Little Known Facts About Me, Continued

This is that Meme of 100, where you're supposed to share little-known facts about yourself. It's actually quite hard, which explains why I haven't followed up on it for quite a while. Figured we'd best get to 10 this year, so here goes:

LKF #6:  I met Billy Idol at the gym in Helsinki several years ago. I was working out (to satisfy gym requirement) when he sat down opposite me on one of the machines. I was floored, but was not gonna show it, just said a casual "Hi." His manager-dude who was with him, was quite sleezy, but Billy Idol himself was actually very nice, surprisingly short (the reports that he is 5'9" are untrue) and not at all the "bad boy of Rock'n'Roll" I might have expected. He invited me to his concert that night, backstage passes. My boyfriend at the time was managing a few Finnish rock bands, and we already had backstage passes courtesy of MTV Europe, and I said so. He intimated I could ditch the boyfriend, but as I'm sure you know by now, that's not my style. Anyway, it was a great concert. Also met Suzanne Vega that night—she had a fragile bird-like quality about her. After the show, the groupies ("provoca-whores") proceeded to the band's suite at the hotel—my boyfriend and I had drinks with the MTV people and then went home. Kind of a non-story I guess, but bet it's something you didn't know about me before.

LKF #7:  My favorite potato chips flavor is BBQ. There is one kind I like even better—in Greece, they had Oregano potato chips, Ruffles brand, even, but I've never seen them anywhere else.

LKF #8:  I'm a pretty good cook, except when I'm nervous about impressing someone. Then, I either burn the dish, or figure out some other way of ruining the dish irrecoverably, to make sure I come out looking like the worst butter-fingered dunce ever to set foot in a kitchen. So if I ever serve you anything that is absolutely god-awful, you'll know I was especially keen on impressing you.

LKF #9:  I was "the ugly girl" at school until about 7th grade, although looking at old pictures, I don't look as deformed and hideous as I felt back then. Throughout those years, I was mercilessly tormented by bullies, and I don't even want to think about all the ugly names I was called, the fights I got into, or about the boy in third grade who was my "desk mate" (the desks were twin desks joined together), who would poke me with a compass, the kind you use for math class. My parents noticed I had lots of strange bruises and abrasions, and they contacted the school. That boy was moved to a class for "disturbed" kids. Sometimes still today, if someone gives me a compliment, my first internal reaction is that they must be taking the piss out of me, and I get very embarrassed—I often over-compensate for that residual low self-esteem by pretending to be super-confident.

LKF #10:  I play the piano. I haven't had a piano since I moved out of Finland, because I've never had that kind of money. But whenever I visit someone who doesn't mind me bungling away (10 yrs makes you forget an awful lot), I like to see what I still remember, and caress those ebonies and ivories. My favorites to play were Chopin and a Finnish composer named Oskar Merikanto. I wanted to play all the popular stuff, like show-tunes and "light-classical", but my teacher wasn't supportive. She wanted me to play Bach, whom I'm sorry to say, I loathed to play. I quit her, and piano, for over a year, before getting back to it. My last piano teacher was really nice and she'd let me learn one song of my own choice for each classical piece she picked. Someday, I'm gonna have a piano again, and my kids can play whatever they want on it, even if it's "Chopsticks".