While running late to the train station this AM with a lead foot on the gas, I slammed on the brakes to end up behind this license plate holder.

It’s proof there are still realistic people on this planet, and when you live in a town that borders Berkeley (who is now trying to ban cigarette smoke in domestic households) sometimes you’ve got to wonder.

How would my life look if I was normal? On the outside it’s got to appear that way to some people, but I’m pretty sure I come from a long lineage of people who have always raged against some type of machine. The man who fathered my mother: a drinker, swindler and racketeer. He frequently conned people into investing their savings in his oil drilling runs to Texas but he always came up dry. He eluded the government, tax collectors and investors and vanished when I was three weeks old. Years later we learned he had a whole other secret family.

My father’s father: a traveling motor home evangelist, disciple of TBN. He hung on every word ministered by Paul and Jan Crouch. Late at night, I still see Jan on cable with her lavender Marie Antoinette hair and mile-long fake tarantula lashes. They say women who pile on the makeup and hide behind it, are just plain hiding.

Here are some other hidden facts about people in the media you are familiar with:

1. Dr. Ruth is a trained sniper. She can load a Sten automatic rifle in under a minute.

2. Steve Jobs became a vegan because he believed that would eliminate the need to bathe.

3. Kesha (that seemingly airheaded blonde singer) has an IQ of 150 and scored 1500 on her SATs.

4. Before acting, Christopher Walken was a lion tamer.

5. James Lipton was once a pimp in France.

I’m not saying I’m normal. I’m far from it. But that’s material for several other blog posts. Until then, here are some fairly innocuous things from my past:

1. When I was younger and people told me to pursue writing, I replied saying I wanted to be a mortician. Something about the quiet calm and serenity and the ability to make people over.

2. I try never to step on cracks in sidewalks.

3. I have a tattoo on the inside of my ankle that says Danza (the Italian word for dance). My  girlfriend thought the uppercase ‘D’ looked cool in the sketch at the parlor. Now people think I had a thing for Tony Danza (my husband being one of them).

4. I used to pen love letters for my classmates in school. They’d get the boy, I’d get their lunch money.

5. Growing up, I insisted my mom call me Shannon (no idea why) and cut all my hair off. She wouldn’t bend on the name so I referred to myself in third person as ‘Shannon’ and negotiated a butchered ‘do from my mom, a former beauty school student.

If you ever feel like a misfit at times, like your uniqueness is a detriment in the high school of life – I’ve got a clip below that will make you feel better instantly. Dean has been watching a show called Eastbound & Down. It’s a total guy show about this ex pro baseball player who can’t let go of that life and has to prove to everyone years later that he’s still a baller. Curled mullet, big flapping gut, faded jeans and all. He’s producing homemade self-help videos and pumping his flabby body up with steroids. When life gets to be too much, he climbs on to his leopard-print jet ski with his metaphorical middle finger in the air.

Just spend a few seconds with Kenny Powers now, and you’ll instantly feel more sane:

Dear readers, (what are you one, or five at this point?) would you say you are fairly normal? And if so, how do you define that? Is everything knitted together neatly, all tied up in pretty red bow?

What’s one weird fact about you?

I’d love to know.

M