it's not stupid to want to put on a pretty dress and feel beautiful for a night

1. If you had to eliminate one emotion from your life, which would it be? 

    fear

2. If you could have done one thing with one of your teachers, what would it be, and with whom?

    this question made me laugh, hard. I had an English prof that haunted my dreams, in a good way. He appears in my answers here.

    To be full serious and above-board, though, I will say that I would have liked to have tried to write an article with my grad school mentor. He is a prolific writer, a brilliant teacher, and very well known in the field. It would have been an incredible boon to my career. (He retired as senior historian at a major Second World War museum.)

    For that matter, do have done the same with my softer/kinder grad school hero might've been even better. He's a more basically decent person, and the experience would have been rewarding and fun. (He remains a full professor at the school where I knew him.)

3. If you had to name the most difficult goodbye you've ever said, what would it be? 

    if I can make it broad, I would choose The Flatland, in general. Leaving my life there broke me, in certain ways that can never heal.

    If it has to be a person, it's Chris. He was proud of me, and glad for me, and as sad as I was. The hug, in the parking lot of Cabana Charley's, lasted so long. We didn't want to let go. 

    If it's any goodbye...then it's the boy kitties I've loved and lost. 

4. If you could remove one marking from your skin, which one would it be?     

    besides the tattoos (sigh), it's a cherry angioma just below my left collarbone. It's almost but not quite out of my visual range, so I can just barely see it, and it looks like a bug, and I've tried to scratch it off ten billion times. They aren't inherently dangerous, but the scratching can cause (relatively) profuse bleeding. I want that thing gone. 

5. If you could have won a single thing you tried for in your lifetime but didn't win, what would it be? 

    the local library job would have been nice. It's a not-funny joke that to get a job in that field anymore, you have to know people or bump someone off. Alas.

    

6. If you could live in a past era just so you could wear the clothes in fashion at the time, when would it be? 

    1950s

7. If you could suddenly be irresistibly charming for one day only, what would you do? 

    negotiate a car loan, a raise, and a date with the 2 O'Clock Man

 [from If2: 500 New Questions for the game of life; the title quotation is by Stephanie Perkins, from Lola and the Boy Next Door]