Letter Meme

Thanks to Annie over at Somebody Once, I am finally tagged for the letter meme. Admit it, you've seen it going around, huh?

I have to come up with ten facts about me/my life (what a chore! rofl) based on ten items beginning with the letter I have been given. Annie gave me J. There are very few airy-fairy words beginning with J and this is going to be quite severe and un-fluffy, I imagine, so here goes nothing:

• Jam (jelly across the pond). I hate it, in all its forms. Can't stand the stuff, especially strawberry or raspberry. My mother thinks everything about me is a 'fad' or a 'phase I'm going through' and gets very offended when I 'haven't grown out of it yet', even after forty years. She pushed the boat out for us when we visited recently and bought cream cakes as a treat. Inside the bun, under the cream? A thick layer of red jam. Puke puke pukety puke puke. So she's sitting there like this is pure heaven and I'm trying to silently control the gag reflex and find reasons to run from the table for a pint of water. Mother doesn't hold with drinking water either - it should be tea, only when everybody is ready, in very small cups. Honestly I can't even tolerate Victoria sponge. I admit this aversion may be more pathological these days, having been force fed jam bloody sandwiches for years in my childhood.

• Jasmine. I bought a jasmine plant from Asda near my mum, then had to carry it all the way home on an eight hour coach trip. Mum had this bright idea of wedging an empty cereal box over it, to protect the buds. It worked. I got the thing home, it bloomed and smelled heavenly for a week. I woke up one morning and there it was, dead. Humph.

• Jinxed. Sometimes I feel like I have been. :-)
  

• Joy. This post sounds really whiney so far, doesn't it? I surprise myself in reading it back. I think joy is the best sort of happiness, because you can find joy in the middle of a farce. Sometimes, however, especially in print, others can't see that you are laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of life. Trust me, its all true and I'm still laughing.
  

• Jumpy. I guess I am. My sense of humour is coloured by the life I've had, so its very dark and far too dry for some people. Nothing on this earth makes me feel more uncomfortable than writing my laughing release; some sarcastic, scathing, venomous little expression of the black comedy that is my life, only to get a comment from someone that is all 'how sad'. You can say 'oh shit' or get heavy with the expletives in support and its much appreciated, but I don't do sad, don't even go there with the sad thing. I do angry, furious, self pitying, but its all full on. Sad is so, so drippy actually, that the use of the word makes me angry. Am I weird? Very probably.

• Joke. My all time favourite joke because it so perfectly encapsulates the way the world runs on Murphy's Law, Sod's Law and the Peter Principle:

Jim and Mary were both patients in a Mental Hospital.

One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, Mary suddenly jumped into the deep end. She sank to the bottom and stayed there motionless.

Jim promptly jumped in to save her. He swam to the bottom and pulled Mary out.

When the medical officer became aware of Jim's heroic act he immediately ordered him to be discharged from hospital, as he now considered him to be mentally stable.

When he went to tell Jim the news, he said: "Jim, I have good news and bad news.

"The good news is you're being discharged because since you were able to jump in and save the life of another patient, I think you've regained your senses.

"The bad news is, Mary, the patient you saved, hung herself with her bathrobe belt in the bathroom. I am so sorry, but she's dead."

Jim replied, "She's not dead, I put her there to dry."

• Justice. The world should run on justice. It doesn't, but if you come near me it bloody well does. The most basic counselling skills courses look at your own life, how to refuse to be put on the triangle of aggressor, rescuer and victim.

Aggressor says: I will abuse you because I am better than you and you are nothing.
Rescuer says: I will do it all for you, because you can't do it, because I am better than you and you are nothing.
Victim says: I can't do it, I am nothing, so Aggressor, its all your fault, and Rescuer come and do all the work, so I can sit here being useless.

Good, huh? So when you think about it someone can even 'play victim' whilst really being the aggressor because they either lay blame on you all the time or run you ragged. I personally try very hard not to play, and that's my idea of justice.

• Janet and John books. Lots of people of around my age in the UK will go into raptures about the first reading books they had at school, all about Janet and John and their dog and their friends. There's even a series of comedy fridge magnets based on suggesting there's something kinky going on. I feel left out, as we didn't have those books, we had the unfairly uncelebrated Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry books. "The big red lorry goes up the hill. The big red lorry has pots and pans." Bloody hell, where did my photographic memory go? They always used to worry that I couldn't really read the individual words, because I only had to see and hear it once to know what every page said, never mind which word represented which bit. I guess I unlearned it for my teachers' sake.
  

• Juggling. I've never been that enthralled by juggling, until I saw this. I can't juggle for love nor money. I have fantastic balance, but precious little hand-eye coordination.

• Job. Since I had my first kid 23 years ago, I've only ever done 'jobs', squeezed in among moves, family crises etc. Never had a passion, a purpose, a career. Now the last of the special needs offspring has a senior school, now the youngest child is a year away from seniors too, I still don't have a passion, but I think I'd like to start with a job. I want one. I just haven't got the first clue what. I'll probably end up as a virtual assistant, because if my parents hadn't had my testicles removed at birth, I would be the original grey man, in as much as I thrive on paperwork.

Flippin' Eck! What a nasty letter! I don't even have any relatives whose names begin with J, not even their middle names. I was completely struggling there.

So, has that scared you right off, or would you like to play? If you would, say so in the comments and I'll tag you by emailing you a letter.


Players so far: 266k, Doris, Stegbeetle,