Obfuscation results

1. When I was twenty, one of the job possibilities I considered was long-haul truck driving. I love driving and thought there could be nothing cooler than doing it for a living. My downfall, and one of the main reasons I never pursued it, was the fact that I can't drive in reverse in a car, much less in a tractor-trailer. Still wish I could do this sometimes, though...

TRUE. I love driving! It's one of the reasons that I like to travel. All those family vacations int he car? Heaven! But, everytime I've damaged a car, it's been while reversing. I'm better than I used to be, but backwards driving in a semi sounds perfectly dangerous with me at the wheel.

2. My brother and I came face to face with a young bear while hiking in the mountains. He was about thirteen, I was three-ish. He was supposed to be doing some surveying of a parcel of property for my dad. I was just along for the hike. So really, he had two jobs: carry the big stick so Dad could get his measurement, and watch his twerpy little sister to be sure she doesn't fall off the edge. We clambered up a rock slide and reached the top and just in front of us was a brown bear. He was bigger than me but smaller than my brother, so clearly not full-grown. We all stared across the species barrier for a minute and then bro picked me up and RAN full-tilt down the mountain. I could hear the bear crashing away the other direction behind us. When we reached the bottom, Dad yelled at us for leaving the stick up there.

This is the HALF-TRUTH. I wasn't there, although the story was told so often around the dinner table that it has become incredibly vivid in my head. As a child, it just felt like I had been there. The rest of the story is true, just my presence in it was added. Yes, my Dad yelled at my brother for leaving the surveying rod up the side of the hill...before Dad knew the rest of the story.

3. I didn’t learn to read until I was seven. My sister worked and worked with me, but I just didn't get it. She and I are both librarians now, which is a credit to her stick-to-itiveness (and, I guess, mine). Kindergarten and part of First Grade were rough.

This is HOGWASH. I was four when I learned to read. The book we were reading was "Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang." It was the page with the picture of the family on it. It was a definite Light Bulb Moment for me. I just suddenly totally got it. I used to read books to the rest of my Kindergarten class when I got to school--"Geek in training." Grade school--the academic bits anyway--was a breeze for me. (OK, my sister and I are both librarians, so that was sort of tricky...sorry. It didn't occur to me to change that.)