Tag, Part Deux

Wow! I'm really feelin' the love here in blog-land. Another good bloggy friend of mine, Em, has tagged me too! Although, this tag limits me to a six word sentence (Editing! I can't take it!). Aren't you so glad? No more sagas of random and seemingly unimportant stories of me.

Well now down to business. I'm back to the rest of this meme. The theme? It is my 7 strangest life experiences. Mind you, as soon as I've finished this meme, I will have thought of probably 7 even WEIRDER experiences than these. So, I'll sock those away for later. Now, on to numbers 4 -7.

Life Experience #4: Everyone has mentioned to me that I should include my house-alarm experience and after sleeping on it, I agree. So, here it is.

When I was a senior in college, I auditioned and made the cast for Tommy (the Rock Opera). A local theater company in Birmingham (Alabama) was putting this great show on and I was very excited to participate in a "real" play rather than one through a school or acting class.


Through participating in this play, I made some very good and interesting friends. One of them was a 30-year-old woman who was a grant writer for a local children's theater company. She couldn't have been any cooler. She lived in a slightly shady part of town in a beautiful old house built in the 1920s. In this house were gorgeous antiques that she bought from around the US and the world on her many travels. I was in awe of her and her house and her basic coolness and the fact that she would want to hang out with me.

One weekend, she asked me to check in on her house and feed her cat, I think, while she was gone with another acting troupe. All I had to do was master the complicated security system. Of course, this probably wasn't all that complicated to her or the rest of the world in general but it might as well have been quantum physics to me.

Don't get me wrong, I am a pretty bright girl. But all that was chucked out the window when I found out that if I didn't disarm the alarm in exactly 60 seconds - going through a ritual of opening the door, closing it, entering a code and then pressing the green key and getting the all clear tone - the police were going to be notified and she would be slapped with a hefty fine.

I tried to back out, but over the course of the afternoon (I was there to have lunch with her and hang out), she convinced me that it would be no big deal, that I could master it easily enough and I could even bring over a friend to hang out that weekend if I wanted to. We practiced this over and over until I felt comfortable and parted ways.

The weekend came and it was getting time for me to come on over and check on things and feed the kitty (somehow I can't remember if there was a cat or not, but I'm going with it). So, I called up my good friend, Nik, and we headed over there for an evening of fun and girl stuff.


We got into the house and I ran like mad to the key pad and entered the code and got the all clear. Everything seemed okay and I showed Nikki around and we ooh-ed and ahh-ed over all the cool stuff. Then we decided to head out to Five Points to get something to eat. So, Nikki stood outside (I had her significantly scared of the alarm too) while I entered in the code and hit the RED button and walked out.

A lovely evening passed uneventfully and we headed back to the house only to find a note from the COPS that they had been by and that the alarm had been set off. They were one call away from slapping my friend with her hefty fine.

We went inside and I ran to the keypad and entered the code but nothing was working! I didn't get the little reassuring beep and after 60 seconds, the phone rang. It took a while to convince the security company that I wasn't an intruder and that I just had a hard time trying to disarm the alarm. I gave them her code and they confirmed but said that a cop was already dispatched to the house and could I please stay and talk with that person?

So, by this time Nikki and I were freaking out a little bit and the freak out level was slightly heightened when the cop finally arrived (while we were already in our jammies) and asked us questions about the alarm and why we were there.


I went through my spiel again and the cop left AND MY FRIEND WAS GETTING SLAPPED WITH A HEFTY FINE. One more false alarm and she was going to get her service terminated. So, with a heavy heart and feeling extremely immature and childish, I called her wherever she was - in California or New York or something like that - and spilled. She was so gracious about it and remarked that she appreciated that I called her and was so nice about it.

About that time, Nikki slid into the door frame with her coat over her jammies saying, "Let's get outta here!" I agreed. We hastily packed up and I faced the keypad for yet another time. Nikki stood out on the front stoop with the door open telling me to hurry over and over. Wouldn't you know it but I couldn't get that alarm to set! So, we made sure everything was locked up and ran like crazy to our car as if something was biting at our heels.

I never saw my friend again, or her house, and mailed back her keys. I think we emailed each other for a while, but the alarm pretty much destroyed whatever friendship might have developed.

After having further experiences with home alarm systems, I found out that the alarm wouldn't set that night we were trying to leave because the door was left open so Nikki could dance on the front stoop, urging me onward and waiting for me to run out. Oh well!

Life Experience #5:That last story brings me to my fifth experience and that was my crowning achievement in my theater life. I got to dance on top of a pinball machine in The Who's Tommy. It was cool.


Life Experience #6:I once pierced a girl's ear with my bare hands and an earring post with a pointy end. I KNOW! I was grossed out too. In high school I was a member of the dance team/colorguard and we spent a lot of time traveling to competitions. Needless to say, some of the girls on the team were a little rowdy. Me? No, I was the good girl on this team believe it or not. Anyway, we were at yet another competition and staying in a hotel with only a few chaperones. I was in a room with three other girls and NO chaperones.

One night my friend, Jamie, decided that she wanted two earrings in her right ear and somehow persuaded me to take a sharp earring post and drive it into her ear. She held an ice cube to it for about fifteen minutes and then held onto hear teddy bear and let me go for it. I counted to three, swallowed the throw up that was threating to come spouting out and pushed as hard as I could.


It didn't go through! Only 3/4 of the way. I KNOW. We both squealed and Jamie jumped up and down with her bear and I did a hopping dance in a circle, shaking my hands and saying, "Ew - I'm sorry!" over and over. But Jamie was determined to have the earring. I guess her parents wouldn't let her have another one. Well, I tried to back out but in the end, Jamie had her third earring and I had a reason to stay up all night reliving the icky feeling of driving a small, blunt object into someone else's flesh.

I KNOW.

Life Experience #7: I once had a dare from a good friend to sign up on a match service online. I was 25, bored and up for a challenge. My friend was also 25, bored and ready for a man. She said that the first one to get a man wins. I am not sure, looking back, exactly what this meant because getting a man could have so many connotations. Does it mean meeting the man? Dating the man? Pulling a bag over the man's head and smuggling him over the state line? Well, anyway, that was the challenge so I signed up.

I immediately got a lot of flack from friends and family saying what I was doing was crazy and I would only meet creepy old men or psychopaths or child molesters. Keep in mind that this was before Match.com or eHarmony.com or anything like that was popular. I believe the website I joined was run by a single man out of his basement as a hobby. Whatever that man's intentions were, he did a good job on the site.

I got a few emails from some crazy guys. One was a man in his mid-forties (no offense to those of you in that age-bracket) with three children. I think his youngest was 12.

One man was from Chicago and liked to take pictures of himself with his webcam. Unfortunately the camera was at an angle where you were really looking up at his face so I only really got to get intimately acquainted with his nose hairs.

One guy seemed promising and we chatted for a while but I soon found out that he was crazy. After about five emails or so, I cheerfully recommended foregoing the self-help books and seeing a therapist and blocked him.

Just when I thought I was going to lose the bet and my friend was going to win, I got an email. It was just a line or two asking me if I was interested in chatting and to please check out his profile in the meantime.

That person was my husband. My sweet, awesome, best friend, great father of a husband. So, I met my husband online. On a dare. I wasn't really looking, but he found me. And I'm glad he did.

Stay on the path!