Women’s Month

To celebrate Women’s Month, I’m going to share history about me, a woman. What an exciting opportunity for you to learn a little something!

• I rolled myself off my changing table and broke my leg as a pretty new infant.

• I thought English was called “Spanish” when was three and thus believed I spoke Spanish.

• As a wee child, I would stand in the ocean and become disillusioned that instead of the waves rushing past me that I was actually drifting off into the sea. I would cry until my dad got me. It’s that kind of visual confusion that allows me to be the innovative artist I am today.

• My grandma put all of us granddaughters in two days of Irish step dancing classes.

• I used to stay up 13 minutes passed my bedtime and listen quietly to Radio Disney on my clock radio because that’s when they played “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter.

• My dad signed me up for email when I was I was six.

• Even though I passed my Level 1 swim class at age six, I didn’t feel I was quite ready for Level 2 and made my parents sign me up for Level 1 again. In fact, I don’t think I ever made it to Level 2.

• At age seven I was hit in the head with a piece of asphalt in my neighbor’s backyard, which is when I learned the word “ricocheted.” As in, “a chunk of asphalt ricocheted off a play structure and hit Rachel.”

• We learned to knit and crochet in second grade from Joseph’s grandma. She couldn’t figure out how I managed to do a knit stitch on a crochet hook and neither could I. A mystery for the ages.

• I switched to public school in third grade and wrote to the superintendent regarding the population growth in our area. My school already had over 600 students and I was concerned he didn’t have a plan to build more schools. His letter back was patronizing and a waste of my 8 year-old time.

• While studying bridges in third grade, we created our own functional bridges in groups using household materials. I drew up plans for a double-decker vertical lift bridge that my peers (boys) thought was impossible to build. That’s why women don’t go into STEM. We did build the only double-decker in the class. Sounds like a brag but it’s just a cool fact.

• I once mistook a tube of Icy Hot for toothpaste.

• In third grade, my friend asked me to record a piano song for her gymnastics floor routine. This request led to my first EP, Fandango. To my knowledge, she never used the recordings.

• I didn’t clasp my hands together with my fingers intertwined for years.

• I have only had one scary nightmare and it ended so funny that it was also the only time I ever woke up laughing.

• Even though I wasn’t supposed to, I would cut through the woods when I walked home from school. I did have the wherewithal to drop strands of my hair along the path for DNA evidence in case I went missing.

• Using my newfound understanding of air pressure I caused a small water explosion in seventh grade science, ruining several people’s worksheets.

• I think I was thirteen when we got my dad a Rubik’s cube for Christmas. I messed up the cube and just felt terrible. I hunkered down and memorized all the algorithms needed to solve a Rubik’s cube to fix my dad’s Christmas present. About a year later an annoying know-it-all classmate brought his new Rubik’s cube to freshman study hall and would not shut up about it. I asked to see it, quietly solved it, and he never bothered me again.

• A boy asked me to go to the movies with him and I didn’t want to go, so I told him I had an essay to finish. I did have an essay to finish, I finished it, went to the ice rink with my friends, and ran into him there.

• I ran onto the beach and immediately stepped on a mysterious substance that gashed the bottom of my foot, hampering my ability to serve as a Safety Town counselor during the week and gave me a limp for my first concert (Britney Spears).

• I was a hostess at Spaghetti Factory and the servers never made me cry.

• I decided to run for senior class president because there was already a rumor going around saying I was. Now I have to plan class reunions for the rest of my life!

• I was bucked off my razor scooter twice freshman year of college. Then my scooter was stolen.

• I performed a parody of “My Favorite Things” on accordion during a group interview for a job in college. I passed through to the second round of interviews.

• I once stood on one leg for 30 minutes to prepare for a standing-on-one-leg competition that never came to fruition because people heard how good I was.

• As an adult I stood up after a meeting with the president of C-SPAN and accidentally let out one long burp.

• As a SoFar concert attendee, I ended up playing piano with a band for a song. When I sat back down, I knocked over a full bottle of beer on the carpeted floor.

• I tailgated with my family for The Incredibles 2.

• I joined Reddit to do two things: 1) Identify a caterpillar I saw summer of 2014 (success) and 2) Discover the meaning Tolstoy’s short story The Empty Drum (fail). I was banned from the literature subreddit for my question.

• I went on an 11.5 mile-walk one day during the pandemic without realizing it.

• Two years ago I took an online stand up class in secret. I did exactly one open mic after that and was the only comic to get heckled by the host’s dog. I suppose women really aren’t that funny!

Now that’s a lived woman’s experience, if you ask me!