people give flowers as presents because flowers contain the true meaning of love

1 What is the dumbest thing you made your parents buy for you as a kid? 

    hiking boots, when I was about 10. They were heavy and clunky and I wore them probably 10 times total before outgrowing them, which was fine because I hated them SO much—they were almost unbearably uncomfortable. All the cool kids had them, so I had to have them, too. What a dumb reason for kids to do things.

2 What topic do you wish was a college major but isn't? 

    'Making a Life, rather than Making a Living'

3 What is your earliest childhood memory? If it’s something "mundane," why do you think it stuck in your memory? If it’s something unusual/unique, what do you remember most vividly about it? 

    watching my siblings getting on the school bus and crying my head off because I wanted to go, too. Not that I wanted to be with them, but I wanted to be in school.

4 What is your favorite compliment of all the compliments you've ever received? 

    "you're closer than a girlfriend—you're like a sister"

5 What are you looking forward to right now? 

    Friday - forecast 48º+ for the weekend

6 What famous masterpiece painting or sculpture would you like to own? 

    No. 6 - Violet, Green and Red by Mark Rothko. It is one of the most expensive paintings in the world.

7 If you went into the witness protection plan, what identity would you like to assume? 

    I think that the whole point of WITSEC is that you don't get to/have to choose. I couldn't walk in and say, "I want to be a wealthy idler" and have that happen overnight.

8 What random stranger from your life do you think about or (even talk about) regularly? 

    a toll-taker outside the big city who gave me a carnation on Mother's Day, 1991. It was my first time driving out to A2 to see my then-boyfriend. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong over the weekend, the worst being getting inaccurate directions on the way back, getting horribly lost, and adding roughly four hours to the ten-hour trip. The good side to that was cruising into the metro at the absolute best time of the morning, encountering almost no traffic, and having clear sailing all the way. 

    That toll-taker was handing off flowers from a pickle bucket in his booth, presumably to every woman of child-bearing age. He took my cash, gave me my change, and handed over a flower. He said, "You look too young to be a mother, but you're so pretty and you look so sad. Let this brighten your trip." 

    I drove with tears in my eyes and a smile on my face for the next 50 miles.

9 What food would you recommend to visitors to your home town? 

    maple longjohns

10 If you could only be one of these things, which one would you choose: rich, smart or beautiful? 

    Rich.

11 If you decided to run away, where would you go?  

    not tellin'

12 What is a boring fact about yourself? 

    my feet are size 7.5 without socks, and 8 with socks

14 Which book did you read in college or high school that was actually interesting enough that you still think or talk about it sometimes? 

    A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

15 If you had one opportunity to permanently change someone's life (better or worse) who would it be and how would you change it? 

    I would make someone appreciate the good things about himself, stop automatically accepting bad ideas about himself, and open the door to believing that changes are not only possible but can be wonderful.

 

[from here—it's an ongoing site!; the title quotation is by Paulo Coelho, from Brida]