Sunday Stealing

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. This feature originated and published on WTIT: The Blog. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves.

1. What do you hope your last words will be?
I love you.

2. What do you spend the most time thinking about?
This week it's my best friend, who died on Tuesday.

3. What is something you can never seem to finish?
Cleaning my office!

4. What mistake do you keep making again and again?
There is either a problem with my keyboard or my fingers.  I keep running words together.  I used to type 130 wpm; these days I'm lucky if it's 30 wpm, with all the corrections I have to make.

5. What’s the best thing you got from your parents?
I got my father's humor.  I wish I had gotten my mother's ability to be a hostess.  Probably I got my card playing fascination from her.

6. What’s the best and worst thing about getting older?
I don't know that there is a best thing about being in my 80s.  The worst is definitely the death of friends.

7. What do you wish your brain was better at doing?
Math

8. If your childhood had a smell, what would it be?
We lived halfway between the Ghirardelli chocolate factory (when they made chocolate there), and a coffee roasting company and I often went to school with the smell of mocha in the air.  I also love the smell of the mechanics of cable cars, which were a block from where I grew up and which I rode to school in high school.

9. What have you created that you are most proud of?
Other than my children, the book I wrote about The Lamplighters theater company.  I can look myself up in the Library of Congress.

10. What were some of the turning points in your life?
*leaving school and working for the Physics Department at UC Berkeley
* getting married
* having children
* hosting foreigners
* traveling
* volunteering with The Lamplighters

11. What song or artist do you like but rarely admit to liking?
I always admit to liking Judy Garland, less frequently liking John Denver

12. What small impact from a stranger made a big impact on you?
My son and I got a flat tire at night, driving home from San Francisco.  I tried to change the tire, but the car slipped off the jack.  We hoped for a police car to come along but found out later that it was miles away and would not have come near us for hours, but a car saw us, got off at the next stop, came back and picked us up (so scary getting into a stranger's car!) He took us to the nearest restaurant, gave me money to buy food for Paul and refused to give me his name so I could repay him.  It was definitely a play it forward moment for me. (this was before we had cell phones)

13. As you get older, what are you becoming more and more afraid of?
Well, dying, of course, but more becoming unable to function.  I am so lucky that our son lives with us!
These days, I am terrified that Trump will win the upcoming election.

14. What are some of the events in your life that made you who you are?
Definitely working with The Lamplighters.  Giving birth to 5 children.  Hosting 70 foreigners from 14 different countries.  Many of our travel experiences.  Working for the local newspaper for many years.

15. What could you do with $2 million to impact the most amount of people?
My sister-in-law and her husband have worked with a group to bring fresh water to places in Africa.  I think any opportunity to bring fresh water to an area would make the biggest impact.