Hugo Schwyzer

Jill tagged everybody, and I haven’t done one of these in a while, so here goes. It’s required by the rules of the meme to post this first:

THE RULES

1. All right, here are the rules.
2. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
3. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
4. People who are tagged write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
5. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1. I have to have an unsharpened pencil with me at all times. I play with them as a nervous habit, and when I’m alone, I talk to them. One at a time works fine, but it needs to be unsharpened and I prefer Dixon Ticonderoga #2s. I’ve been playing with pencils as little “talismen” to center myself since I was a small child. I go through a box of 12 every two weeks. The house is covered in pencils.

2. I am a great maker of lists. Not the useful to-do lists, but lists such as “ten states in which I would least like to live”. I do this in my head, often when I’m driving.

3. The greatest struggle of my life has been with sugar. I love sugar, and can eat spoonfuls out of the bowl. As a child, I ate sugarcubes one after the other to the amazement and horror of friends. Nothing, nothing, nothing, is “too sweet” for me. I have tried to subsist on Cadbury Cream Eggs and Jelly Bellies for days. I’m on a periodic break from all sugar, and I feel much better.

4. I like rats, heights, spiders, and public speaking; the usual phobias don’t get me. I’m scared to death of snakes, and — inexpilicably — scared of turtles. Tortoises frighten me. I want very much to love them, and I do, from a distance. But I’ve never touched one, not even on the shell.

5. I have two small birth defects: the top of my right ear has no cartilage in it, and I have the beginnings of what might have been a sixth finger on my left hand.

6. After nine years of sobriety, I still have “drinking and using dreams” from time to time. They are terrifying, but I think I’ll worry more when I stop having them. Sometimes we need reminders of what we once were to help us to continue to become what it is we are called to be.

7. It’s all about boxer briefs, occasionally boxers, never briefs. Hey, if Clinton can share, so can I.

8. If I’d have been a girl, I would have been named Elizabeth or Katherine. My mother was convinced I was a girl until the delivery nurse reported otherwise. As it is, I am named Hugo for my father’s father’s father.

I tag anyone who wishes to be tagged, but in particular:

Sneha
Jeff
Sarah
Lindsey
Rudy
Cassandra/Antigone