10 Things You Probably Don’t Know About Me ( and wish you didn’t !)

Thanks Jack Preston King for tagging me!

Violet DeTorres

6 min readSep 17, 2018

The Lugubrious Game/ Salvador Dali 1929

Ah yes.

Salvador Dali has been one of my favorites.

Why?

He’s just plain weird.

And that’s me in a nutshell. I’ve learned to embrace my weirdness. For me, there is great comfort knowing I’m not like everyone else, even though such behavior can lend itself to being rather lonely from time to time…

I mean, I had a pretty normal childhood. Whatever normal was in the 60's and 70's. I’ve certainly written about my early life on numerous occasions, and I would share those links with you, but, alas, since I have deleted my account twice ( identity crisis…NOT) my stories now only reside in the deep recesses of my mind. Hopefully I will resurrect those stories again.

I’ve been a pretty open book on here on Medium. Speaking of Medium, I now reside in the next city over from where Medium’s headquarters are. I plan on visiting their offices, so they can put a body ( and face )to all the writings I have produced ( in addition, possibly get arrested for being a pain in their ass).

Sigh…

Lets see…

10 things you don’t know about me…

…

I got nothing.

Seriously.

Maybe if I start, things will fall out of my head, just like Dali’s depiction of his subliminal thoughts.

I used to dance in a cage.

Yup. And it wasn’t that kind of dancing, get your mind out of the gutter. Back in the day, when the nightclub Embers was still open, the club had these two cages that one could dance in. Most of the time I ended up there, because the dance floor would get so crowded, that I couldn’t move.

Here are the cages…

And here is the club…

I had really good times in that place. I experienced a midlife crisis there. The kind of crisis that helped me realize who I was, because being a stay at home mom had swallowed me up whole. Having something to call my own, to forge an identity outside of being a wife and mother, was something I have come to appreciate in my later years.

2. I finally watched Game of Thrones.

Right? And ohmygod…I throughly enjoyed it. In fact, I need to watch it again. There were so many things I missed. GOT had so many complex story lines, that the first episode, I got a headache, because I couldn’t keep track of the families and their secrets. I’m that way with movies or tv series; if they are super popular? I’ll wait to watch them. When Titanic came out? I waited YEARS to see it. Jurassic Park? Waited.

3. I really love the beach.

Since moving back to the Bay Area, I have found my refuge at the beach. My father lives close to Ocean Beach, where he used to take me as a child. I wrote about going home again…

What Happens When You Go Home Again?

…you realize you have grown up, and its sad

medium.com

When my daily duties are done, the changing of diapers, the administering of medicine, I’m ready to head for the beach. And sometimes I will sit for several hours, listening to the waves…

Yes, those are my fat little feet, covered in sand.

There is something very therapeutic about just sitting there, listening to the seagulls above, hoping they don’t crap on me. I watch the little kids build sand castles, just like I used to. The weather has been really nice as of late, so when that happens, everyone heads for the beach. I get to watch hang gliders out at Funston Park, and surfers in their wet suits, joggers, tourists and the like.

4. I have a thing for Crayola crayons.

I like to sniff them. Always have. In the early days of my pregnancy, I kept a box of crayons near the bed, because I would wake up nauseous and the only thing that helped was smelling the crayons.

In my childhood, getting the 64 count of Crayola crayons was a dream come true.

5. I fell head over heels for one of the writers here on Medium.

Yes. That’s it.

6. When I die, I want to be cremated and have my ashes scattered at Disney world.

So, when my family comes to visit this magical place, I will already be there waiting.

Sigh.

Only three more things left.

7. I have actually talked to some of my favorite writers on Medium.

That was simply thrilling. It truly was and is astonishing. Thank you Skype and Metro PCS.

8. One of the items on my bucket list is to arrange a big get together for all the writers I have had the pleasure of talking to and meet in a city that is central for everyone.

I’m still figuring it out…however Clay refuses to go to Cleveland. I think Cleveland would be great. The Rock and Roll Museum is there.

9. I feel compelled to steal garden gnomes from people’s yards and put them in yards where there are none.

I got the idea from the movie, Amelie, which by the way, is one of my favorite films.

And yes, true to the tag line, Amelie did change my life.

Now, for the last thing everyone did not know about me….

Drum roll please….

10. I used to run Hollywood Videos.

I kind of cheated on that one. It was a segue from number nine. From 1998 to 2004 I was the store manager of several of the locations in the Portland/ Vancouver area. This was back when our uniforms consisted of white tux shirts, red bow ties, red cummerbunds and black pants.

I once worked in a store that was located on Burnside Avenue in Portland. It was two stories. It was insane. One store I ran had over 22,000 titles. This same store was an independent movie store that Hollywood Video had acquired.