Melina's Egocentric Blog of Vanity and Narcisism

Welcome to The Wilder Coast's first fabulous giveaway! You can enter here to win a gift certificate to the Chaco Canyon Cafe, or a $10 gift card to a local coffee shop of choice for non-Seattle readers. All you have to do is leave a comment containing a fun fact about yourself. The top 10 comments deemed 'most fun' will be thrown in a hat, and the winner chosen randomly. Read, comment, then stay tuned: the winner will be announced right here.


We've all seen the '25 things about me' note that people post on Facebook. It's always preceded by this disclaimer: "I didn't want to write this but my friends tagged me! They made me do it!" Come on, you lying liar! Why wrap yourself in faux-modesty when it's far more comfortable wearing the sensible pants of honesty. We all love writing about ourselves. It's a lot of fun.

The reason it's taken me this long to write my own is not because I didn't desire to, but because I have an eerily accurate memory. Dredging through the annals of 24.5 years of my personal periodicals in search of the interesting paragraphs has been laborious, to put it lightly. I'm going to break them up for you into a few posts, so that you can have a daily fix. Also, so that you can read them in your average attention of 15 seconds. I hope you enjoy them:

1. If I spontaneously lash out at you in a seemingly random and unprovoked episode of physical brutality, I assure you it is neither random nor unprovoked. It is because you were chewing too loudly.

2. Getting out of bed has always been a serious cause of angst and despondence for me. I absolutely dread it. I slept in my clothes until I was 13 in a clever plot I devised to save me the agony of getting out of pajamas. If I know I have to wake up before 9:30am the next morning, I'll be too miserable to sleep.

3. I was raised in a staunchly anti-religious household. When I was in 7th grade, my best friend gave me a bible. Knowing that it was contraband in my house, I hid it under my bed. My sister ratted me out to my mom, who bought me a copy of Bertrand Russell's Why I'm not a Christian. She needn't have worried. I find religion in its current form irritating, dangerous and delusional. That said, my three best friends from childhood are strongly Christian. They are three of the people I love and admire most on this earth. They know how I feel, I know how they feel and all that....still, I hope they don't FB de-friend me after reading this.

4. I was put in full-time daycare when I was 17 months old, and quickly rose to the upper echelon of Toddlers at the Transportation Research Center Daycare. I was an instant junkie for school. In fact, I didn't kick the addiction until I graduated college, 21 years later. Always looking for my next fix, I now work as a high school teacher and browse grad school applications to get a quick high.

5. Going on that, I am a HUGE advocate of daycare. I credit my four years in daycare for instilling in me at an early age a social fluency, independence, and humor that have been my most powerful assets thus far. (However, why I still can't spell after 20.5 years of school remains a mystery.) The whole "My children never saw the inside of a daycare" really rubs me the wrong way. What's wrong with your kid getting socialized? Whatever happened to 'it takes a village?' My kids are going to be tossed into preschool as soon as possible, for my sake and theirs.

6. My dad changed Boston forever. He was the man that conceptualized the Central Artery Project, also known as the Big Dig. I'm durn proud of him.

Now just hang on, there's more to come.