25 Things You May Not Know About Me and Probably Could Care Less About

Just for fun, I'll post the first half of this list this week and the second half next week. Now you know all my secrets (well...maybe almost all).

1. Instead of Susan, I would have preferred to be named something exotic and sexy like Serena, Desiree, or Jezebel. However, I am grateful that my mother prevailed over my father who wanted to name me after my two grandmothers, in which case you would be addressing me as Oma Viola Valentine. One grandmother was Oma Hall Harris and the other was Viola Valentine McCoy, both lovely ladies, but thank heaven I didn’t have to answer the roll call in school as Oma Viola.

2. I once worked for the public relations/advertising agency that handled Duke Kahanamoku’s, a well-known and popular restaurant/night club in Honolulu, Hawaii and their biggest star, singer/entertainer Don Ho. The head account manager, the vice president of the firm, and I (a lowly copywriter) once had a publicity meeting in Don Ho’s Waikiki penthouse at the Hawaiian Village. At the time, he was in bed with his latest blond girl friend and we conducted the meeting sitting on his bed, sipping Mai Tais. Unfortunately, there were no cell phones with cameras back then.

3. I almost got arrested by the secret service for trespassing on President Lyndon Johnson’s ranch near Austin, Texas. On a spring break trip during my sophomore year, my friends and I, who had been staying at a sorority sister’s ranch near Austin, decided on the way back to school to stop and see LBJ’s ranch. The ranch house sits on a big hill overlooking the Perdenales River outside Austin. It was hot and dusty, and we were hot and dusty and cramped (four of us travelling in a Volkswagen), so we decided the President wouldn’t mind if we took a swim in his river to cool off. We were having a great time splashing around and never batted an eye as we watched two cars speed down the hill from the house and cross the river to our side on a secret road built just beneath the water. We waved and hollered and whooped at them as they approached. When they slammed to a stop in a cloud of dust right by us, we thought it was hilarious. Please be advised, the Secret Service does not have much of a sense of humor.

4. My genetic heritage (from the deep South) is predisposed to Hershey bars, popcorn, nachos, cokes, chocolate pie with meringue, and gravy on everything. Vegetables, with the exception of black-eyed peas and spinach (and only if they are heavily laced with bacon grease), and fruits, with the exception of strawberries (and only if they are layered on angel food cake and topped with whip cream), are not and never were part of my family’s daily nutritional plan. I never even knew what kale or chard looked like until my daughter and her husband bought a farm and grew it. I just recently found out there is a vegetable called raddichio.

5. When I was 15, I accidentally cracked a window pane in my parents’ house. It was in the bathroom off the family room, and I didn’t think anyone would notice so I didn’t say anything. They did notice and went into an uproar because they thought a burglar had tried to get in the house and had broken the window. My mom installed security locks on the back doors. She and my dad put a lock on the backyard gate and even considered getting a burglar alarm. Every night for the next week before he went to bed, my dad took a security walk around the house, checking for unguarded entry points. I never told them I was the one that cracked the window.

6. I am terrified of the common moth that flits around lights. When I was a kid, if one got in my room and I heard it flapping around the ceiling, I would go into fits of hysteria until someone, usually my parents, killed it. It didn’t matter if it was 3 a.m. in the morning, I’d wake them up to get that little bugger out of there. I’m still terrified. In fact, when I was nine months and two weeks overdue with my first child, I was sitting on the sofa when a moth flapped around the light next to me and then into my hair. Terrified, I jumped six feet off the sofa, fell over the coffee table, and rolled on the floor screaming. My water broke the next afternoon and my mother was convinced I’d still be pregnant if it weren’t for that moth.

7. I love movie theater buttered popcorn and often go to the movies just so I can get a bag of popcorn.

8. I cannot make gravy. No matter what I do, it turns out lumpy.

9. I used to bribe my sisters to rub/tickle my feet, which I find the most relaxing thing in the world to this day. I’m absolutely shameless about what I’ll do to get a foot rub.

10. I have had my thank you speech for accepting the Academy Award for best actress written for the last 40 years, though I update it annually at awards time. (I always secretly wanted to be an actress.)

11. I also would love be a detective because I’m nosy, observant (good for a writer), sneaky, like to pretend, and am a good liar.

12. In my next life, if I’m not an actress or a detective, I want to be a stand-up comedian.