25 Things About Me

Reposted from Facebook. I'm consolidating. I'm especially proud of this one, though.

1. I sing, hum, and whistle unconsciously. It’s a habit I gave up trying to control a long time ago.

2. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of Lost, Saturday Night Live, Scrubs, and seasons one through ten(ish) of The Simpsons.

3. Speaking of Lost and Scrubs, if a work of fiction can get me to care about the characters, I’m hooked no matter how horrible and/or confusing the plots get. See also: Firefly, Arrested Development, and Animorphs.

4. I went to an all-guys’ Catholic school for eight years, from fifth through twelfth grade, and I state this fact as a blanket excuse every time I end up in an awkward social situation. It's scary how often it works.

5. When I can’t think of anything else to say, I spout off a movie quote. One usually just jumps to mind as I’m trying to work out something original to say. I feel validated as long as one person in the group gets it.

6. My top two “dream careers” are probably to be a novelist and a Broadway singer, but I’m too much of a realist to seriously pursue either of them.

7. I recently discovered that I can, in fact, function without my morning cup of coffee. That doesn’t mean I’m quitting or cutting back, but it’s nice to know that I have the option.

8. “That’s what she said” jokes and any joke about poo will always, always, always be funny.

9. I haven’t cried since February of my sophomore year of high school.

10. I’m cursed with maturity beyond my years. Whenever I fail a test, my reaction is always to shrug my shoulders and realize that I must not have studied hard enough.

11. I’m a grammar Nazi thanks to four consecutive years of English Lab at the aforementioned all-guys’ Catholic school. A simple sentence consists of a subject and a verb. A compound sentence consists of two simple sentences separated by a comma. Therefore, "Bob ran and then went to the store" and "Bob ran, and then he went to the store" are both correct.

12. I will never eat at Wendy’s again as long as I live. I haven’t been able to eat their burgers since sixth grade, when three friends and I participated in what we called the “Triple Burger Challenge.” I was sick for a week. I’ve gotten burned out on everything else on their menu, especially chicken nuggets, over two years’ worth of late-night Wendy’s runs with dorm friends. Sorry, Sean.

13. I was born eight weeks prematurely, without my esophagus. Over three years of surgeries, doctors removed my transverse colon, turned it into my esophagus, and sewed my ascending and descending colon together. I have a second belly button, which is where my feeding tube was for eighteen months or so. I can eat and drink normally now, but I don’t have peristalsis, meaning that biologically, I can’t throw up. This is a problem sometimes.

14. I’m very task-oriented – once I start working on something, I hate being interrupted. When I sit down to watch a movie, it irks the crap out of me when I can’t get fifteen minutes in without getting a call or a text message. Likewise, when I dive into a pile of packages to check in at the front desk, people wait to call me until right after I’ve fallen into my groove.

15. In a crowd, I’d rather not be noticed than be singled out, either positively or negatively.

16. One of the greatest compliments I’ve ever gotten was from my friend Saul, who once told me, “Part of your charm is that you think you’re much more socially retarded and awkward than you actually are.”

17. That being said, I do have a tendency to say non-awkward things in the most awkward way possible. Example: at the end of last semester, we had a box of three-dozen cookies at the front desk. I was starting my shift as Amara was ending hers, and she wondered aloud whether she should take any cookies to go. What went through my head was, “Between the option of no cookies and free cookies, one should always choose free cookies,” and what I said was, “Amara, you always take as many cookies as you can carry.”

18. I’m very easily startled but almost impossible to scare.

19. I indulge myself in nostalgia a lot, whether it’s buying the first season of “The Adventures of Pete and Pete” on DVD and watching it all in one sitting, Facebook-friending all of my elementary school friends that I haven’t seen in ten years, or making it a point to drop by Kids’ Kastle (the local park) every time I go home. I think it’s because I still consider elementary school and middle school as the happiest period of my life thus far.

20. I overthink everything, especially when it comes to girls.

21. My name is Matt, and I’m a Facebook addict. To say that I check it multiple times daily is an understatement. I like feeling caught up with what’s going on in everyone’s lives, even people I don’t talk to anymore.

22. I write a lot. I’ve written a couple short stories this semester, and I think they’re pretty good, but I’ve only shown them to a couple people. This isn’t because I don’t want people to read what I’ve written, because I do. It’s mainly because I don’t want readers to feel obligated to tell me I’m the reincarnation of Ernest Hemingway if my story turns out to be another mediocre effort by some student writer.

23. I see grad school as a means of prolonging the inevitable.

24. I can see both sides of any issue, sometimes to the point where I have no clue what I personally believe.

25. Three songs never fail to put me in a good mood: “Purpose,” from Avenue Q; the Across the Universe version of “I’ve Just Seen a Face;” and The Barenaked Ladies’ “If I Had $1,000,000.”