getting to know you....

I have this constant wonder about what people are like in their personal time.  Like people waiting at the bus stop...do they go home and complain that they had to wait at the cold bus stop?  do they have wives?  hobbies?  are they from here?  I wonder what their house looks like?  how long did it take them to get dressed this morning?  what were their last thoughts leaving the house? 

I love people watching and speculating (errr.... judging) about the different way people live.  Like there are so many things about myself that I feel only a few people know, so I can only imagine all the little secrets all of these strangers around me have.  Also, I have moments throughout my life where I'm like, wow, if only the people sitting in the cubicle next to me knew this, they would think about me completely different than the quiet, private, boring person that I come off as. 

Bottom line, I would much rather quietly learn about and watch other people, than divulge about myself .(For the first 3 years of my relationship w/ D, he and his family thought it was shyness, but really, they love to talk about themselves, and I love to listen...and judge.  Now D is fully aware of my people watching fetish, and as a compromise, I interact a lot more).  Anyways, back to my point: the downside of being a private person is that people who are my friends and family and coworkers, don't know me very well, and when I'm feeling good and happy and being 'myself' I sometimes find out that people are shocked by some of my interests, or things I do or say and then I feel like "oh my gosh, I'm surrounded by strangers, if they only knew."

So in the spirit of letting it all hang out and full disclosure, I will drop a few little Rebecca specials as they come to my mind.  Here are a few to start off:

1.  I love old school hip hop and R&B and tune into the 97.3 old school lunch hour everyday to go down memory lane, but then scoff at how they play songs from when I was in high school.  I look forward to being old, because 'oldies' stations will be playing the songs I love from the 90s.  When it was the 90s, I was in elementary school and I always said I hated rap music because my initials spell R.A.P. and I didn't want to be a conformist.  To say the least, I was a late bloomer.

2.  I love watching compilation album info-mercials.  Rock ballads, Quiet Storm Slow Jams, Favorite Hits from the 60s and 70s, Soft Rock, Monster Jams ...they just run on a loop, over and over and over, and I stay tuned.  They are the songs everyone forgot.  In reference to #1, I also can't wait til I'm old so I can buy all my favorite random one-hit wonder 90s songs on cheesy compilation albums. 

4.  I have a memory of steel, when it is in the ON position.  I think I have a photographic memory.  No, I can't see a sheet of numbers and recite them to you in reverse order. The way I remember things the best is by writing it on a piece of paper, and just by seeing it, the information is printed in my brain and I have something to refer back to.  I'm not so good at remembering what time I'm supposed to meet people places and I can't remember movie quotes to save my life, but I can read books and tell Dave about my favorite part while remembering if it was on the left or the right page, and on the top or the bottom.  In college, I learned 25% of the material, and memorized the other 75% (I didn't know what I was talking about, I could just recall the visualization of each note card or the pages of text).  Dave thinks I'm crazy that I remember so much.  I feel like I can recall every moment of my life from age 4, and he says he can barely remember his elementary school years.  I have pretty vivid memories of most everything and poor poor David never wins a fight because of this.

5.  I sing.  I sing in the shower, and around the house, but mainly sing in the car.  I need to hear a song 3.2 times to memorize the lyrics, and then I bust it out.  David is the king of movie quotes, and I'm the queen of song lyrics.  Songs I do like, songs I don't like, I have them all memorized.  I can't drive with no music in the car, I can't drive with music I don't like in the car (usually music with no words), and I have to sing in the car regardless of whether I'm driving or someone else is driving (I hold back with strangers).  It's like a bad habit, but I have to be doing something while I'm getting from place to place, and it's better than raging.  When I think about how I look, I'm ashamed (who cares about how I sound, no one can hear me), but I try and be inconspicuous...except for when I'm throwing down some Bombs Over Baghdad.

Thank you, thank you very much.