Several months ago, I began to see lists of 25 Things You Don’t Know About Me popping up on blogs and on Facebook. Everyone I read was intriguing in its own way, but I hadn’t considered doing one myself.

Then I had a bout of insomnia last night and amused myself by composing a list of my own. When I got up this morning, I decided to give it a try.

While none of these things are secrets, there may be a few surprises in it. After you read it, you may want to try writing one of your own. I suspect you’ll be as surprised as I was about the things that came to mind.

I’m cross-eyed and began wearing glasses when I was 5. For years I was the only kid in school who had glasses and was teased incessantly.

I finished college in 3 years and began teaching high school English to 17-year-olds six weeks before my twenty-first birthday.

Although I don’t know how it happened, I was an Anglophile by the age of 7 and began filling scrapbooks with pictures of the royal family and London landmarks. Years later, my mother said, “Yes, we thought it was a bit odd.”

Two years after graduating from college, I auditioned for a summer theater production of Barefoot in the Park and was chosen to play the lead’s mother. I am now about the proper age for that role.

Despite having shared a difficult childhood, my three sisters and  brother have become interesting people that I love to spend time with.

In high school, I created my first wild adventure (getting myself included in a press conference for pop star Rick Nelson) and discovered “what the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”

On September 9 I plan to celebrate 27 years of sobriety.

My father’s six unique sisters were powerful role models for me.

I’ve always considered travel to be a necessity, not a luxury.

My best friend Chris Utterback died of breast cancer in 1999 and I have never stopped missing her.

When I was six I bit our elderly family dentist who demanded that my mother get me out of his office and never return.

Sandy Dempsey and I share a birthday and it’s especially auspicious this year since it falls on 10/10/10.

I love housesitting and could easily become a property caretaker.

I’ve never met a gelato I didn’t like.

I want to live in a world where everyone gets out of bed in the morning excited about how they’re going to spend the day.

When people stop laughing together the relationship is coming to an end.

I am the mother of a daughter who was born wise. On the day she left for college, she left me a card that said, “Thanks for being a great mother, a great teacher and a great student.”

Although I grew up surrounded by people who were lifetime residents of my hometown, I always wanted to live in different places.

I can still recite the opening to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Middle English.

Two things that turned out to be even better than I’d expected were my time on a sabbatical and Sedona.

I swore off home ownership years ago. I have owned three homes and every time I moved into one I began to feel as if I couldn’t breathe.

House Hunters on Home & Garden television is my idea of a spectator sport.

On a trip to England, I rented a room for two nights in a home that turned out to be a dormitory for Scientologists.

I am brought to tears by stress and beautiful music.

I believe that committing to a dream is a daily activity—not something we just do once.

13 Responses to “Things I Haven’t Told You”

  1. Jane Beaver

    Love it, Barbara! Thanks for sharing those interesting bits about your life.

  2. Jane Snell Copes

    When I was in high school, I grumbled one night at supper about having to put up with C.T in M.E. My parents IN UNISON started out from line one and continued on to the end of the prologue, giving me no sympathy whatsoever! Neither of them was an English major, and they would have both nearly 60, so it wasn’t a recent memory. Too amazing!

  3. Barbara Winter

    Apparently, there’s something about Middle English and the prologue that sticks. And it’s so useful!

  4. Linda Gannon

    Oh, My Dear Babs,

    This was one of my all time favorite posts of yours! I knew some of those juicy tidbits about your life….but, certainly not others! You are still the most interesting, weird, and amazingly fabulous person I know! (:

  5. Barbara Winter

    Ah, Linda, I’ve been thinking of you and realized that it’s been forever since we’ve talked. I consider you one of the most interesting, weird and fabulous people I know!

  6. judy mayne

    Awesome, once again. Thank you for sharing yourself. This is how we all grow.

  7. Traci Johnson

    Absolutely love your list Barbara! Thanks for sharing so many interesting pieces of your life; it’s wonderful to have a little more insight into your fabulously interesting world!

  8. Barbara Winter

    It was surprisingly fun and easy to write, Traci. Great exercise.

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  1. Moments when Reality Shifts | Lansing Rocks

    […] I have talked before about author Barbara Winter of the Joyfully Jobless blog (and book Making a Living without a Job). Today she posted a blog entry called “Things I Haven’t Told You.” […]