The 10 Weirdest Things I Ever Did

The White Stripes
Originally uploaded by Barakattack

I woke up this morning to the news that the band, The White Stripes, had broken up. Sad, but hardly surprising when you consider that the band's helmsman, Jack White, has been pursuing his own projects for the better part of the past decade sans Meg. Sad, nonetheless.

I've always enjoyed The White Stripes. At their best they were a remarkable duo because they managed to successfully allow the great sound they produced to not override their weird- and sometimes creepy - personalities. It's a very tricky thing to accomplish in popular music where image is everything. Right, Phil Spector?

So, in honour of the demise of The Stripes Blanche, I am going to come clean on the ten weirdest things I have ever done. And, let me state for the record, I didn't have to dig too deep to come up with just ten.

1. I once took on an assignment to write a review of a DVD entitled, The NASA Missions: Volume 1. It was 9 hours in length. I sat through 2 and a half before I realized that I was losing my will to live and would rather be stuck in a capsule with Yakov Smirnoff headed to Mars than write the damn review. I still have the DVD if anyone wishes to borrow it.

2. I once argued with Danny DeVito over why he couldn't bring a rum and coke into one of Canada's most esteemed concert halls. It didn't go over well.

3. I practiced squatting with a dozen women - all of us 9 months pregnant - in the basement of a church on Bloor Street. At one point the instructor asked us all to moan from "the bottom of our throats" and the sound made me feel ashamed to be female. If I ever want to get in touch with a feeling of instant humiliation, I will conjure up this sound again.

4. I walked backwards from work one night just to see what it felt like. It was a two mile hike from my place of work to home and, near the end, I tripped over what I think was a cat. Rather than stop my experiment right then and there, I continued on my journey until I reached my apartment. Yeah. I did.

5. I once plunged a stuck toilet with a plastic garbage bag wrapped around my foot. It actually worked. I don't, however, recommend you try it home. Very messy.

6. I once watched my soon-to-be husband (though I didn't know it at the time) perform "surgery" on my roommate's cat with a safety pin. The cat never fussed and miraculously recovered. (N.B. I was never sure if this actually happened - a great deal of extracurricular liquids were involved - but my now-husband assures me that it did.)

7. I was obsessed with eating dirt for about a week while I was pregnant. When I told my doctor about it he told me to go home and lick a potato. It worked.

8. I once bought a Richard Simmons: Jazzercize! record at a garage sale because the look he had on his face on the cover radiated pure joy. It spoke to me. The lady I bought it from felt so sorry for me that she threw in a set of 3 pound weights for free. I still have them. The weights, not the record.

9. I let my daughter cut my hair. She got bored halfway through and stopped. Nobody noticed the change.

10. I once sat with a crazy lady on the subway who convinced me that the Eiffel tower had blown up that morning. When she got off I asked a sane gentleman if her info was correct. When he refused to answer me I skipped my class in order to get to the bottom of the situation. In my defense, this was years before the internet.

Damn, I just realized that I could go on for days. Long live the White Stripes!