At Sixes and Sevens

by Stephanie Black

Multi-talented novelist, poet, and musician Cheri Crane tagged me in a seven-things-about-me game. I’d rather tell you seven things about Cheri—she’s more interesting than I am—but I’ll give it a try.

1. I have five children. Three girls and two boys. The oldest is sixteen. The youngest is three. Speaking of the kids, should I be worried that my oldest daughter has this mat in front of her bedroom door?



Actually, Amy is on the long-arm-of-the-law side of things. She wants to be a police officer when she grows up and is very involved in our local law enforcement Explorer post. When she found this mat in an online store, she thought it was hilarious.

2. I hate squash. Gag-reflex hate it. I always have. I can handle zucchini, though I wouldn’t seek it out, but any kind of winter squash—ick.

3. I'm way out of it when it comes to popular TV shows. My teenager downloads Psych episodes online, and I've watched some of those. But I’ve never seen American Idol or The Office, or whatever other shows are hot at the moment. I’d probably enjoy them if I did watch them, but I’m just not interested enough to figure out when they're on or to take the time to watch them. I did watch some of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice, but only because one of my husband’s grad school classmates was on the show (and he won!). If I want to see a TV show, I can get it from Netflix. We’ve watched a lot of Monk that way. My current favorite is Ballykissangel, the BBC show from a decade or so back. It’s set in a small town in Ireland, which lends a nice air of nostalgia to the show (we used to live in Ireland), which brings up number four:

4. I once flunked an Irish driving test. I’d tell you more about it, but I don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t one of my favorite life experiences. Nothing like having a U.S. license for eighteen years (with a good driving record) and then getting told that no, you’re not worthy to be on the roads. Those Irish road tests are brutal.

5. Mitt Romney used to be our Gospel Doctrine teacher.

6. I don’t have any pets, nor do I want any. This makes me sound like Grinch McScrooge, but I’m just not a pet person. I didn’t grow up with pets—who needs pets when you have younger siblings? We did have a cat--or rather a succession of cats—in my later teen years. They didn’t last long—we lived on the edge of the desert, so we’re assuming coyotes might have had a hand in pet population control. But I was off to college by then, and didn’t ever have much to do with the cats. I think dogs and cats and other furry critters are fine, as long as they belong to someone else. My teenager has three hermit crabs, but that's the extent of our pets.

7. I have strange nicknames for my children. For instance, I have a son named Stephen. Sometimes I call him Peter. Why? I don’t know. His first name isn’t Peter, nor is his middle name. “Why didn’t you just name him Peter?” my family asks. “I don’t like the name Peter,” I reply. Actually, this isn’t true. I like the name Peter just fine—I just like Stephen better. Why do I call him Peter? It just has that . . . je nais sais quoi that makes it ring as a nickname. Sometimes I call him Pietro. I call my younger son Binks, even though his binky days are long past. My second daughter is Slio (her name is Shauna), though I don't use her nickname as much as I used to.

Okay, now I’m supposed to tag seven other people. I’m going to tag the seven Ink Ladies: Katie Parker, Crystal Liechty, Tamra Norton, Robyn Heirtzler, Marcia Mickleson, Elodia Strain and Marsha Ward. I think I'll tag Anne Bradshaw too. I know that's eight people, but who's counting?