Can I jump on your seat to start your motorcycle?

There it was.

That same look I got 21 years ago. That, ‘Did she just say what I think she said?’ look.

Then came the teasing from my new reporter buddies Brian and Robert. And on it went for the rest of the newspaper convention I was at. Then more teasing after I got home through emails and on my Facebook wall. So much for confession being good for the soul.

You’d think they would have given me a break. After all, I was young.

Okay, not so young, I was in high school.

But for the first 17 years of my life I thought that’s how it worked, up until that day in my parent’s driveway, as my friend John was preparing to drive off on his motorcycle.

It was the first time I had ever asked someone out loud. “Aren’t you going to jump on the seat?” “What for?” was his response. “To start your motorcycle,” I innocently said. “No, I’m going to use the key,” he said, baffled at the realization that until that very moment of my life, I thought to start a motorcycle you had to jump on the seat.

Didn’t know about the kick start.

He gave me that look. At the Holiday Inn on Quinpool Street this past May when I fessed up to my stupidity, there it was again.

But having gotten that off my chest, I have a few other confessions to make.

I am addicted to sticky notes. Maybe addicted isn’t the right word. It’s more my inability to throw anything out. In a filing cabinet near my desk is a box containing nearly every sticky note I have written a name, telephone number, or other gibberish on in the past year. I haven’t thrown them out for fear I’ll need the information. Although I can’t see what I would need with the words: ‘that’s to be determined, fisheries and aquaculture, entering it in the competition, N.S. angler’s handbook’ that I have written on one sticky.

Still, a few weeks ago I actually referred to the box of sticky notes in search of a telephone number. Aha! There it was. I saw it as vindication for being a pack rat.

Since I’m on a roll, when I was a kid I spent six months checking under my bed for a whale before I went to bed. One night the movie Orca came on. I wanted to watch it but mom came in my room and kept telling me over and over I’d be too scared. In the end I didn’t get more than three minutes into the movie because I don’t know who freaked me out more, mom or the whale. Regardless, there I was night after night, peeking under my bed. Phew, no whale. Phew, no whale.

And finally, my fantasy in life is to sing at somebody’s wedding. Actually there’s a catch to my fantasy. As I’m singing people sitting in the pews are whispering to the person next to them, “She sings so beautifully.”

I saw my opening when my sister and her husband got married years ago. “Can I sing at your wedding? I asked. “Can you sing?” they asked back. “I asked you first.”

Their answer was a big, fat, no…with that look. Maybe I’ll start buttering up my boys. I bet they’d love to have mom sing at their weddings.

On second thought I better keep my mouth shut. I’d rather they didn’t elope.