Embarrassing Confessions

So I would like to dedicate this post to awkward confessions.

1. First of all, I was a massive fan of one of the members of the "Magnificent Seven" of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Dominique Moceanu. I was seven that year and I went CRAZY watching every bit of gymnastics that I could find on TV, day or night. Me and my sister, Brooke, helped make gymnastics all the rage in our friend group. Dominique Moceanu was our idol; she was so small, powerful and beautiful, and I wanted to be JUST like her. I had a book with pictures of her as a kid and pictures from all of her competitions... A couple more things- notice her wrist guards in the first picture. Well, me and my sister didn't have any of those, but we DID have rollerblading wrist guards! So we'd wear those and put sidewalk chalk all over our hands so we could do flips in the yard and look like professionals. Also, notice the position of her hands (something similar to "jazz hands") in the second picture- yeah, I perfected that- the dismount hands. What of it? Anyway, me and my sister got to meet her one time; we bought shirts with her on them and she signed her autograph. I don't know where my shirt is anymore, but it was my most prized possession for quite a few years.

2. Secondly.... I was also a fan of pair figure skaters Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov. My grandpa knew that me and my sister, Brooke, were crazy about the Olympics and any type of sport that we most likely had no chance in ever doing. Sooo, he noticed some documentary called, "My Sergei" coming on TV one day about this Ekaterina Gordeeva and Sergei Grinkov. Well, he recorded it for us; and we got hooked. They were individual ice skaters that got paired up at 10 and 14 and started competing as pair skaters. Well, as the story goes, they fall in love and get married after years of skating together, they have a child, and then Sergei drops dead on the ice at 28 after he had a very serious heart attack. Such a sad story. But me and Brooke were hooked. "My Sergei" was sort of like a documentary- there would be clips of their competitions, clips of their home videos, pictures, recent clips of Ekaterina speaking regarding Sergei's death, etc. Me and Brooke would watch it religiously- we wore out the tape - and we would cry our eyes out every time and then immediately go roller skate in our driveway to classical music or jazz that we had recorded on tapes off of Encarta. Here was my favorite competition that they did when I was little.

3. I had THE biggest crush on the kid from Summer of the Monkeys. I remember thinking that it was cool that he was really adventurous and passionate (and henceforth, sometimes had a temper), but was so kind to his little sister. Haha I thought he was brave, absolutely beautiful and darn sexy while playing with all those monkeys.

4. I would put on sad classical music and try to make myself cry, just to practice my acting skills. After I mastered this, I would stare at myself in the mirror and have back-and-forth conversations, while I was playing two different characters. It was the best when they'd get into an argument. It entertained me, at least.

5. .... I still sometimes do #4.

And there you have it- some embarrassing confessions I'm not sure if I've ever told anyone.