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You can run but you can't hide. I've been kissed by an angel and tagged by the honorable poet and author Laura Purdie Salas to divulge my darkest secrets.

How come these online memes never ask us to probe the meaning of oxygen or the importance of being earnest? Not sure what there is left to confess that I haven't already spilled onto the screen here but I'll try.

I wonder if I know myself enough to know the obscure things about me that would seem interesting to a reading audience. ;>

1: I used to listen in on phone calls at the switchboard when I worked behind the desk at a hotel during the summer a million years ago. My parents stayed at the hotel and the job was given to me out of courtesy to my mom and dad. (It was an old switchboard with plugs and buttons. Straight out a 40s movie set.) That was the summer I was hypnotized by Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT. I read, I plugged, I listened, I made a lot of mistakes. I learned a lot of secrets.

2: My first true kiss and true love was with a 19-year old trumpet player to my 14-year old goofiness. Our first date was an afternoon movie ("Ode to Billie Jo") because my father would not let me go out at night. That was the summer I found Sylvia Plath and romance all at once. I can still remember the moment of that kiss. I can see myself on the couch, wearing oatmeal-hued jeans and a brown tube top. I wrote a lot of love letters that year.

3: My Can't Dos: Sew, Play cards, play PlayStation games or Dance Dance Revolution, cook, make braids, eat fish or eggs, understand math, draw, dress fashionbaly, throw out a book, figure out how to put on the DVD player in the living room, go to sleep like normal people do, change a flat tire, bear the sight or mention of a mouse.

4: Almost Famous: The closet ham in me is not too shy to admit my off off off off off off off Broadway acting roles: (Think camp, school:) Annie Oakley (ANNIE GET YOUR GUN), The Courier (1776, Hi Hope, Best Play Ever) , Tuptim (THE KING AND I, school production), ANNA (camp production of THE KING AND I, took over the role when the star got sick and my mother forced the head counselor to give the role of Anna to me, ahem ahem), The Cowardly Lion (THE WIZARD OF OZ), Patty (YOU'RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN) and some sort of robot/woman of the future in the high school SING show. The funniest talent show moment: when I was a little nothing and sang WHY MUST I BE A TEEN AGER IN LOVE, accompanied by my own miserable guitar playing.

5: If I see people throwing trash outside their car windows, most notably cigarette butts, I even my car next to the offending driver and stare the person down until my message is loud and clear. When I am in the mood, I roll down my window and shout: "Why did you have to do that?" (Really. Who DO they have to do that? Are there not enough garbage pails in the world?)

This was a ridiculously random spew of airhead factoids. It was a long day. I was in a hospital/nursing home in Brooklyn for much of the day. I can still smell its putrid aroma on my skin. I don't like knowing a family member is there but that's all there is for now. My grandma (father's mother) died in that same building. I walked into the doors and all the ugly memories of the last time I was in that building washed over me. I can still see her thin, pale wrists tied to the bedrails to avoid her hurting herself. She had very little recognition left but I do remember saying my name and watching me with her big blue eyes as I kissed her clammy cheek and left her room. I never saw her alive again.

Hey. Who brought the Sad Sack in here? :{

This is supposed to be a fun project. {}

Ready to make some noise, make some more fun? I choose.....

(Drumrolls and glockenspiel clinking, maestro, please! Oh and did I mention I pretended to know how to play the glockenspiel in our junior high school band class? I don't know how I got away with that one.)

Next battah battah is...

newport2newport Melodye Shore... because if anyone can make a random obscurity make sense, it's My California Girl, the one and only Original First-Place Trophy Friend, Melodye. {{{}}}

Take it away, Mel, mon chere.

-Pamela, worried my obscure confessions make for one, massive snore-fest...