112 Things

On a need to know basis

1. People call me Em Locke. I think she is my true chi.
2. The Locke is my favorite part of my name.
3. I inherited it from my mom. She inherited it from John Locke, an Enlightenment philosopher who believed that every person is born good, independent, and equal.
4. I have thesaurus.com linked to a hot key on my MacBook keyboard.
5. I was born on February 10th, 1984 in San Antonio, Texas. The number one song in the U.S. that week was Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon.
6. My Nalgene bottle is hot pink.
7. On the last day of the seventh grade, I asked the hot dog man on Main Street to sign my yearbook. He wrote, Dream big, set no limits.
8. I love sharpie markers, 5×9″ spiral-bound notebooks and Vision Elite pens by Uni-ball.
9. I like to go barefoot.
10. My favorite part of an ice cream sandwich is the cookie.
11. I don’t like the way my mouth looks when I say the word cookie.
12. Twelve is my favorite number.
13. When it’s really quiet at night, I can hear the F-train running on the Manhattan-bound tracks under my apartment block.
14. I twist the chapstick back down in the tube after I use it.
15. I work in book publishing.
16. I like the sound my computer makes when I empty the trash bin.
17. I’m usually just as happy, if not happier, to eat cold leftovers than a hot meal.
18. I will never wear gold and silver combination jewelry.
19. I’m a flirt.
20. Sometimes I think in lists.
21. Sometimes I think in haiku.
22. I’m deaf in my left ear. I lost my hearing as an infant because of a few very bad ear infections.
23. People who know me well recognize my “I did actually hear you but I am pretending not to know that you’re talking and I’m avoiding the conversation” face.
24. I supplement my hearing by reading lips.
25. I have a vivid imagination. Sometimes I let it get away with me. My heart races and then I have to laugh at myself.
26. I have a hard time sitting still through movies, especially movies based on books.
27. There is no such thing as sheets tucked in too tightly on my bed.
28. I have a stubborn streak. It’s gotten me into some trouble and out of some trouble.
29. Once, my parents moved the TV and I refused to watch it for a week in protest.
30. My favorite colors are and have always been pink and purple.
31. I can’t cut in a straight line.
32. I like to sleep with the windows open all year.
33. I like writing letters almost as much as I like receiving them.
34. I’ve been told I’m diplomatic.  I was named “Most Likely to Rally for Peace Outside The U.N.” in my village at summer camp in 1997.
35. I’ve been told I look like Kate Winslet since Titanic. I see the resemblance. I’ll take that compliment.
36. I like it when peanut butter cookies have criss-crossed fork prints.
37. I like fortune cookies, and not just for the fortunes.
38. When I was three, I got an elephant stamp on my hand on the way into the zoo. That day, I decided that elephants were my favorite animal.
39. I like elephants because they are faithful, affectionate and good communicators.
40. Grocery shopping and changing lanes on highways make me feel like a grown up.
41. I have an irrational anxiety about talking on the phone.
42. I hated breakfast foods when I was little.
43. I used to construct a barricade out of cereal boxes when my brother Will drove me crazy at the kitchen table.
44. When Will turned twenty-one, I wished him happy birthday and then whined that he never gave me the opportunity to fulfill my right as an older sibling to purchase alcohol for him.
45. I have a teeny tiny scar at the skinny end of my right eyebrow. I got it when my brother hugged me around my knees because he was too short to reach higher. I lost my balance and hit my head on a brass drawer pull.  My mom rushed me to the ER and I needed stitches.
46. I’m chronically squeamish about blood and tissues and needles, etc.
47. I’m a Red Cross certified First Responder.
48. When I was 19, I got a ticket for driving 89 MPH in a 55 zone in New York state.
49. My friend Jill asked me to be her Maid of Honor more than six months before her fiancé proposed.
50. I went to my first concert when I was fifteen. It was the third and final Lilith Fair tour and I got Lisa Loeb’s autograph.
51. I have an enormous birthmark between my shoulder blades and a freckle-sized birthmark on my hip.
52. Sometimes I get love attacks and I have to wax sentimental with everyone around me.
53. I have a yellow labrador named Maggie Zelda Mae.
54. It’s hard for me to ask for help.
55. It took me six months, on and off, to learn to knit. It took me six consecutive hours to teach myself to purl.
56. I love to dance.
57. I am an environmentalist.
58. I like to wear flowers in my hair.
59. I am a natural strawberry blonde.
60. I have always hated taking lessons of any sort.
61. My favorite poker hand is is trip sevens.
62. I like to snuggle.
63. I’m tremendously ticklish.
64. Alliteration is my favorite literary device.
65. When I write, I want every word to count for something.
66. I don’t really know how to answer when someone asks me if I am a writer. Part of me wants to shrug it off and just say, “How do you officially define a writer?” Part of me wants to say, “I’m a writer more than I am anything else at all.”
