I Confess . . .

I am a very strange person. I do the oddest things, and today I feel compelled to share a few examples. They are not related in any way; but somehow they go together in a random-what-the-heck-it's-Friday kind of way.

You're aware, I'm sure, that I loved pickles before I got pregnant. Now that I'm pregnant, I wonder on a daily basis why people don't write odes about them. I mean really: pickles. Salty, vinegar-y pickles. Are they not the stuff of poetry?

(http://wwff.wordpress.com/2007/06/25/pickles-are-evil/)
Delicious, delicious evil. 

Anyway, yesterday I had a tragic episode with a pickle that involved a vast amount of hormone-induced pickle lust and the discovery that my jar of pickles was frozen. Me and my frustrated hormones are still having a pity party, and I just want you to know, oh Commissary of Ft. Bragg, that freezing my pickles was highly unfunny.

The unfunniness escalated as I was trying to chip ice away with a knife and climaxed after an unsuccessful stint in the microwave.Your spastic refrigerated produce section and I are going to have words, Commissary. And you won't like them.

Also, frozen pickles are decidedly not delectable. Not that, um, I would know. (It was a desperate moment, folks.)

Moving right along.

In the spirit of making confessions, here's another. Unlike the pickle incident described so painstakingly above, the following actually caused a fair amount of embarrassment in its day.

In a bout of questionable logic, I agreed to be John Calvin in my high school government class. And by "be," I mean, dress up and talk like him for a class. We were studying something he had written, and I was supposed to read and discuss it in front of the class.

For the life of me, I cannot remember why I agreed to this. My teacher happened to be a very likeable sort of person with a fascinating proclivity for "rocking the boat." He liked to make things interesting, a good trait in a teacher. Hence the idea of me dressing up like Calvin.

At the time I was a conscientious, quiet sort of person who, while easily amused at other's antics, rarely initiated them. (Full disclosure: I still am.) There must have been some extra credit or something involved, because I can think of no other reason why I would have thought this was a good idea.

On the appointed day, I went to the drama department, donned a long beard complete with a mustache, a hat, and a robe. Feeling rather conspicuous, I fluttered back down my high school hallway and burst into the government classroom. I don't really remember everyone's reactions, but I do remember badly faking an on-again, off-again British accent two octaves below what was natural while trying to nurse a nasty head cold around a hot, scratchy beard as I read some nondescript document presumably written by myself.

In front of twenty of my staring teenage peers. UN-comfortable.

This incident may or may not forever have marred John Calvin's writings for me, but I think under the circumstances, the reader will overlook that.