I got this meme from Devon. I thought it was fun, and so I have slowly been doing it throughout the week. Enjoy!
Seven things to do before I die:
1. Live abroad.
2. Teach a strictly literature class.
3. Travel to Prince Edward Island.
4. Write a published book of some sort.
5. Do a lead that I'd love (coughEPONINEcough) in a great and professional-like musical production.
6. Be involved in some political campaign of merit.
7. Dance with grace, style, and skill.
Seven things I cannot do
1. Dive
2. Read music
3. Understand how Hilary Duff ever became famous or popular
4. Speak Italian
5. Drive a stick shift
6. See well without glasses or contacts when driving
7. Realize the appeal of running for fun
Seven things I say most often:
1. Sarcastic answers to questions for the purpose of making people laugh.
2. Guess what my students did today?
3. Oy vey! (I used it a lot during Fiddler, and it just won’t leave my vocabulary!)
4. Here’s the thing . . .
5. Quotes from Shakespeare, Anne of Green Gables, Jane Austen, Gilmore Girls, various movies . . .
6. Carson City is full of hicks!
7. I can’t, I have rehearsal.
Seven books I love:
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Anne of Green Gables
3. Jane Eyre
4. The Chronicles of Narnia
5. Shakespeare’s plays (there are several I read over and over)
6. The Princess Diaries series (hilarious!)
7. Agatha Christie mysteries
(Okay, I realize I wasn’t completely staying true to the requirements of the section, but there are far too many to choose from! Reducing it this much was a hassle.)
Seven movies I watch over and over again:
1. Pride and Prejudice
2. Anne of Green Gables
3. Much Ado About Nothing
4. Meet Me in St. Louis
5. Roman Holiday
6. Emma (with Gwenyth Paltrow)
7. Love Actually
My seven most vivid memories
1. At my 8th grade graduation was when the school decided to give us the awards that weren’t academic. The academic awards and student of the month awards were given at an all school ceremony the last week of school. I had been proud to get my award for Straight A’s, honor roll, Top 20 in Science, History, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, that was all I pretty much expected to have happen. The awards at Graduation were for Lion’s Club, or Valedictorian, or whatever. I planned to kick back and talk with the guys I was sitting between. I gave a half-hearted attempt to listen to the school nurse, who presented the first award. It was the Shirley Baker Humanitarian Award (she’d been a school nurse who had died midway through my 5th grade year). They announced the winner—it was me! I don’t know if I’ve ever been so shocked or honored in my life! I’ve won other awards in my life, but that one has meant the most to me, because it was an award for my character, not my achievements.
2. The first speech meet of my junior year of high school was such a crazy day! I’d competed on the LJHS speech team my sophomore year and had done okay; not great, but okay. My junior year, I chose a piece very different from my piece my sophomore year. I competed in Drama Interpretation. I felt okay about my piece, but not totally enthused—it was about a baton twirler. Anyway, our first meet was at Wasson High School, in or near Colorado Springs. The meet, in fine Wasson tradition, was running about four hours off schedule. This meant I never bought any lunch, because our next round was supposed to start before our last one let out, and I wasn’t sure that I’d get to really have time to eat before competing. I didn’t want to leave my lunch if I had to go to another round, because A) Cold pizza which isn’t great to start with tastes nastier at a high school event. B) There was a chance that it would not be found in a sea of backpacks, coats, files, etc. C) I liked to eat afterward as kind of reward for my hard work in three rounds. When I came out of my third round, the food had been sold out and was gone. No worries. It was Jenny Jones’s birthday, and we had a cake. Not enough to fill me up, but enough to tide me over. Anyway, they posted the competitors for the final round. I went up to check, because that’s what we would do, but I didn’t expect to see my code. But there it was! And Julie Checketts, another girl from my school, was in it, too! We hurried to the room, because the round tended to start once everyone was there. We each competed, and I did the best I could, considering the stress. I was in with “the best”. Julie, Sean, Kourtney, Juliet, Katie . . . all of us were there. At about 9:30, they started the awards ceremony. I ended up getting 4th place, I think. Yay! When we tried to go home, we couldn’t. Our bus driver had left around 4, and only told one of the kids, James. Apparently there were mechanical problems, and he was trying to get them fixed. We were all starving, cold, and exhausted. The people running the Wasson meet had to get a van to shuttle us to a Denny’s where we waited for our bus. We didn’t get home until 3 a.m. on Sunday. Oddly enough, the next year, Mrs. Smith didn’t have us go to the Wasson meet . . .
3. During my sophomore year of college, I did what any normal kid does on a Friday night; I was having fun with my friends. When I got back to the dorm, I had a voice mail . . . from my parents. This was odd, since we usually talked on Sunday nights. I could also tell from the tone of my father’s voice that something was genuinely wrong. I called immediately after I woke up fearing for whatever it was that I was going to hear. All semester long, I knew something huge and hard was going to happen to my family. Do you ever get that feeling? You just know something isn’t right, but you don’t know why? Well, I in all my imaginative glory pictured my entire family dying in a car wreck. Hearing my dad’s voice was reassuring. It was November. My parents answered and I asked what was wrong right away. My dad asked how I knew, and my mom said, “Lynette can always tell.” My 17 year old sister was pregnant and due in January. She had just told them that week (though she’d been showing for awhile). They also told me in the same phone call that they intended to move somewhere in the summer—either Arizona or Nevada! Needless to say, both of these pieces of news changed my life in a dramatic way.
