25 Reasons I will not play the '25 Things about you' game

Some of you in the blogosphere and facebook may be aware, or may have already succumbed to the temptation of playing the '25 things about you' game. It's sad. Most of those 25 things were probably things you should have kept to yourself and close friends, instead of posting them all over your blog or facebook. I refuse to make a list and tag people like so many of those ridiculously annoying email chain letters that say, "Send this email to five friends and your crush will like you, send it to 15 and your crush will love you, send it to all your friends and you and your crush will be married within the week." But, I do have the time, patience and wherewithall to post 25 reasons why I will not post 25 reasons.

1. I never do anything embarrassing.

2. When things happen to me that are cool and I share them, other people feel bad because they realize that their existence is meaningless.

3. I have eaten things I shouldn't have, and I have no regrets, but I refuse to be told that I have to have any of the eskimos removed from the shark I ate.

4. I was not fat as a child, and I'm sorry if you were. See a therapist.

5. I'm too busy doing unimportant things to read your list, so I'm not going to guilt other people into reading mine.

6. I like the same music as you, have all the same favorite foods as you, and am actually your identical twin.

7. Lists of 25 are not divisible by 3. That's unacceptable.

8. I am running out of ideas and I'm on number 8. Now imagine doing it yourself.

9. I am pretty sure most of the lists people write are chock full of exaggerations, BS, and things to make others laugh, and, I hate laughter. It's the worst.

10. If you thought stepping in dog poo was bad, think about how hard it is to clean BS off your eyeballs after reading it. 

11. Every one of the 25 things on my list would be easily made into a screenplay for a blockbuster.

12. Billy Idol told me not to make the list.

13. I like chicken (This reason is more relevant than you know).

14. In the list of contract violations in my hiring agreement for being a Teacher's Assistant, the 25 list thing is number two after sexual harassment. 

15. This '25 things about you' game is the first step into entering a social networking cult closely affiliated with worshipping dolphins and eating only halibut.

16. I like halibut too much to resist its smelly innuendos and fishy pick up lines.

17. Making lists of 25 things about yourself increases your chances of getting a brain tumor, pancreatic cancer, marfans syndrome, and the heeby jeebies by 700 percent.

18. This list is sufficiently self-indulgent. Another one would cause my implosion, and we don't need another black hole.

19. Lists usually get progressively boring as you read them (for example, see this reason)

20. I care about you enough to ask you to stop before you unnecessarily defame yourself in front of millions of people online from Singapore and China (They also use the lists to pick out who would make a better slave to kidnap).

21. Predatory Walmart greeters will stalk you if you make one of these lists.

22. You will be labeled as a spammer for the rest of your life, even if you don't like spam and have never been to Hawaii.

23. The children will cry.

24. You will never get to return to Narnia.

25. You will choke on oatmeal when no one is around and the Walmart greeters dressed in nothing but Walmart bags will put stickers all over your face.

Phone Tag and Rediscovering Your Inner Child

From the days of our early childhood to maybe even last week (for some of you), we have been brought up with social games. There is duck-duck-goose, "pin the tail on the donkey," "truth or dare," and the classic, and my personal favorite, tag (not to be confused with Mitt Romney's son Tagg). For those of you reading this in Pakistan or Singapore, tag is a game where there is a group of people, with one designated as "it," and thereby endowed with the prerogative, power, and responsibility to tag everyone else. The last person to get tagged wins.

(This man is enjoying a nice game of tag with a polar bear)

Tag quite often devolves into arguments among children. One says, "I got you," with the other saying, "No you didn't," or, "That was my jacket, it doesn't count." But, petty bickering aside, it's a pretty wholesome activity. And, I'm not about to make it into some metaphor for life or root out your inner demons by psychoanalyzing your success or lack thereof while playing the game as a child. However I do want to talk about the more relevant form of tag for adults, or more sophisticated adolescents. This derivation is called 'phone tag.'

I myself am a master at phone tag. You might think it hubris on my part, and, perhaps you're right, but I have proof. First off, let me start by explaining the ins and outs of phone tag and by which criteria you can go by to find out if you've got skills. Phone tag, (the structured form) involves two people. One person calls the other, for whatever reason does not reach the person, then the other calls back in hopes of getting a hold of the person who called. The game only continues if they never get in touch. When someone finally does, the game is over. Either the caller or the called wins, and that depends on the context of the game (and, if you really want to talk to the person, I guess everybody wins, but I'm not espousing Marxist dogma).

So to my case study. Myself. I make plenty of outbound calls and receive plenty of inbound calls, but I am meticulous in calling people back if they call me. So, you might say I am naturally inclined to end phone tag quickly. But you would be wrong. Whether it happens to be divine providence or luck, I seem to get embroiled in regular bouts of phone tag. It starts off simply enough with me calling someone and leaving a message. Then the person calls back, but for some reason they catch me during the .5% of the day I don't have the phone with me. This might be while I'm taking a shower, making a sandwich, at the gym, or circling the earth in a satellite (that happens more than I'd like to admit). Then, I call them back and magically get the voice mail box again. If it carries on I either leave random or ridiculous tag messages. For instance, I might claim to be a towing service, or prize patrol, or an angry Chinese man, but always I end with "Tag, you're it" even if it is unintelligible in a thick Chinese accent.

So I suppose the moral, if there must be one, is to keep your inner child alive through adaptations of children's games like phone tag. If you can find a way to play duck-duck-goose with phones, texting, or skype, you're my hero.