Interview meme

So there is this interview meme going around. On of the cool things about it is that you tag yourself. You ask someone who has been interviewed to interview you. So I asked Bacchus (who was interviewed by Dawn, who was interviewed by someone else) to interview me. So here are my answers to Bacchus' questions:

1. As an educator what was your biggest challenge and if you've overcome it how?
I don't know that it is really the biggest, but certainly the challenge that keeps coming back is that I have a difficult time sticking to the syllabus as I have written it. I have an idea for how things could be better (change the assignment, change the reading, give them a practice exercise). It always seems like a good idea at the time, and it always leaves a good number of the students confused and frustrated.

2. How did you meet your Hubby and how did you know he was the one?
Thank goodness for an easy one! I warn you though, it's long!

First the back story: When I was a freshman in college someone took me to Dr. B's table in the cafeteria for lunch. He was a history professor and a gossip, and he ate lunch in the cafeteria every lunch and dinner at the same table. (And my retroactive gaydar tells me he was very definitely gay). In any case, what was cool about eating with Dr. B was that you would meet people there that you wouldn't meet any other way. I mean, where else would a first year woman with no major meet a senior physics major? So I ate lunch with him a couple times a week. Some of the women on my dorm floor seemed to think there was something scandalous about him and asked me in concerned tones why I sat at his table. Simply because I wanted to get them off my back I told them that I had an intuition that I would meet my husband there. At least in the early 80's, you could get a southern (North Carolina) woman to leave you alone about ANYthing if you just told her that you thought you were going to meet your husband by doing it.

At the beginning of my junior year I met Hubby at Dr. B's table.

He introduced me to Hubby, and I barely noticed him. I remember that I had something to tell Dr. B that I knew he would be very interested in knowing. I forget what it was, I just knew that I wanted to be the first to tell him. I was animated and excited and I completely ignored Hubby. This of course made me interesting.

Hubby was also not from the south and was not finding any of the women at the college interesting. So he asked his friends about me. His roommate, who I have to tell you is the geek of a geeks, told him that I was kind of a nerd. His other friend would only tell him that I had once asked him if he masturbated. This by the way is true but there was a context in which it made perfect sense, really! Hubby's friend refused to say anything else. This made me even more interesting.

A few days after the lunch I went into the library to look up an article by Bertrand Russell. There was someone sitting at all the tables and Hubby happened to be someone I knew. So I sat down at the opposite end of the table. He asked me what I was reading. I told him that it was an article about whether we could know what reality was given that we only had access to our perceptions. I thought that would shut him up, but he kept asking questions. He was interested. So that was when I started falling for him -- this guy who would listen to me talk about philosophy!

A week or so later he asked me to go to the Dead Zone, which I hadn't wanted to see, and to a frat party, which I didn't want to go to (I was proud of the fact that I had never gone to a frat party). I said something like, "I'd love to!" The movie was okay and the party was a bust, so we left and walked and talked.

The next week he took me to his parents to help him carve a pumpkin for his mother. He pulled into the driveway of a mansion. It was huge. At that moment I knew it was over. There was no way I was going to date someone who lived in a place like that. I also wasn't going in there while wearing my ratty pumpkin-carving clothes. I thought I had mis-judged him. He should have warned me I was going to a billionaire's house. He shouldn't have let me show up dressed like this.

"Take me back to school."
"What?"
"Take me back. I'm not going in there."
"What do you mean? This is where I live."
"Well, I'm sorry, but I am not going in there."
"Are you serious? I mean, you really won't go in with me?"
"I really won't."
He started to pull out and said, "I guess it's a good thing that's not my house."

He took me to his real house which was very nice. I mean, a whole lot nicer than any place I had ever lived, but it was also modest. Shortly after I got there his mother came in wearing clothes more ratty than mine. She immediately went and got all three of his baby/childhood photo albums and showed me all of them.

It's hard to tell you when I knew he was the one, because frankly I was pretty nutso about him as soon as I actually noticed him. I do know though that our first real fight was important to me. I don't remember what we fought about; I actually don't remember anything about the fight. I do remember telling my sister about him over winter break. She asked me what I liked most about him and I said, "He fights fair." It might not really be the best thing, but I knew it was the crucial thing. It meant that we could work out anything else. It meant that I was safe with him.

And though this is going too long, I can tell you when his mother decided she liked me. I stayed there Thanksgiving weekend. Hubby and I had only been dating since the weekend before Halloween and I had not seen Hubby's parents very much (at all?) since the pumpkin carving day. We were all supposed to go out to dinner one of those nights and I was told to be ready to go at 6:15. At 6:08 Hubby came back to my bedroom knocking and telling me that everyone was ready and where was I? I told him that I would be ready on time. He yelled down to his parents, "She's almost ready! She'll be right there!" And I yelled, "No she's not! Sit down and I'll be there by 6:15."

I came out at 6:13 with Hubby all anxious. His parents were perfectly calm. I said, "Just for the record, I would like to point out that I am 2 minutes early. In the future I will remember that this family runs early." His parents laughed. Later my mother-in-law told me that that was when she knew I was going to fit right in.

3. When did you realise you were ready to be a parent?
Um...when I got a dissertation grant and realized that for the next two years I wouldn't have to teach.

4. What book has been the most influential in your life?
Gotta go with sub-categories here:
-Parenting: Liberated Parents, Liberated Children, Faber and Mazlish
I still go back to this when I need help parenting

-In my adolescence Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austin
It wasn't until I re-read it as an adult that I realized how much Elizabeth Bennett had been my model for everything I thought I wanted to be.

-GLBT Issues: Not Like the other Boys, Growing Up Gay: A Mother and Son Look Back, Marlene Fanta Shyer and Christopher Shyer
I don't know if it so much influenced me as touched me deeply.

5. How would your Hubby describe you?
I cheated; I just asked him. "Intelligent, attractive, competent and funny." If he were being entirely honest I am sure he would have added "an obsessive worrier." I should say that he was once in trouble with me for an entire year for telling me at our anniversary dinner that his favorite thing about me was that I was prudent. He knows better than to make that sort of mistake again.

Okay, so the next part of the meme is for anyone out there who wants me to interview them to ask me to do so.