Twenty Things You Probably Don’t Know about Me

by Jen Barry, posted in Uncategorized
  1. At one point in my life, I had five jobs and about two hours of sleep per night.
  2. I still have a scar from the chicken pox I had when I was three, but the scar from the burn I got on a go-kart motor when I was eleven has disappeared.
  3. I learned to drive stick on an orange ’69 Volkswagen Beetle when I was twelve. My aunt taught me in the church parking lot.
  4. My middle name is Kaye, but I changed it to my maiden name when I married.
  5. I wrecked my first car three days after I turned sixteen. It set a precedent for the next nine years.
  6. Three of my closest friends live more than two thousand miles away, and each in a different country.
  7. I took piano lessons for ten years, and my nephew, who has played for a year, puts me to shame.
  8. I discovered caramel Frappuccinos the year I gave up chocolate for Lent. I’m not Catholic.
  9. During the year I lived in New York, I sang with a black gospel choir in Brooklyn.  They called me Sweet T.
  10.  My first three dates with my husband involved either a speeding ticket or a fender bender.
  11. I play, though not well, the piano, clarinet, trumpet, French horn, and saxophone. I have attempted, and utterly failed at, percussion, guitar, and violin.
  12. My first best friend was Stacey, and my first “real” boyfriend was Jasen.
  13. My top five movies of all time are, in no particular order, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Tombstone, Boondock Saints, Snatch, andMichael Collins.
  14. I do not now, nor will I ever, apologize for loving N’Sync.
  15. I call any fizzy drink Coke.  Even if it’s Sprite.
  16. I’ve fallen in almost every city I’ve visited – usually in the middle of the street.  There was a particularly spectacular belly flop in front of a busy Starbucks in midtown Manhattan that I would love to strike from my memory.
  17. I once performed the role of Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music.
  18. My mother used to have to wrestle me to get me out of my car t-shirts and into a dress.  My fashion sense has barely changed over the years.
  19. Sometimes I paint. We hang them even if they’re terrible.
  20. When I was sixteen, my sister and I recorded a gospel album. No, you won’t find it on iTunes.

6 thoughts on “Twenty Things You Probably Don’t Know about Me”

  2. I also learned to drive at 12, in a jeep, on country roads, by the black man who worked on our ranch. he was a war hero, and more of a father to me than my dad. god bless him.
    hap

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  3. I love finding out all these things about you. Funny how some things in our lives were very similar. Mostly the parts about wrecks, jobs and the chicken pox scar that graces the center of my forehead.

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