67. My brother taught me how to code web pages. I give him tips on aesthetic design.
68. People dressed as oversized animals, as cartoon characters or as fruit totally freak me out.
69. Blimps, too.
70. I don’t pretend to know where I’ll be in ten years, but I hope I’ll be happy.
71. I started Girl Scouts as a Daisy in kindergarten and won my Gold Award as a senior.
72. I started college at Mount Holyoke in South Hadley, MA. I transferred to Hamilton when I was a sophomore because I wanted to go to a coed school, but I didn’t like it there either and decided to transfer back to Mount Holyoke because at least they served milk and cookies in the dorms every night.
73. I’ll probably always wish I’d had more fun in college.
74. I took a semester off from school in the spring of 2004. I still graduated on time (May 2006) because of my AP credits from high school.
75. I wanted to use the time to challenge myself with something new, so I went sea kayaking in Patagonia with Outward Bound.
76. People in Chile drank Nescafe, called me “la rojita” and complimented my Spanish.
77. The only way to get rid of my hiccups is to scare the living daylights out of me.
78. In second grade, my class put on Maurice Sendak’s play Really Rosie. I played Rosie.
79. I was the tea hostess in my dorm at Mount Holyoke.
80. I like taking care of people.
81. I like making people laugh.
82. Grand Central Terminal is my favorite building in New York City.
83. I like writing with black ink.
84. I am more loyal to Camp Jewell than to any other place or organization in the world. Most of my best triumphs, great life lessons, poignant regrets, and comforting memories are grounded there in some way.
85. Camp taught me to solve problems creatively, to be spontaneous, to drink enough water, and to love stargazing on clear nights in the mountains.
86. I worked at the Gap in high school. I was the Denim Specialist, I loved the people I worked with and I got a great discount.
87. I am inspired by kindness and people who read The New York Times every day.
88. In 2005, I conquered the freeipods.com pyramid scheme and won a 20GB iPod.
89. When I was little, I wrote my own secret language for writing notes to my friends.
90. I don’t know how to drive a standard transmission.
91. I failed my license test the first time. I hit the cone when I backed into the parking spot. I wrote an article about it for the school paper.
92. I love to wear mascara. I hate waking up with it smudged all over my face.
93. I like beer out of the bottle and soda out of the can.
94. I love Diet Coke. Not so crazy about Pepsi. I can tell the difference.
95. I lived in Wellington, New Zealand for five months during my junior year.
96. I jumped barefoot when I did the Canyon Swing in Queenstown.
97. My roommate Caitlin and I were randomly assigned to the same suite when we both attended the Summer Publishing Institute at NYU in 2006.  We’ve lived together in Brooklyn for more than two years.
98. I don’t know how to whistle.
99. My favorite holiday is Valentine’s Day.
100. I drive drove, in my suburban life, a white 1994 Honda Accord coupe. I can’t wait to own a car with a sunroof.
101. Once I was dancing around on the subway platform, waiting for the L train, and I kicked one of my favorite shoes on to the tracks. A painter with a really long pole retrieved it for me and said that no thanks were necessary as long as I just stopped dancing.
102. I like to edit. Sometimes, I revise grammatical errors and substitute words in song lyrics. I will probably edit this list more times than it is read.
103. When I was fourteen, I portrayed Zelda Fitzgerald in the 8th grade 1920’s festival.
104. I’m scared of horses and the dentist.
105. Super Mario World is my all-time favorite video game.
106. I like “dangerous curve” road signs.
107. It took me an unusually long time to learn to blow my nose. My mom would hold a tissue up and I would just sniff as hard as I could.
108. It’s difficult for me not to consider this list the final word on who I am.
109. I went to my senior prom solo.
110. I love it when stores put colored tissue in the shopping bag.
111. Two different medical professionals have told me that I have the worst case of Spring allergies they’ve ever seen. Once I developed a blister on my right eyeball.
112. My [old] iPod is was engraved with a line from my favorite Ash song: “yeah, you light up my life.” My new one quotes my favorite camp song: “out there, on the loose.”