Despertar

falling back to earth

1. Who was your first love?
God only knows. I'm conflicted, now, as to whether that was love or not. It wasn't mutual, and maybe love needs to be mutual. Maybe unrequited love is just dressed-up desperation. At the time, calling it love made it feel a lot less pointless.

2. Who was your first kiss and when?
I never tell this story if I can avoid it, because it's really embarrassing.

3. Who was your first prom date?
It would have been Sanjay, but I reeeeally didn't want to go, so I told a weak lie and stayed home that night. I'm constantly counting down to the moment when I start to really regret that. I still have, by my estimate, about two years.

4. Who was your first roommate?
Her name was Treesje, and our relationship ended very badly.

5. What was your first job?
Camp counselor, Camp Atwater! I got paid, I think, seven hundred dollars for five weeks of intense, backbreaking childcare-related labor over the summer of 2001. For contrast purposes, in the summer of 2008, I got paid thirty thousand dollars to read a few cases and eat catered lunches every day. Like I always say, there is nothing more marketable (or soul-sucking) than a good education.

6. What was your first car?
Stefan, my 1993 Nissan Altima, a hand-me-down from my dad. May he rest in peace.

7. When did you go to your first funeral?
Nineteenish? The pastor of my parents' church, cancer. It was the most out-of-body experience of my life. Every member of the congregation was taking turns paying respects at his open casket, and walking that way, my knees were shaking, not because of the whole dead-body aspect, nor because a church without a pastor is like a motherless child, but because I had left my phone in the car (at my dad's insistence) and was totally freaking out about what would happen if I missed a call from Marcus. I have never been proud of my priorities.

8. How old were you when you first moved away from your hometown?
My parents still live there, but I left for college when I was eighteen.

9. Who was your first grade teacher?
Her name was Miss Oberdorf, but this is making me nervous, revealing all this trivia. I feel like someone could totally piece together my identity and be waiting for me outside my apartment.

10. Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane?
Jamaica, I think. I was a baby.

11. Where did you go for your first date and who was it with?
Ha, the irony. It was Winston, from high school, and we went to see How High then to P.F. Chang's. (A taste of my culture, a taste of his.)

12. When you snuck out of your house for the first time, who was it with?
I never did, not once. My life wasn't really set up for that kind of tomfoolery.

13. Who was your first best friend and are you still friends with them?
Her name was Veronica, and we went to preschool together. By coincidence, her younger sister was best friends with my younger brother all through high school, so I've seen her at different functions over the past few years. She skipped a grade in elementary school, so she finished college before I did, which actually makes me kind of feel weirdly competitive whenever I see her.

14. Who was the first person to send you flowers?
Chris.

15. Where did you live the first time you moved out of your parents' house?
In a dorm in Atlanta.

16. Who is the first person you call when you have a bad day?
Through no fault of anyone's, there isn't anyone who consistently answers my phone calls, so I tend not to call anyone when I've had a bad day. Just toughing it out myself kind of beats getting a voicemail recording.

17. Whose wedding were you in the first time you were a bridesmaid or a groomsman?
I've never been a bridesmaid. That phase hasn't quite started yet.

18. What is the first thing you do in the morning?
Try desperately to get two more hours of sleep. I'm in a thing, currently, where, no matter what time I go to sleep, I jolt awake at six-thirty all fatigued and ruffled and not ready for the day. I don't really have time for naps anymore, so this leaves me fucked on the energy front. Did I mention I hate my life right now and I spend every waking moment wishing I could just jump in my car and drive toward the West Coast?

19. What was your first career choice?
Not that there's anything I especially want to see or do on the West Coast. I am just massively over the horseshit-ridden farce that is my present life. I hate most to all elements of every aspect of every day of it.

20. What was your first sport?
Curling.