Interview meme again...

[blinker]

1. Do you remember how we first met? I've always been curious to know what was going through your mind at the time.

I do remember how we first met, but it's been so long that I'm not sure I recall what was going through my mind at the time. I think I decided you weren't likely to be a psycho because you lived with Colin. [For those of you who weren't there, it was my freshman year at Amherst and we started chatting on the VAX at an absurdly late hour one night. Somehow I wound up getting invited down to his dorm room on the other side of campus to learn ballroom dance steps. It didn't turn into a tawdry hook-up, but between his dorm room floor being the size of a postage stamp and my general lack of coordination it didn't really improve my dancing skills either.]

2. If you could change any one thing about Kelly, what would it be?

Now that we've been living together for two years, I've caused her to make a bunch of changes because I'm a very good influence (and it goes the other way too). I want to say that I'd give her a little bit more self-confidence, but then she'd be unstoppable and I'd never win an argument again so maybe that's not a good idea.

3. If you could change any one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I'd become more disciplined as an athlete. I really enjoy sports, but I'm not good at making time for regular exercise.

4. An alien race descends upon the earth and wipes away all technologies based on computers and electronics. Miraculously, nothing else on earth is adversely affected, and you must take on a new line of work to earn a living. What do you do?

I'd probably become some sort of writer. That was the plan before I went to college and discovered computer science. Unless the disappearance of electronics was so complete that I couldn't type anymore, in which case maybe I'd become a chef or something.

While I don't expect technology to disappear completely, I do have a lot of backup plans if being a software developer stops being a viable career path. I could see writing or teaching about technology and after a few more years in my current job I could also see eventually moving to working on renewable energy in some sort of non-software capacity.

5. I understand that you don't get along very well with your mother. Imagine you have children. What, specifically, would you do differently?

I won't hit my kids. Hopefully I won't yell at them either. I'm pretty sure that Kelly and I won't fight the way my parents do (she doesn't know how, and I'm gradually adjusting to not doing it). Other than that, I'm not sure. I was a really difficult kid in a lot of ways, and I'm sure that my parents have wished equally difficult kids on me at least a few times so we'll see what happens.

Comments

[fj.livejournal.com]

Gawd, yes, the way you carry the fights of your family in your new relationships... in my case it was my siblings and my first guy, Ed. I had to stop because he just couldn't handle the overwhelming force of snap-judgement ego-destruction I was traine to unleash in the name of being humurous.

She hit you?

[call-me-al.livejournal.com]

heh. i always say that i'm kinda afraid to have kids, because if they're going to give me as much trouble as my sister and i have given our dad, i should just shoot myself right now, and if they aren't, well, then, how could they truly be my kids, i'd never be sure.

[danger-chick.livejournal.com]

You were a difficult kid, because you weren't getting what you needed from your parents. Fuck them. They are the jerks here.

I used to have these "fight to the near death" matches with my mom when we last lived together. The first person that I lived with was also subjected to them and it took me a long time to realize that you shouldn't do that.

[slinkr.livejournal.com]

When I went to college, one of the biggest adjustments for me was that it felt really weird to go months without yelling at anyone or being yelled at.

But lest anyone think that my family is completely without redeeming qualities, my folks also did a lot of stuff right and I need to give them credit for that. We weren't the most dysfunctional family in Scarsdale by a long shot.