Tragic Tag

The Daily Knack tagged me. She's so tricky. It's an easy tag. All you have to do is tell 6 things about yourself. I have decided to share six tragedies.

1. When I was around 2 or 3 we got a new swing set. Nick helped set it up. Nick was a friend of my [then single] mom's. In retrospect I find myself wondering, who was Nick, how did my mother know him, and was he in love with her?

One day I jumped out of the swing on our new swing set but I didn't let go of the chains that held the swing. As I jumped and held on tight I sliced 8 of my fingers. My mom cleaned them and put iodine on them. I remember my hands were a huge bloody mess--why is iodine blood- colored? That doesn't help.

2. One day in second grade I sneezed into my hands. A lot of mucous came out. It was very gross. Unfortunately I was immobilized with embarrassment and sat on the rug for about 15 minutes until Jennifer Hardy, who wasn't really even my friend, mercifully asked the teacher if I could go to the restroom. This was in the olden days, before hand sanitizer. Later--in about 5th grade--Jennifer and I would become friends as we were both in a dance class at The Dance Factory. We did this crowd pleaser called a flip-flop where we would create an arch with our bodies by holding each other around the waist and doing a back bend. Then we would "flip flop" across the stage for our recital. Jennifer was well-liked and adorable. I accidentally passed gas right in her face once while doing our flip flops. I was neither well-liked nor adorable.

3. One day when I was in about first grade my sister jumped up from behind the sewing machine to scare me. I reacted in a peevish, babyish way--I was really mad that she had scared me. I immediately felt sick about my reaction when I realized that when she popped up she had hit her head on the corner of the cabinet above her, injuring her head badly.

4. I had this amazing life-size Raggedy Ann doll. For some reason it just made sense to me that I should ride her as I slid down the stairs to my basement. One time, however, I landed flat on my face and got a bloody nose. I remember that I saw tiny green balls, not stars, like in the cartoons.

5. When I worked at Sundance in college a lantern broke in my hands and sliced my right index finger open. It happened on the day I had given my 2-weeks notice. I got Workman's Comp and never went back.

6. When I was in 3rd grade my friend Jenna and I found some charming baby quail who were stuck in the gutter so we picked them up and put them on the sidewalk. Later Jenna's mom told us that the mother bird would peck the babies to death because we had touched them and they would smell like humans. This was a tragedy wrought by our own hands. I don't know how Jenna acquired such a fanciful and ethereal aesthetic--her mother was such a realist.

And now I'm supposed to tag someone, but I always end up with hurt feelings when I "tag" because the person I tag inevitably does not read my blog. In order to spare my feelings (and really, can't you see from the above tragedies that I've been through enough?) I'm going to tag everyone who reads this. I hope it's a lot of people.