Tiggity Tagged

I better catch up with this tagging thing while I can. Becky, I'll save your husband one for this week in honor of Valentine's Day and Les, I'll do yours now.
5 things you may not know about me....hmmmm.....well, I have a lot of stories and experiences, many of which I've told. Depending on how well you know me, which section, chapter, subtitle, bullet point would you like? To share just 5 things brings great pressure.....

1) If there is one disorder that I may questionably have been cited as a victim of, I would have to say it's narcolepsy. As most of you know narcoleptics fall asleep, anytime, anywhere, with anyone. It just happens. I've somehow gained a better handle on it over the years but it used to happen often in my childhood. Some of the places where I've spontaneously fallen asleep:
- Driving Eastbound on the I80 from Davis to Sacramento (approx 15 minute drive), at least 10 times!
- chairlift at Squaw Valley
- chemistry class (a given)
- Logan Golf & Country Club, on the job
- 75% of theatre movies, 95% of movie rentals
I'm just glad I'm not like the dog on Oprah a few years back who went running across the room and then fell to the ground mid-stride like he'd been shot.

2) I'm very obsessed with foreign languages. I can wholeheartedly sing a full song in many of them. I've lost count but let's add them up, Hebrew, Italian, Africaans, Spanish, German, French, Swahili, Chinese, Japanese, and one other African language, origin of which I've not yet determined but I swear it's legit. I can also do accents pretty well so I like to pretend that I speak all these languages. I will ask people to test me and then I will just talk out the words of the song(respective accent included) as though I'm rambling on in thought. It works EVERY time and I leave people stunned. That is unless of course they actually speak that language, but do you think I would be silly enough to make myself that vulnerable? I just quickly skip over the tongue they actually speak, to a language far more impressive of course.

3) I once was in a high speed chase with the cops. yep. Right after my friend Jesse got his drivers license, he and these kids named Calvin and Tommy came by my house and wanted to go to a movie. We ended up not getting there in time and were bored teenagers looking for some adventure. What else but to go pick oranges off of Tommy's aunt's tree in her front yard and drive around throwing them at cars. Not my idea but of course I thought it would be fun after all those years of watching my brothers putting black cardboard kitties in the road and hiding in the bushes. Driving along, laughing as we're nailing cars, I went to chuck my first orange out the window when my friend yelled, "NO, it's a co.....(my arm proceeds to throw) p car!" The cop flips a U and turns on the sirens. What does my friend Jesse do? Speeds up and starts taking a left, then a right, then a left, trying to ditch him at 40 mph in a small downtown neighborhood. Meanwhile, everytime we lose him around the corner for a second, I'm chucking the remaining oranges to eliminate evidence. We finally hit a dead end and contemplated getting out and running down the greenbelt which wouldn't have done my friend much good whose car would still be remaining. That's about the first half of the story. In the end I ended up with a misdemeanor for littering. I'll tell you about the outrageously crazy and fun activity I did for community service another day, I guarantee it would hold a candle to anyone who's ever done community service. Could have something to do with the fact that my mom had dated the chief of police and I had a little in.

4) Though I can't turn down a gourmet meal or international cuisines, I'm a straight shootin junk food junkie. I love cheetoes, frosted sugar cookies, slurpies, keeblerhouse fudgesticks, donuts (except the nasty filled kind), rice krispy treats, scotcharoos, and so on. I also can't pass up a hit the spot Taco Bell crunchwrap or Carls Junior Famous Star. yum yum.

5) Okay so for the last one I was going to tell the story of what happened when I took the worm pills but I decided it may not be fully appropriate. Well it's not really that, it's more that I just tell the story so dang well in person that I wouldn't want the written version to not fulfill justice. So I’ll play it safe and tell you that in 2005 I went to LA to compete in Bejing China's version of American Idol. It was one of the silliest and weirdest things I've ever done. It was designed for American people who speak Mandarin that could perform Chinese talents. I sang this Chinese pop song that the producer more or less "made" me sing by aggressive suggestion and for fear of losing my spot as a contestant, I concurred. They had these Chinese judges set up, just the same as American Idol. And these 2 MC's not nearly as cool as Ryan Seacrest. I can confidently say I didn't do so well. I was EXTREMELY nervous, not sure why cause the audience was so random. I just sang a "hai-hao" performance at best. I had quite a bit of friends and family there to support me and think I got the loudest screams and claps due to my biased audience member section which really threw off the judges. i think they were way confused as to why people were cheering. Stacie held up this sign that said, "Way to follow your dreams, Denise!" and I was completely mortified to think that people thought I was actually serious about it. The whole competition was released on one of the most widely viewed television stations in Beijing China, over tens of millions of viewers. Nice! To this day I've always wondered if that actual pop star saw me and thought to herself, "that's the American's sad attempted version of me?" Needless to say, I wasn't one of the 3 finalists that got sent to Beijing for further competition, dang it!!!