The Nitty Gritty

It was just a matter of time...but I've been caught. I was caught and tagged by Pandave over at Odi and Amo. Now it's up to me to carry on the game. Here are the rules:

The Rules:
- Link to the person that tagged you.
- Post the rules on your blog.
- Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.
- Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
- Let each random person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.

1. I am a perfectionist. I believe that we are born with our personality traits. I was certainly born with this one, although I've worked hard over the years to try to mellow it out...but essentially it is who I am. My mother tells me that when I was a baby and learning to talk, that I could talk long before I would utter a word in front of anyone. She had placed a mirror in my crib and I would sit there and practice as long as I thought no one was watching. As soon as anyone would enter the room, I would stop. When I began speaking I essentially had a very good command of the language. I had the same struggle in Quebec when I was first learning French many years later. I hated the thought of making an error or talking like a toddler. Eventually I had to ask myself what was the worst thing that could happen was and just get out there and do it. Still, I tend to over do things. It's a bit of a stress.

2. I am also just a bit obsessive compulsive...another trait from birth. I have always loved books and I am told that from about the age of one, I would gravitate to my parents' beautiful coffee table books, which, of course, were at just the perfect height for me to reach. I would choose a page and then rip just the tiniest little bit...not even a millimeter. Sometimes I'd have more than one book going at a time. Every day, I would go back to those books, to those specific pages and rip just the tiniest bit more. It would take months for the rip to develop into a much larger tear that would eat its way to the centre of the page. When I would start on a page, my parents told me that they were never sure it was actually a rip, perhaps just a snag from wear, but when they would go back to those same pages after a space of time, that very same rip would be decidedly longer. Yes, I know what you are all thinking...I had a lot of issues. I was probably born with them. I am sure that Freud would have had a heyday with me.

3. I, and everyone in my family, have memories that go back to about the age of two or three. These aren't fabricated memories or things that I've heard people talking about and then adapted as my own, these are my actual memories. Memories from when I was younger are sometimes more of a visual memory and at other times I remember the situation or event because I remember specifically what I was thinking at the time when the event happened. I am always astonished when people tell me that they can't remember anything before the age of ten. That's a whole decade that is lost or forgotten. I simply cannot imagine.

4. I have never been able to sleep in moving vehicles, especially cars. When I was young, my family would drive to the coast several times a year to visit the grandparents. It's a long trip through numerous mountain passes. I had visions of the car driving off a cliff so I would force myself to stay awake and keep watch. I recently recounted this to my father who excitedly informed me that when I was a baby, I was in a vehicle with my mother who missed a corner and drove the car over the bank. We both wondered if this incident had somehow imprinted itself upon my cellular memory so that even though I don't consciously remember the event, somehow my body did.

5. I am a night owl. Always have been, probably always will be. There were at least a couple instances when I was young where I simply forgot to go to sleep. No, this was not when I was at university pulling all nighters, although that did happen much later. At sleep overs, I was always the last one awake and usually the first one up. Now, although I still tend to keep rather late hours, don't find it quite so easy to get up so early. I have considered that perhaps I was supposed to have been born in a different time zone, not sure how I would actually confirm that though.

6. Last but not least...I talk to myself a lot...or sometimes to people who aren't there. Okay, I usually don't do this when other people are around, or if I do, it's internal dialogue. I'm not an outright freak, at least not yet.

Now, who to tag, who to tag...eenie, meenie, minie moe, I choose Cheryl, JBelle, Fede, Pinks, Mone, and VE.