Interview meme.
1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better ! If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!
3. You WILL update your LJ with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions..
Jesamin asks:
1. How did you and John meet?
John and I met at his fraternity on the campus of Georgia Tech. I was going to college about 3 hours away at the time. I was brough there by a friend of mine who knows that I love weird people. Thise fraternity is FULL of weird people. The first time I ever went there, I walked into the main room and 30 guys were all sitting around giving a point-by-point critique of midget fisting porn. I kid you not. Anyway, my friend took me by to meet all these weirdos and I ended up dating a wonderful guy named David. He was a math geek and I was an art geek. He went away to Texas and we continued to date long-distance. Tima passed and we grew apart and right before he was due to return for RUSH week, I called him and asked him if he still loved me. He said something like “We’re so far apart…” which of course meant no. I cried, but then told myself that I was going to do the worst thing I have ever done to a guy before. I was going to flirt with someone else the whole week just to make him so jealous he’d beg for me back. The guy I picked to use against David was John, mostly because John was HOT. I ended up finding out John and I had a lot in common and we really hit it off. At the end of that week poor abused David wanted me back, but I’d come to realize that John fit me a lot better. I did a lot of crying and a lot of saying “I’m sorry” to David, but I don’t think anything I have ever done in my life has been so mean and shallow.
2. Did you always want to be a photographer? If not, what else did you want to do?
No, actually. When I was very small, I wanted very badly to be a veternarian, a bird vet, specifically. Then I discovered that part of helping sick animals is also putting them out of their miserey when you cannot do anything to heal them. I was probably about 12 at the time, and I could not fathom purposfully hurting an animal, even if it’s hurting so badly it will never get better. I wanted to be a marine biologist for a long time and work at Sea World, but my math skills are awful and I only passed real biology because my teacher felt sorry for me. I then turned to animation. I wanted to animate for Disney for years, even went to college for it. I was pretty good, but I decided I didn’t want to be someone’s underling for 15 years while I worked my way up the ladder. I dropped out of college with 2 years to go, and went back home, broke. On an off-chance I took a job as a pre-k teacher and found that I LOVED it. Every day when I went in 22 4-year-olds tackled me in the classroom. I was very loved. I had to move though, so I decided to get my degree in education. I was nearly done when I got a job in a room full of two-year-olds at a church daycare. It was mostly fun except for the poo, but the worst part was my co-workers. I was the only person there who wasn’t baptist, and I was very much looked down upon. I was also getting sick all the time. I finally got the flu and was out for a week. They pulled some excuse out of thier butts to fire me, and that was that. I wanted to keep working with kids, but Larken told me “You’re just not cut out for a 9-5 job, Heather!” Durring my two’s days, I’d been taking pictures for the parents of the kids, so they could see what we do daily. I’d send them the photos over e-mail, and I got a lot of people saying “Wow, you should be a photographer!”. When I got fired, Larken sat me down and said “Here’s your chance. Go for it.” After a lot of waffleing, I finally did. Bonus: here’s the first photo I ever took in my life. Christmas morning, 1987. I had gotten the camera not 5 minutes before and snapped this photo just as my sister opened up the pair to mine.
3. Why don’t you guys want children? (I’m always curious about what makes people go one way or the other on this topic)
First and foremost, I love children. I love them from the ages of 2 years to about 8 years. After that age, they’re not so nice to be around anymore until they’re 25. I don’t ever want to face an unruly child who’s screaming “I hate you!” and think “God, why the hell did I have this thing?” Second, John really dislikes children of ANY age. We’ve talked about how he reacts to children and just decided that he’d probably make a really negative dad. Third, we are both selfish people. When I was little, my mom dressed me, did my hair, told me what to eat.. etc. My mother was still picking out my clothes until I was 14! When I left and went to college, I was finally able to make my own choices. I worked really hard to become an independant person, and I don’t want to give that up. I want to be able to travel the world at 45 and not have to worry about who will get the kids to school. I don’t want to sit up late at night and wonder if my 13 year old daughter is fucking some 19 year old dropout in a studebaker while high on pot. I don’t want to have the drug talk, the sex talk. No crying at night because she didn’t get asked to the prom. Also, I’ve just plain dealt enough with bodily functions. I don’t want to smell shit everyday for 2-5 years. I don’t want to do 5 loads of vomit covered laundry in a day. I don’t want to clean the inside of the car out and still smell puke a week later because the child got sick on a road-trip. Mostly, it’s just that I don’t want to give up any of the myself I’ve worked so hard to find.
4. How did you meet the Stump?
Stumpy adopted us, actually. We moved into the partment complex in august, and I began seeing a little grey cat with a stump of a tail around. As it got colder, I began leaving food out for it. She would eat and run always, very timid and feral. John and I began to call her Stumpy-cat because of her tail. I’d say “Hey, that Stumpy-cat is back.” Eventually it got shortened to just Stumpy. I began sitting by the door to watch her eat, hoping she’d eventually let me pet on her, because I adore cats. One night, she came to the bowl like always but just seemed disinterested int he food, talking at me though the glass instead (she’s very talkative). I stood up and creeped slowely out the door trying not to scare her off. She stuck around, but was scared. I sat down on the cold ground and she immediatly lept into my arms and began purring like a motorboat. I mean, this cat can be heard in other ooms when she gets going. I called John in to see and he was like “Uh.. yeah. That’s nice dear.” I knew she couldn’t stay, but she was very interested in the inside of the apartment. I came back in with tears in my eyes because I wanted to let her in so badly. John looked at me and was like “Okay, fine. Let her in!” She came in, sat down on his lap, and refused to leave. She had a bad hait of meowing at night loudly, so for months we threw her out the door every night and let her back in everyday. One week in feb, it iced badly here and I bought her a litterbox so she didn’t have to stay out in the ice. I stayed up with her all night and kept her quient so John could sleep. She refused to go ever again. Now, she sleeps on the bed with us at night and is hardly ever loud enough to wake us. She still talks ALL the time though.
5. When you were growing up, what was your favorite bedroom? Bonus if you have pictures. (even if you only ever lived in one place, what color was it when it was your favorite, etc etc)
My favorite was the room I grew up in, in Ohio. My mother and father built the house and when the time came to put up wallpaper, she asked us to pick out the border that was to go around the top of the room (probably the only thing in my young life I’d gotten to chose on my own). I already loved birds at this point, so I chose a border full of parrots of all types. Cockatoos, Amazons, Toucans, Mynahs, Parakeets, Cockatiels.. everything was up there. I would lay on my bed for hours and look at the bird border in my room and dream about having birds like that. It was also that room that housed my very first bird, Max. He was a bright yellow-faced cockatiel. He loved to whistle at me and sing. We would sit for hours and read together. All of my books had bird bited in them, and I had bird shit on my shoulders for years (because small birds don’t have bowel control). That room is special because it held the most precious things to me. My bird, and my dreams of other birds.
Bonus: Here are photos of the room.
