I’ve been tagged by my dear colleagues and twitter mates Nik Peachey (@NikPeachey) and Seth Dickens (@sethdickens) to take part in that meme around on those 7 Seven Things You Don’t Need To Know About X.

Procedure:

• Share the rules.
• Link your taggers.
• Tag 7 victims, people, at the end of the post and tell them they’ve been tagged. Knock, knock…
• List 7 things no one would need to know about yourself.

What an oxymoron! If they’re things no one needs to know why should I share them? (oh, my, we’ll definitely end up in that asylum mentioned by Tolstoy). I’m going to write them down anyway, so:

1. I have 5 siblings: 4 sisters and 1 brother. That’s tough as tough can be -yes, not only for my brother, I know you’re going to think that, but he always had a room just to himself while we, the girls, had to share 2 rooms. That was like Survivor. Now, they all have kids but me, even the youngest. That’s a lot of pressure…My nephews and nieces call me Maena…because my real name or, rather, my full name is María Elena. Only my parents and sisters call me Mª Elena, which seems too hard for kids to pronounce, so they call me Maena. I’m Elena for the rest of the world…I hope.

2. But wait, my father also calls me “Harrison” after the #1 selling medical textbook in the world. Why? Because I have this loong curriculum full of physical subtleties -this is when I love metaphors- that have been discovered serendipitously during my visits to hospitals, practices, etc. To name but a few: my stomach has a different shape, not j-shaped but hourglass-shaped. I wonder if that means something. It’s a very delicate one, not weak,  just delicate. I have a big heart -literally- and a vena cava which is larger than the average. There are many others…but I don’t want to scare you. In any case, nothing really serious. So far. You know, I always thought my parents had that romantic evening too close to a nuclear power plant.

3. I always thought I would never be a teacher, I thought I wasn’t going to enjoy it. And I was wrong -even though sometimes reality puts my feeling to the test. I like “teaching” but I like other things. I would have liked to study every single degree out there-especially physics (except law and medicine).

4. I am frustrated football player and tennis player. I would have liked to be a pro.

5. I’ve worked as an usherette at some multiplex here in Valencia -please, I didn’t have to wear these clothes. And also at Blockbuster. I was saving money for my Erasmus grant…since the grant is non-existent. I love movies.

6. I’m very shy but I try to compensate. Several reality checks made me realize I’m probably too sensitive (appearances are deceptive). I’m also very comfortable with solitude. I can’t help but analyzing conversations, adjacent pairs, implicatures, etc. I guess I’ve spent too many years reading on Pragmatics and Semantics.

7. I love playing the djembe and derbouka drums. I have two at home. But I don’t play anymore because of social media…and oh my collaborations and projects on web x.0…and oh the PhD thesis. Ok, back to work.

And now it’s when things get complicated. I’m at the following diatribe: I don’t like tagging people to do something like this because I wouldn’t like them to feel obliged to do it. But then, I’d be breaking the rules. So I might tag (I apologize) some of my bookmarked bloggers and/or twitterians (and there are many) and feel free to follow this conversation or not. I guess the topic is just like a face-to-face informal conversation over a cup of tea. But I would like that you, reading this, feel like participating in this self-disclosure by leaving your own comments or your own 2, 3 or 7 things below.

• Brian Lamb
• Dolors Reig (en español, o te ayudo en inglés )
• Joe Dale
• John Moravec
• Martin Weller
• Todd Gailun
• Víctor Cuevas (en español, o te ayudo en inglés )