Strange Facts, Episode I

1. I was born 6 weeks premature.

2. I have a genetic disease that the doctors said would do all kinds of horrible things to me. My poor parents were told all kinds of things that were likely, from going blind, to needing to break and reset my rib cage when I was a teenager so I could get enough air, to my being mentally retarded. What the doctors thought would happen and what God decided would happen were thankfully drastically different! The doctor's now think the genetic disease is an "incomplete penetrance", i.e., you test positive, but you really don't show the full symptoms. The only lasting effect it has had on me is watching my parents, mostly my Mom, be way too overprotective, and that I get upper respiratory stuff kindof easy. But that could have been from being born premature, so... or from not getting mother's milk due to it upsetting my stomach, and so not getting the benefit of Mom's immune system.

So I guess the only real effects have been psychological turmoil for my parents, way too many blood tests for me in order to see how I was doing (Needles! Aigh! No!!!), and the fact that I need to make sure my kids won't REALLY get this genetic disease.

3. I was a very sick little kid. But I think that was mostly from being born premature, and not getting Mom's milk to help me out.

4. I have very little saliva. My Mom couldn't figure out why I hated toast so much growing up. [If I eat toast, I bury it in butter, honey, or jelly.]

5. My Sister's black German Shepherd Myca growled at me when he first met me. I looked at him with disgust, and said something like "Lassie wouldn't have growled at me", and walked off. I was 5 years old. Myca and I became good friends after that first meeting. :)

6. I had hives from being around Myca. Or that's what my parent's thought was causing it. They couldn't keep me away from Myca. Dogs 1, hives 0: I eventually outgrew the hives due to constant doggy exposure!

7. I am asymptotically 5 feet tall. I never quite made it. My spine has a slight curvature. My driver's license says I am 5 feet tall. ;) And that's what it will ALWAYS say.

No, I don't have a height complex, why do you ask?

8. I have OCD. My Mom has OCD. Her Dad and possibly her Mom have OCD. Being a sick little kid, with warnings of a dire future (health-wise), with an OCD Mom... heh-heh. ;) Let's just say that growing up was an interesting experience.

9. I attended 7th grade twice and both times, never fully finished it. Long story, but highly ironic. :)

10. I went to a private school where, due to expansion, my class was moved into unused rooms in the back of a skating arena. [The Principal's Dad ran the skate arena, and it was empty during school hours anyway, so...] Our PE was playing a form of soccor where we bent over and hit the ball with our hands instead of kicking it, as the owner was worried we would kick the ball too high and it would break the lights over the skate arena!

[On Fridays, if we had been good, we got to go skating. :) ]

11. I went to college at the age of 16. [Mom was afraid of that aforementioned blindness thing. So she wanted me to get educated early.] I took the California High School Proficiency Exam to test out of high-school.

12. I transferred from my junior college into my university into the major of ECE (Electrical Computer Engineering), which I thought was a wise move as it was the hardest of the Engineering majors to get into. [So if I didn't like it, I could transfer into another Engineering major, right? Not w/o ALOT of units accumulated at my new university. And I found out I hated ECE. Oops.] I also moved 5 hours away from home, into the dorms. First time on my own. Age of 18. Junior in college. Used to having parents around 24/7. Totally unprepared socially and psychologically.

Gee, guess what? I flunked out. Got back in. Managed to get into major I *should* have chosen the first time (Computer Science), considering how much I loved computer programming and computer games. Graduated with B.S. after 6 years, at the age of 22, in spite of my head start. ;)

13. In college, I was such a germ-a-phobe (due to that lovely undiagnosed OCD problem) that, once I got back into my dormroom to go to sleep, I would spray lysol on my hands. I did this because I'd keep seeing girls use the women's bathroom on our floor w/o washing their hands, and then opening the bathroom door with their dirty hands. :P

I was also highly adept at opening doors with my elbows.

More later... need a breather. :)