I got tagged with the [Five Things Meme](http://www.google.com/search?q=five%20things%20meme&), in which I’m supposed to share five pieces of information most readers probably don’t know about me. Fair enough.
1. __I’m an Eagle scout.__ I can tie all my knots, splint a broken bone, and build a fire without matches. Growing up in Colorado, I also learned to dig snowcaves, gut fish and cook a delicious snipe. My troop had the Frost Point Award, which worked thusly: for every campout during the winter months, they’d bring a thermometer. For every degree below freezing it fell, you’d get a frost point. The goal was to collect 100 frost points during the winter camping season. I got the award three years straight. Yes, in retrospect, it was crazy.
2. __Raspberries are my kryptonite.__ One raspberry and I’m curled in the fetal position, waiting out the abdominal pain and feeling like I’ve been poisoned. This has only been going on for a few months. I think it may related to some undercooked ostrich I ate.
3. __I was all-state orchestra.__ I wasn’t a prodigy, but I was very good at clarinet through high school. Then one day I realized I was never going to be great. I was never going to do it for a living. What’s more, I didn’t really enjoy it: I kept playing because I was good. So I gave it up completely. No regrets.
4. __I’m not the smart one in the relationship.__ By any metric, Mike is demonstrably smarter when it comes to math, history and languages. At a certain point, most couples divvy up responsibility for life’s chores: cooking, pet care, dealing with solicitors at the door. I have ceded all responsibility for calculation, navigation and scheduling. I have claimed baking, swimming instruction, and ripping the meat off rotisserie chicken.
5. __I was a vegetarian for seven years.__ I gave up meat during a summer film program at Stanford, largely for economic reasons — pasta was cheaper. Mostly through inertia, I stayed a milk-and-egg-eating vegetarian without complaint or incident, until I started working out and found myself ravenously, deliriously craving protein. Tuna was my gateway meat, and within a year I was eating KFC. But I still don’t eat mammals.