This is my response to the 25 things challenge.  It was originally posted on Facebook, but I removed it during the Facebook Terms of Service shit storm of February 2009.  Since then, I’ve decided to use Facebook only for social networking.  Any of my creative output, such as photos or writing, will go on my own web sites, or on Flickr, where they respect their users’ intellectual property.  Occasionally, I will post links on Facebook.

I enjoyed writing my 25 things, and truly enjoyed reading other people’s 25 things.  That’s not narcissistic (as some newspaper stories about the trend alleged).  It’s a way to connect with people who are interesting.  As far as relationships go, the rest is up to us to follow through on.  A social networking site can’t do that for us.

Here are the rules:  “Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.”

1. I love tea. I hardly ever drink coffee. I love tea so much that I coined the phrase, “Tea…the other brown drink.” Yeah, that was me.

2. I avoid wearing light blue shirts or blouses because they remind me of the uniform I wore for eight years in Catholic school. Needless to say, saddle shoes are totally out of the question.

3. I went to the first 15 years of the Clifftop old-time music festival, and then got completely burnt out on the festival camping. I miss the people, the music, and the dancing, but not enough to camp there.

4. A few years ago, I finally found a sweet man who is at least as smart, if not smarter, than me. So, I married him.

5. I got married for the first time the day after I turned 52. Better late than never.

6. I have two black and white cats. One is named after the late, great Dave Grant. The other is not.

7. I was in Washington, D.C. working on Capitol Hill, on September 11, 2001. Ever since then, I always make sure I have comfortable shoes with me at work, so I can walk the ten miles home in an emergency, if I have to.

8. I learned Appalachian clogging in 1980, and picked up the banjo in 1986. Now I’m learning to play the ukulele.

9. I have three sisters and two brothers. I’m the third.

10. I had never heard of the Weekly World News until my younger sister was in it for teaching Bible study in the nude.

11. Most of my life, I haven’t worn make-up. I guess I’m more interested in cosmology than cosmetics. However, I have begun to wear a little lipstick now and then, because I am tired of seeing photographs of myself in which I look like I don’t have any lips.

12. Until I got on Facebook, I thought my name was unique. Then I got a friend request from someone named Julie Mangin. I checked her friend list, and she had another Julie Mangin already on it. Every once in a while my FB feed says something like, “Julie Mangin is a fan of KFC chicken,” and I think “how do they know?” before remembering it’s the OTHER Julie Mangin.

13. My niece and I share a birthday. On my wedding day, she went into labor and had to leave fifteen minutes before the ceremony began. If her daughter had been born a day earlier, all three of us would have had the same birthday.

14. I have souvenir plates from the Maryland amusement park, The Enchanted Forest, which I sell on eBay.

15. I’ve always wanted to do something on stage in the Galax band contest that would cause the Moose Lodge to create another contest rule. It would be referred to as the “Julie Rule.”

16. Every weekday, I read the Washington Post comics section on the subway in the morning. If I have time, I do the sudoku, too.

17. I’m thinking of retiring in a couple of years.

18. I’m the first person to win a prize in the Washington Post’s Style Invitational contest for an entry that they deemed too vulgar to print. Gene Weingarten called it, “a hilarious entry too revolting to be published on any planet inhabited by sentient beings.” I didn’t think it was that bad.

19. I used to be known as the Clog Mogul of D.C., but I always preferred to be called an impresario.

20. I have the world’s largest collection of Mark Eden Bust Developers. They are among the many tacky treasures I collect.

21. I have had one of my photographs published in People Magazine.

22. If I could start my own religion, I’d make Girl Scout Thin Mints the communion wafer. I would encourage meditation while listening to Uncle Bunt Stephens play “Candy Girl.” One of the sacraments would involve crabs, fresh tomatoes, corn on the cob, and beer.

23. I used to smoke a pack and a half of cigarettes a day until the late 1970s. I quit because I was struggling through music school, and I needed to drop the smoke breaks to get more study and practice time in.

24. When I was in my 20s, I learned to drive a motorcycle. On the first day of driving class, I kick-started my motorcycle in gear, launched myself six feet in the air, and landed on all fours. On the last day, I got the highest score on the driving test. The instructor called me his most improved student.

25. I received a masters degree in library science about 25 years ago, and started working as a librarian. Now, I’m a web developer who writes dynamic pages in PHP/MySQL. What the hell happened?

When I was a kid, I grew up in Glenmont just north of Wheaton, Maryland, which at that time was considered a distant suburb of Washington, D.C.  Our house was built in 1951.  You should see the area now.  You’d have to drive out another ten miles to see rural scenes.  But in the 1950s, there was a horse farm on Georgia Avenue, where the subway station is now.

We lived on a sloping street with a row of brick, one-story Cape Cod houses on either side.  The late 1950s and early 1960s were my earliest memories.  Wives and mothers stayed at home all day while their husbands went to work.  Some of the wives didn’t even drive, and even if they did, it was rare in my neighborhood for a family to have two cars.  And because it was so far from the city there wasn’t dependable public transportation, the men had to drive to work.  The Washington Metro didn’t open until 1976, and the Glenmont station didn’t open until the mid-1990s.

That’s why, in the 1960s, Mr. Simmons made a living driving the grocery bus.  It was a little mom-and-pop stop on wheels, a full-sized school bus painted red and silver, with “Simmons Market” across each side.  The seats inside were gone, replaces by store shelves.  There was even a working refrigerator for milk and eggs.  Way in the back, fresh produce was stacked up: lettuce, carrots, tomatoes, etc.  As a kid, I have the clearest memory of the candy counter.  The Bazooka bubble was in the front row, with candy bars and other kinds of sweets behind it.  Every weekday, Mr. Simmons came through our neighborhood and stopped at the bottom of the hill.  He blew the horn three times, and the housewives would come out of the houses to shop.  The kids would come from wherever they were: backyards, the tetherball court, even the trees to crowd the candy counter.

My favorite treat was the chocolate Turkish Taffy.    I can still imagine the taste.  Before opening it, I would slam the candy on the sidewalk to break it into pieces.  It was too thick and sticky to bite pieces off of it.  Oh how I loved hat stuff.  If I were to eat it now, all I can think is that it would probably pull out my fillings.

I don’t remember what Mr. Simmons looked like.  I only had eyes for the candy.  I also don’t know when Mr. Simmons’ grocery bus stopped cruising the neighborhood.  I don’t remember it at all during my high school years, which started in 1969.  I only wish I had a photograph of the bus to prove to people that we really had a grocery bus in our neighborhood.  All I have are my memories, and my ability to write.