4. This event also took place during my sophomore year of college (it was probably the biggest year ever). I was in the Junior Class Play, which was The Night of January 16th by Ayn Rand. It was a courtroom drama/comedy, and it was such a fun cast to be a part of. Anyway, I played an old Swedish maid whose belief in religious justice could probably make Jonathon Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” look like the 23rd psalm. I had been the maid of the murdered man. Anyway, my testimony during the play could “make or break” the case, and it was one of those shows where the jury is picked from the audience. Because I had so much information, I would often run lines during intermission with the two lawyers, Jen Hill and Cory Schmidt. Cory and I really made a point to do this, because my testimony helped with her case and I had so much evidence for the case. Our final performance had a dead audience, and I knew my character was funny enough to bring them to life. I asked Cory if she was ready to run lines, and she said, “Nah. We’ve done a pretty good job with it.” Okay by me! When it got to our scene, Cory didn’t say two words put together that were in the script!!!!!!!!! It was so thrilling and scary at the same time. It got so bad that she said, “So . . . January 16th was the night he got married, right?” “NO! That the night he DIED!” There were even parts where I knew my testimony was crucial to later testimonies, so I had to say things like, “I want to tell you something,” all the while trying to get the poor girl back on track. My heart was literally pounding as I left the witness stand for that performance.
5. My senior year of college was quite an exciting year for me. I did deal with bouts of loneliness/feeling left out and plenty of self doubt as to whether I was cut out for this senior project thing or teaching thing. However, most of it had a golden ring around it. I remember at the end of the year being so excited about London, but knowing I had to make the most of every day because life was going to be vastly different soon. On one of my last days, we had the Dooley Banquet. I was a sophomore girl’s R.A. that year, and it was truly an amazing wing of girls I had. I was feeling sad because I was going to miss them a lot, and they ambushed me! The girls got together and got me some amazing gifts and a card which I’ve kept in a scrapbook I specifically created for my experience as an R.A. I loved those girls so much, and it surprised me how much I meant to them.
6. The third and final semester of my senior year of college, I was broke. I mean, the if-I-found-10- cents-on-the-ground,-I-considered-myself-fortunate kind of broke. I was trying to find a job at first, but then I got the massive piles of grading that squelched that plan. I literally would get home about 4:00, have a quick dinner, and sit until 10-11 at night grading. Weekends were great, because I didn’t have to go to school, and I could concentrate on teaching. I could sit and grade. On a good weekend, I would put in my 3 or so hours of time set painting for the Fall play (because I wanted to honor my drama scholarship requirements) as a break, and go to church as a break. If I could finish up on Saturday night, then I could do my homework for the classes we had to take on Mondays, and give myself a couple of free hours to play. On a good weekend. Anyway, I was broke, and my parents weren’t helping me out that semester for NNU. I had a couple of scholarships, but it wasn’t enough to pay for the semester. I remember doing some heavy duty praying and constantly e-mailing my Financial Aide advisor. I finally was able to go in (school had let out early, and I’d made a point to get to school earlier so I could leave earlier) and Wes and I got to work. I sat there for a good 1 ½-2 hours. He came up with THREE different scholarships for me, and was able to get my drama scholarship increased by $1,000!!!!!!!!! I didn’t owe a single penny for that semester. It was truly phenomenal. I will never forget that time, because it was a miracle I witnessed and realized at the time—something that rarely occurs in one’s life. My parents had been freaking out, but for some reason I remained calm. God takes care of people; no one can tell me otherwise!
7. During my freshmen year of college, I made a lot of friends. There was a girl who’d moved onto our Morrison wing from a Ford wing mid-way through the year. I got to be her friend—not a great friend, but friends nonetheless. She was quirky; one thing I won’t forget. She had a pet guinea pig that the school let her keep. She had a leash for it and would “walk” it around the dorm. It was quite hilarious to witness. The more I got to know her, the more I realized how different we were. She was kind of wild. Did the drugs, did the alcohol, did the sneaking out of the dorm, or sneaking guys into the dorm thing. I didn’t, because I’m a perpetual goody two-shoes. But we became friends. I learned that she’d been moved to our wing because she was friends with our R.A., and this girl had issues—she’d run into the middle of the street next to the school trying to commit suicide was the rumor; she told me it was a reaction to her anti-depressants. Anyway, we would talk late into the night quite a bit. One night, she looked straight at me and said, “I wish I were more like you.” Huh? She was popular. At that time I wasn’t. She had a ton of friends, I was still very introverted around my classmates (until the end of the year when I said, “I want to change!”). Why did she want to be like me? I asked her, and was surprised at her response. “Because you see the person. You don’t look at the drugs, or whatever. You get to know them, and befriend them. You don’t judge me. You don’t seem to judge others. I want to be like you.” That shook me up and it made me very aware of myself and how I wanted to be.
The title comes from the song, "The Seven Deadly Virtues" from the musical Camelot. Hope you enjoyed it!
