Ten Things Pris Has Done

(Posted at Bubblews; may seem repetitious to regular readers; the only label that seems to fit it is "wail," and I don't think we need a new label.)

(Topic credit: Jabo wrote http://www.bubblews.com/news/6136328-10-things-that-jabo-has-done in response to this meme, and credited BeyondRoses for suggesting the topic with http://www.bubblews.com/news/6049304-ten-things-i039ve-done .)

1. Started a business, which outlasted huge corporate-funded competitors for several years, with less than US$100.

2. While "unemployable," if not "disabled," from viral hepatitis (from a contaminated vaccine I was required to get, against a disease I'd already had).

3. Been a foster mother...once, and I'd do it again.

4. Climbed sixty feet up a tree, vertigo and all, to rescue a stranded stray cat. We estimated that it was sixty feet up after persuading the fire department to extend a forty-foot ladder up the tree. (Actually I didn't rescue the cat; my failure inspired a housemate to open a tin of fish at the bottom of the tree, and that rescued the cat!) Later, but in the same vein: tamed feral cats.

5. Earned money as a singer in college; raised money for charity as a singer later on; was paid to record an album, a copy of which may still exist somewhere.

6. Coffee-dated a People magazine cover bachelor; married an obscure Anglo-Indian-Canadian diplomat.

7. I suppose the Dean's List at Berea College is worth mentioning. Being on the Dean's List at the church college I attended first wouldn't have been worth mentioning if I hadn't been (a) financially independent and (b) eighteen years old at the time.

8. What friends may remember as my big achievement at the church college was pulling together the first multiethnic and bilingual social group recognized at our school. One thing the church college taught everybody was public speaking--most of us weren't going to be ministers but we had to be able to give a chapel talk!--and there was a sort of annual rite, in February, where people stood up and bewailed the fact that in the school cafeteria the people sitting at each table were almost always all the same color. Some people also liked to bewail their perception that the school was divided into cliques, instead of everybody being everybody else's best friend I suppose. Anyway, I was there for a few terms, made friends who weren't trying to form cliques but hadn't got to know each other well, and eventually these people started sitting where I was sitting in the school cafeteria, and what d'you know, we had that United Nations look. And the would-be demographers and social planners haaated it!

9. Back to adult life...as the masseuse to whom the official White House masseuse referred people, met three of the four Clinton Administration celebrities who demonstrated to the world the four most common side effects of SSRI antidepressants: painful muscle spasms, "parkinsonism" (twitching like a patient with Parkinson's Disease while not necessarily having that disease), citing unpleasant but unlikely "memories" as a factor in suicide, and convincing oneself that these drugs are safe for other people to use without supervision.

10. Lived on an income of US$100 (or less) per month...recently. I can't say I recommend that other people even try this, but it can be done, and I've done it.