10 Things You Don’t Know About Me
Spoiler alert: I’m a shameless Twi-hard fan with a vocal tic and E.T. toes
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I’ve procrastinated an ‘About Me’ post for over a year. When I saw the About Me publication, I thought it was genius.
And then I started a draft and became hypnotized by the blinking cursor. I sang a beat to its rhythm. It sounded a bit like a drone singing, “Tomorrow, tomorrow.”
Tomorrow turned into a week, then a month, and now a year later and that damned cursor mocks me.
Just write something dammit.
So this is the something — a response to the writer’s prompt that Julie Gaeta tagged me in over a month ago. I fell in love with other Cuppa writers ‘10 Things’ posts and the idea for the post seemed less daunting. Thanks to Katie Michaelson, Hudson Rennie, Karen Schwartz, Barb Dalton 🇺🇦 and Adrienne Beaumont for inspiring me with your About Me lists!
Tagging Nicole Brown, Susie Antonia, Marilyn Flower, Ching Ching, Manasi Kudtarkar to see if you guys will do a fun list!
1. I hum when I’m nervous.
It’s more like a mix between a tiny grunt and hum that emerges when my nervous system activates. I can’t hear it, but it I’m pretty sure it happens daily.
As a child, it happened constantly. Anytime I felt anxious, I hummed.
Like most of my early childhood mistakes, my mom blamed the neighbor boy for my behavior. Somehow I “caught” it from him.
I’m not sure why I do it but I think it’s my brain’s way of calming me and signaling to others that something’s wrong.
One of my favorite memories was when my 3-year-old nephew (now 24) asked me, “Auntie, how come you go ‘hmmmmmm’ like that?”
“That’s just what I do…it usually means I’m excited or nervous.” He nodded and turned the page.
A few years ago, I learned that my humming habit is considered a vocal tic and common for neurodiverse kiddos.