Tagged AGAIN

And to think I used to whine 'cause no one ever tagged me...

Cindy is to blame this time.

(This is the 8 things tag, BTW, and I have a feeling I'm repeating some things...)

1. I love Pringles Right Crisps Sour Cream and Onion but when I eat them, I lick off the sour-cream-and-onion powder so it's best if I eat them alone.

2. I wasn't much of a football fan (except playoffs/Superbowls) until I met my husband in college, and then, because we only got Cleveland Browns games (and he was a native of Cleveland's suburbs), I learned the game while watching the Browns. And I ended up a Browns fan for years. I got us into a Browns Backers club so we could go see games in a bar every Sunday (took Number One for her first year, too). Then, when Cleveland lost the team for a few years, I had to turn to my first team, New England. I've been a rabid fan ever since. And thank goodness for NFL Sunday Ticket.

3. Though I am not against (parental) corporal punishment (I grew up with spanking, and it was a very good deterrent), I have spanked my kids exactly once. Number One was about two, and she wouldn't pick up her toys. She was being willful and defiant and I was at my wit's end. I pulled her across my lap and whacked her on her diaper-covered butt about three times. Set her back down and demanded she pick up her toys. More willful defiance. I asked if she wanted me to spank her again. She crawled over and laid herself across my lap.

4. I was on the Equestrian Team in college, for at least two seasons (maybe 3). I rode English in the beginner classes and earned two fifths, a third, and a first. The first was won on April Fool's Day at Michigan State on a gigantic old police horse named Teacher's Pet. Fitting in all kinds of ways.

5. When my brother was about 2 or 3 years old, I fed him a bottle of vitamins I got down off the fridge while our parents were sleeping in on a weekend. I think we were playing doctor (the real way, you know, where you prescribe medicine). The vitamins were red and kind of like Spree candy. My parents had to feed him ipecac. It's a wonder he doesn't hate me, as this is only one of many indignities I visited upon him.

6. I have never been diagnosed with a broken bone. I used to say I've never broken a bone, but last year I jammed my left middle finger with a bad bounce by a football and I'm pretty sure I cracked it at the first joint. It has a bump now. I never went to the doctor, just borrowed a splint and tried not to open filing cabinets with that hand.

7. I love snakes. And owls. The local radio station had both in the studio last week to advertise Creatures of the Night at ZooAmerica in HersheyPark in the Dark. The on-air personalities were annoyingly squeally and squeamish. I worked at a nature center the summer of 1990 and did a lot of teaching with Joey, a barred owl, and Charlie, a six-foot boa. Joey had been orphaned as a baby when someone cut down the dead tree his family lived in, and he didn't get assimilated after he'd been cared for. He was dive-bombing the kids on the trails, so they kept him in the barn near the interns' farmhouse. We fed him dead, thawed mice and took him over to the center or to schools and stuff for classes. I don't think I've ever felt anything as soft as his feathers. Charlie was also a dead-rat eater. We fed him once a month or so, so he didn't grow very fast. He tended to be sluggish because of the heat, but when we took him out he occasionally got squeamish. He was my buddy, though. Snakeskin (on a live snake) is also very soft to the touch, and the power of the muscles underneath is amazing.

8. My mother had a Mac when I was in high school. I learned on it, then used my first PC in college (DOS-based Wordperfect). My Mac experience led to my first good adult job, the company that let me take the kids to work every day when they were babies. I currently have a desktop PC and a Mac laptop, and unlike pretty much everyone else in the world, I like them exactly the same.

I'm supposed to tag 8 people to tell us 8 things about themselves. I shall tag people with the following 8 first initials:

M, T, O, E, S