It is my natural tendency to try to always do what cops tell me to do. It's not that I'm an obedient person by nature, it's just that I like living outside the prison walls. I will do pretty much anything a cop asks me, within reason, but the kinds of orders I'm used to hearing from cops include the following:

"Drop your weapon!"

"Back away from the body slowly."

"Do not swallow that baggie!"

"Put your clothes back on, ma'am."

In the past, when I've disobeyed the commands of police officers, I've ended up maced, in leg irons, or with broken ribs. In my defense, I'd just like to say that I would probably have obeyed the orders cheerfully had I not been high on PCP at the time. But ever since I quit doing dust back in 9th grade, I've had almost no trouble with the police whatsoever. Well, significantly less. A bit less, anyway. Okay, less.

So when Frankie The Cop recently told me I had to make a full confession, I felt I had to comply. He wants me to confess to 3 things I do that others don't know about. The problem with this is that I've pretty much spilled my guts here on this blog, so I had to think long and hard (yes, with the same tiny brain I've been using all along). Haven't I already told you guys every Thing Wrong With Me? (Well, the first 90 out of 100, anyway.) But again, I'm obedient when it comes to orders barked at me by cops. So here goes. Please, officer, don't hit me with your nightstick again.

1. My friend Becky and I used to shoplift when we were in high school. We didn't really need any of the stuff we stole--mostly it was clothes, and neither of us was destitute--we just did it because we were bored and it was fun. We probably only did it for about a year, if I remember correctly--at some point it occurred to us that we might eventually get caught and then sent to a women's penitentiary where we would become lesbians and develop an appreciation for flannel shirts and corduroy pants. So yes, I was a teenage criminal. But don't worry, I'm not going to hell for that. There's a long list of other things I'm going to hell for.

2. This is almost too silly to confess, and up til this moment, I've never told anyone about this except my husband (who looked at me like I was an escaped mental patient): I have a paranoia about being knockkneed--meaning I'm afraid that my knees are too close together. All my life since the age of about 13, I have consciously stood in such a way as to push my knees apart while leaving my feet together, in an effort to create more space between my knees. Not only do I do this when I'm out in public, but I also do it when I'm alone and no one's watching--every day, all the time. Here is a picture of me standing the way I would naturally, if I weren't so freaking paranoid, and a picture of me pushing my knees apart like I normally do.

I know what you're thinking--that I have too much free time if I'm spending my energy examining the distance between my knees. Either that or I'm deeply, unbelievably self-absorbed. Yes, and yes.

3. Sometimes customers at work show their appreciation for us by baking something--cookies, cake, banana bread, etc. These offerings go on the table in the breakroom, where employees can partake of them at their leisure. We rarely know which customer made a particular item, because it's not like anyone goes to the trouble to label the food; it just gets unceremoniously dumped on the table by whatever employee happens to receive it. I eat this food. I know a lot of you are thinking you wouldn't eat mysterious baked goods because you don't know if the maker of the item washed her hands, or if she lives in an abandoned RV with 35 cats, or if she has hepatitis C and a flesh-eating skin rash, etc. I think about those possibilities each time I pick up a mystery cookie, I really do. And then I think, "Yum, cookie." Now, in my defense, I will say that I do make a judgement call based on the appearance of the gift. If it's cream cheese cookies in a festive holiday tin that's streaked with bloody fingerprints, I wouldn't eat that. If it's blueberry muffins with enough strands of human hair scattered on and around them to make a wig, I wouldn't eat that. If it's a loaf of pumpkin bread with a mouse tail baked in, but protruding halfway out, I wouldn't eat that. The tail, I mean. I'd eat the bread.

So there you have it. Three more reasons to be glad you're not me. Thank you, Frankie, for further alienating me from my people. I'll probably grow old and die alone like a former child actor. Is that what you want?

Labels: The internet--it's more than just pornography