The school yearbook staff one year decided to ask everyone to describe themselves in one adjective. Put on the spot, I gave the word "spacey."

As usual, my mother would admonish me for being self-deprecating and the yearbook staff members gave me funny looks, but I thought it fit pretty well. I remember learning the word "daydreaming" for the first time (on a boardwalk in New Jersey) and I have since spent a considerable amount of time making up stories and other thoughts in the comfort of my own head. Often at the expense of listening to the real world.

Of course, the yearbook staff misheard me, and you can imagine my shock when I turned to that page in my sixty-dollar yearbook--the one that hundreds of my classmates will have forever--to find that they had typed "spicy."

Ouch.

That explains the funny looks.