The Magical Mystery Meme

Shakes here...

Och aye, I've been tagged!

Sticking with the meme that brung me, I'm doing it the "Ezra" and hence "Neil" way—that is, four of the following stories are true, and one is the creation of a memed fabulist.

1. I am ambidextrous and can write, in both print and cursive, backwards, upside-down, and upside-down-and-backwards. I am also a spectacular forger. After watching someone write their signature, I can not only replicate it but write just about anything else in their script as well. A former boss of mine had me sign everything for him and handwrite notes on his behalf—and was constantly delighted and disturbed that even he couldn't tell the difference between his writing and my mimicry of it.

2. I have had unexpected encounters with three famously conservative stars: Gary Sinise, who was extremely nice, Mel Gibson, who appeared quite sane and did not call me 'Sugartits,' though he was only drinking coffee at the time, and Bruce Willis, who was filming a scene from Mercury Rising outside the building in which I was working. Directly outside the front door, in fact—which is why, when I tried to leave the building, I was stopped by a big gym rat in a black muscle tee who told me I had to wait for 10 minutes because "they're shooting a scene and we can't interrupt them." Forty minutes later, a crowd of people, many of whom were trying to leave to get to business meetings, had gathered, and I was getting testy with the gym rat. "Ten minutes," he told me, but I saw the fear in his eyes. "That's what you said forty minutes ago," I snarled, then shoved past him and out the door—and, hence, into the scene—where someone yelled "Cut!" and one Mr. Bruce Willis admonished me, "We're trying to shoot a film here!" and I snapped back, "I'm trying to live my life here!" before marching off haughtily. Attica! Attica!

3. I have never properly learned how to ride a bike. Because my parents were teachers, we spent our summers either traveling about the country on "educational vacations" or in New York City, where my mom grew up, with my grandparents. One summer in NYC, my dad tried to teach me how to ride a bike, but between having a borrowed bike that was too big for me and trying to stay upright on Queens' tree root-cracked, uneven sidewalks, it was a disaster. I tried for weeks, but learned only that scabbed knees and elbows elicit easily-exploited amounts of sympathy from grandparents.

4. I hate—hate hate hate with the passion of ten thousand suns—eggs and anything "eggy," like mayonnaise. (I don't terribly mind a little mayo in, say, tuna salad, but when I make it myself, I use fat-free cucumber ranch dressing instead.) On the phone with my co-blogger Paul the other day, who knows of my deep detestation of eggs and with whom I'll be spending Christmas Eve, he was harassing me with threats of serving me eggnog. I told him I'd sooner eat one of his dog's turds, which sent him into fits of laughter, mainly because he knows it's true. The weirdest bit of my egg revulsion is that while the mere whiff of cooked eggs makes me gag, I love egg drop soup. Mr. Shakes often cites this as evidence of my insanity, a point which I find admittedly tough to dispute.

5. I love card games, and I tend to be extremely lucky at the games I like the least. Five Card Stud is my favorite poker variation, but I am significantly more lucky (and probably also more skilled) at Texas Hold 'Em. I regularly come up with absolutely extraordinary hands on the river. And though I prefer poker, I have more success with blackjack, which I find quite tedious, because it is simply a game of memory and math and has none of the fun bits of poker, like searching out tells and talking smack.

There is it. Now it's up to you to guess which one is false.

And now I'm tasked with tagging five more. Go: Maurinsky, Griffin, Creature, Deborah, and Shayera.