sang about a ”glorified version of a pelican.” A friend of mine thought the lyrics were “glorified version of Elliot Gould though, so maybe I wasn't alone in misunderstanding.

45. I'm afraid of dogs and when I was a kid walking the ”dogless route” home, I'd sometimes mistake the jangling of keys in my own pocket for a bell on a dog collar and start running.

46. With all the movies I missed over the years, I made some interesting choices with the ones I did see in theaters. For example, I didn't think Cabin Boy was all that bad, and I loved The Cable Guy.

47. I have big ears and a disproportionately large head.

48. I don't always swing both arms when I walk. When with a group, my friends have observed that whichever arm is at greater risk of accidental contact with a guy friend will remain motionless, while the arm on the outside moves freely.

49. I sometimes do 10 times more work than required.

50. I'm a blogger.