Therese Walsh

1. I can gobble so authentically that I once had a turkey gobble back at me.

2. I know I’ve dreamed in color at least once, because I recall it so vividly.

3. Speaking of dreams, I once wanted to become a sleep researcher and thought the coolest thing in the world would be to interview Dr. William Dement about REM sleep.

4. And speaking of dement(ed), I will willingly spend several hours in the kitchen to create a perfect cheesecake-including a pastry crust with a dark chocolate lining and a fresh raspberry topping. Oh, yeah.

5. I wore black the day Joe Montana retired.

6.  As a child, I once stepped barefooted into a bucket of red paint and then danced all over the garage floor. When my family moved from that house years later, we left my red footprints behind.

7. My mother once caught me looking at one of my father’s girly magazines, and I was so embarrassed that I hid inside a zippered coat bag in a closet for hours.

8. As a teen, I was once pinched by an old man while walking down a winding flight of stairs in an Italian church. I screamed. He fled the scene of the pinch.

9. I tend to be both klutzy and quick with my reflexes. Hard to picture, but it goes something like this: tip over the glass, catch it before anything spills, then bow for applause.

10. I was once in a band and, after submitting recordings of our original work to various Official People, we received a personal, handwritten rejection letter from the producer of The Cure. Though I didn’t know it at the time, it would become the first of many personal rejection letters.

11. There are two completely different incarnations of my novel, both more than 400 pages long.

12. I want to travel to New Zealand someday and find the Hobbits.

13. I wish I were two inches taller.

14. I make the best popcorn in the world. References are available to prove this claim, and you know references never lie.

15. I don’t like mushrooms, and I wish my husband would stop trying to convince me that I could. It only makes me more resolved to despise them.

16. My favorite Warner Brother’s character is the orange monster, Gossamer.

17. I have trouble sleeping if my feet are cold.

18. One day, after escaping a very boring sociology class, I discovered an original, handwritten poem tucked under my windshield wiper. It rocked my world. I looked around, stayed for long minutes, hoped…but the writer never appeared. I never learned who left that poem, but if given the chance, I’d tell the writer that their words have often lifted me in dark moments, and that I’ve kept the original paper in a red folder labeled, “The Gift.” And I am thankful.

19. I once worked as a senior research associate for Prevention Magazine and won their “Super Sleuth Award,” which essentially was a pen. But still, sounds good, doesn’t it?

20. I own three Javanese kerises. Because.

21. I played Sarah Brown in a high school musical rendition of Guys and Dolls, but I wished I could have had the role of Miss Adelaide.

22. Potatoes make me sleepy.

23. I think the best works of art in my house are the pictures my children have created.

24. I believe in fortune cookies, frog princes and lucky pencils, and I believe-perhaps most of all-in chocolate gelato.

25. [This spot intentionally left blank. Because I’m a writer, and I know that my best ideas will come later.]