Secrets and Lies

The lovely Phoenix Sullivan nominated me to play a game that sounds like a cross between Tag and Truth or Dare, except there's no dare involved.

Basically she listed some secrets about herself on her blog, and nominated some of her followers to do the same on theirs. I'm one of the priveleged few!

But because I'm a twisted individual, I'm listing some secrets and including a lie (one only). My challenge to anybody who's bothered to read through is to spot the untruth, and put their guess in the comments section. Once enough people have commented, I'll reveal which. 

Don't be polite and say #2 is the lie, because sadly, that's true. 

1.    French is my first language. That’s only a secret to those who know me on line. My maman et papa (and my teen aged sisters) migrated from Lorraine a few years before I was born. We spoke French at home, and I have a vivid memory of being both amused and aghast whenever a stream of incomprehensible gibberish passed from my mother’s lips: English. My younger bro and I both learnt English within a week of starting school, and after another week, were thinking in English (Mam says she heard my bro speaking in English in his sleep). Sadly, I now struggle to speak French. English slowly crept into the house.  The family finally got a tv (that’s how old I am). My older sisters left home to go to Uni. My brother and I spoke English to one another, and my parents just stopped talking to each other in any language at all. English became the predominant language. My school didn’t offer French as a subject. I understand it fine, and I can read it, but it pains my poor Mam to hear me speak it. She’ll speak to me in French, and I’ll answer in English.

2.    I’m actually quite stupid, but I work hard to hide it. My spatial processing skills are appalling. Maps are a complete mystery to me. Ditto puzzles. This isn’t false modesty; my job involves testing IQs.  The other day I had a play around with the new edition of an IQ test (the WAIS-IV, in case you’re curious). All the non-verbal reasoning tests stumped me. I just find it hard to visualise anything. So if you were to calculate my IQ (combination of a few different types of IQs, including verbal and non-verbal), you’d find it languishing around the bottom half. Ah, well.

3.    I have severe motion sickness. I just have to look at a boat to feel sea-sick. Amusement park rides are a form of torture. I’m the driver in the family because being a passenger makes me feel queasy. Which is a worry because....

4.    I failed my driving test the first few times I took it. I passed the fifth time. But they were harsh to fail me on some of those occasions, I mean, those pedestrians did recover.

5.    I’m allergic to coffee.

6.    My first-born was named after the cat. Well, that’s an exaggeration. The cat was called Diana-The-Huntress, but she was such a big eater, always demanding more, that we nick-named her Oliver. A few years after she died, and I was pregnant, my hub and I could not agree on names. Anything I liked caused a pained look to cross his face. So I once jokingly suggested Oliver and he didn’t object. And it stuck, because there was nothing else we could agree on. But we spelt it Olivier, just to have a Gallic twist. (get it- twist?).

7.   I’m a vegetarian, too. I do it for health reasons – the animal’s health. Tried to be vegan for a while, but the lure of cheese was just irresistible.

8.    I did The Compact for a while. You know, the agreement to not buy anything new for a whole year – just barter, buy second hand, make it yourself or do without. Rampant consumerism leads to the destruction of our planet, but non-consumerism is um – challenging – in a modern Western society. I’m off the wagon now but still consume modestly, and try to teach my children to think about a product in terms of the “cradle-to-grave” impact it has on the environment.

9.    I’m one of twins, but my sis died after birth due to complications. We were about 2 months prem.