Jess Banks schools you.

I’m a fool for stand-up comedy, and lots of one-liners and references have made their way into the Banks household lexicon. As with my books, music, and movies, I’ve got prodigal tastes that include things that might surprise even those who know me best.

So let me here admit: I love the Blue Collar Comedy Tour films. Don’t judge me–that’s some funny stuff right there. We laugh at Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck jokes, but if we’re honest, we know that more of them apply to more of us than is comfortable. And as a joke format, it’s just about perfect.

So, for today’s Friday Night Lists post, here’s my spin on Foxworthy’s list. If you don’t recognize them all, fire up that Google machine! I’m sure I’m leaving out a billion things, so if you’ve got one that should be included, be sure to leave it in comments! Hopefully, this conveys my general view that geekdom is universal, and everyone’s a geek about something.

You Might Be A Geek If…

Reverb Broads 2011, December 16: What are your biggest pet peeves? (courtesy of Emily at http://warmedtheworld.blogspot.com)

I can only come up with three pet peeves right now, and they’re all so trivial, I’m pretty embarrassed to put them out there. Feel free to mock them. But once you know about them, beware: they might start to annoy you, too!

My first pet peeve is repetitive noises. It’s a Big Red Button that is constantly pushed by my sons, because if there’s one thing kids love, it’s making the same noises or saying the same things over and over and over and over. Both of them engage in what I like to call “echolocation barking,” when they say “Mom!” or “Dad!” over and over until someone responds to them, even if they don’t really have anything else to say. They also seem incapable of singing more than one riff of a song, though they’re happy to sing that riff on endless loop. I refuse to buy The Toys That Make The Noise. And don’t get me started on video game music…

And it’s caused by a big snarly bundle of factors. I have perfect relative pitch, extremely sensitive hearing, and a tendency toward hypervigilance — in short, I really can’t stop listening. This contributes to my general insomnia; I can’t sleep without some sort of patternless white noise, like a fan. My husband once bought me one of those soundscape machines, but I had to return it after two nights, because all of the environmental sounds had a loop, and I would lie there waiting for the same pattern of notes to come back again. Pure torture.

My second pet peeve is simple: apostrophes. Sure, there are lots of other nitpicky little grammar things that make me nuts, but I could learn to live with all sorts of things if folks would just get their apostrophes under control. They’re not even hard, people! Here, I’ll let Bob the Flower handle this one:

And my last one isn’t even that bad, but it makes the holiday season maddening for me. In the song “Deck the Hall,” there is only ONE HALL, but MANY BOUGHS. “Deck the Halls” is not the correct original lyric, though it is ubiquitous these days. I got this pet peeve from a good friend with whom I sang in church and school choir for years, and now, like her, I go around at carol sings yelling, “ONE HALL, MANY BOUGHS!” and generally annoying everyone.

You don’t believe me, do you? Well, here, look!

This is original sheet music, from the Victorian era when the carol became popular

Reverb Broads 2011, December 13: What are three things you are better at than most people? (courtesy of Catie at http://catiecake.wordpress.com/)

I sure wish any of these three things were people skills. I wish these abilities could be leveraged to make the world a better place. But they’re really not. They don’t even make me particularly likable in many circles.

My first superpower is proofreading. I come by this skill genetically; my mom is the Supreme Goddess of All Secretaries. I’ve been proofreading for her since I was eleven years old. I’m also a grammar nazi, the kind of person Lynne Truss (Eats, Shoots, and Leaves) calls “a stickler.” And I’ve had a lot of fantastic English and journalism teachers who did unusual things, like make me memorize all the articles* in fifth grade.

I see spelling and punctuation errors like Haley Joel Osment sees dead people: They’re everywhere. Moreover, I usually see these mistakes within about three seconds, even on a full page of text.  Local TV ads, signs in grocery stores, and small-town papers (even large-town papers, more and more) make me flinch instinctively. There have been books (usually paperbacks are worse than hardcovers, for some reason) that I have been unable to finish without a marking pen in hand; my mom and I have both offered to various romance publishers to proofread for free, just to keep ourselves in trashy novels. And every time I let a publication go out that I haven’t given a pass, I inevitably find a dumb error, which really doesn’t help my general control freak-ness.

But if you ever need to hire an editor for something important, even just a résumé or wedding invitation? I’m your girl, and I work cheap.

My second superpower is quiz shows. I’ve written before about my weird feats of memory; in short, I’ve got a mind like a steel trap for trivia, and a sieve for useful things. And I’ve got a knack for abstract thinking — the more oblique the clue, the better. This combination allows me to be good enough at Jeopardy! that I was regularly kicked out of the lounge in my college dorm when it was on, but to graduate a few hundredths of a grade point shy of wearing honor cords. I can solve Wheel of Fortune puzzles without any letters. I’ve been told by more people than I can count on two hands that I would be their lifeline on Millionaire. I deserve Carl Kasell’s voice on my answering machine. I do, in fact, know Jack.

Finally, my third superpower is reading aloud. Frankly, I rock at this. I’ve got some mutant skills in this area: I can read text I’ve never seen before upside-down at full speed, which would make me the Most Popular Children’s Librarian In The World, if I wanted to be. And when I read aloud, I make it a full-on dramatic event. With me, you get different voices, accents, and a panoply of emotions. If it says, “She screamed,” I can make it sound throat-shredding without even getting that loud. If the character has a head cold, ids goig do sound lig id. Glaswegians sound like Glaswegians; goats sound like goats.

I don’t only do this for my kids and their classes at school. I’ve probably read a dozen books (including every word of Harry Potter) and a thousand articles aloud to my husband. Sometimes, as in the case with the Master Li and Number Ten Ox stories, reading them aloud in their entirety is just more coherent than reading out context-less passages every time I laugh aloud (which is almost every page). And sometimes, it’s because I want to fully convey my shock and outrage. He’s very patient with me, and I’d like to think it’s a value-added service.

In short, I’m a pedantic, overly dramatic know-it-all. But I’m the best one you know.

*a, all, an, any, both, each, every, few, many, more, most, no, several, some, that, the, these, this, those, which, and all number words like one, two.