Neil is a pretty smart guy. He is Jewish, after all.

The man who blogs at Citizen of the Month has, among other things, lobbied to speak at the annual BlogHer conference; asked female readers to mail him their bras for his birthday; and written humorlously about his experiences in therapy.

So it was no surprise to his fans when he came up with the Great Interview Experiment, in which bloggers interview other bloggers, under the pretext that we must be pretty fucking interesting people if we dare to write public online journals.

As part of the series, Danny Miller of Jew Eat Yet? interviewed me in early February.

The blogger I was picked to interview is a girl who goes by the name Sassy, a woman who lives in France, was breastfed by the wrong woman at birth, and was once bit by a monkey. She blogs at Eye Heart Internet, which has one of the most interesting About Me pages I have ever read. She gave a great interview despite having to tolerate my procrastination and laziness.

1. You were born in Alaska and vaguely hint at a hospital mix-up that resulted in you being breastfed by and passing for another woman’s baby. Can you expand this story?

The story goes that my mother and her hospital roomie gave birth a few hours apart from each other. Spent from labor, my mom basically passed out after hearing the doc say, “Oh, it’s a REDHEAD” and taking one long look at me. Later, when she awoke in her room, the woman next to her was squealing, as she breastfed me, “Ooh, I didn’t remember she had such RED HAIR!”

Slurp, slurp, and a tiny brown-headed, half-bald runt/weasel was brought to my mother for her to feed. Not one to mince words, she quickly spurted out “That’s not my baby!” and called for the doctor. The mixup was rectified, but by this time, my newly adopted mother had apparently bonded with me and was bitterly traumatized by the whole situation. She was quickly moved to another room.

I used to dream about that woman, when I was a child. In my mind’s eye she had perfect round cheeks with short mousy brown hair, and the kind of face that wears a perma-smile, even during sleep. Aah, I would think of all the toys and the unlimited unconditional love she would have taught me. I recently confessed this dream to my mom who laughed and told me that the dame was more of the shrill, trashy, inch-long pointy fingernails type, you know, the kind of woman that smells of whiskey in the morning.

2. You have lived in France with your husband, referred to as Manboy on your blog, for nearly five years now. What made you move – and stay – there?

I came to France to work on my French, which I was slowly losing in the U.S. (I spent a year as an exchange student in the French speaking part of Switzerland during high school.) When I came here, I had an arrangement: I worked as a jeune fille au pair, taking care of four mutant elves. (Translate : beastly children.)

I’ve actually been here for six years now, when originally I came planning to stay between three and six months. What happened? Life happened. Saying yes to the unknown happened. Manboy happened.

3. Your life sounds like one that, if portrayed in a movie, would be played by Zooey Deschanel. You have (not necessarily in this order):

This is the sort of bohemian life many strive for but never achieve. What would you say you learned from these crazy experiences?

What have I learned? I don’t have the pretension of thinking I’ve learned much, except for the fact that I can be pretty stupid. I mean, what kind of person packs off to see the world with no money? Trust me, if you get the urge, smoke crack instead. It’ll get you to the same place, just quicker.

However, I think doing all that stuff helped me see the fragility of my own self, the humanity. I don’t think that having gone to interesting places or having done interesting things in any way makes me an interesting person. It would be too easy to hide behind past experiences to let myself stagnate today. It’s frighteningly easy. You can be sure at a dinner party, some guy’s going to ask me to tell the time I got bit by a monkey story, but am I willing to let them see me as I am today, without the lens of what I’ve lived through?

For this reason, I often omit these details of my past in real life until I’m pretty far into the getting-to-know-someone phase. I usually wait until I’m sure that they’ve either passed the test of someone I want to be friends with or think they have figured me out. Then I tell them. Either their eyes glaze over as they try to incorporate that into the already existent Sassy they know, or it’s like, “Oh, that’s cool” and we move on to the next thing.

5. Ok, bit by a monkey? Tell that story.

Told you!

Okay, so we were in Thailand and it was my co-traveler’s birthday, and I thought I’d surprise her and take her to this town where there is a monkey temple. So we go to the park and monkeys are running around everywhere, like pigeons or squirrels in any park in the U.S. They were even hanging around in the streets, eating out of garbage cans, etc.

We get to the park, and I see this man with one leg walking with crutches. He, obviously impressed with the monkeys, sat down on the grass and laid his crutches down, one on each side of him. We were behind him, and what amazed me as he sat was that the manner that he laid out his crutches on each side of him created a sort of fan shape. And then the monkeys, seemingly equally fascinated with him and he was with them, began to place themselves and sit in organized rows, facing him, themselves continuing in the fan pattern. It was really something to see.

I sat down to watch this, the monkeys watching the one-legged fan man who was watching the monkeys watching the man, and my friend sat down beside me. We were there a couple of minutes when a monkey startled us by coming up behind my friend and brushing against her. Just after, one did the same to me. They seemed to be teasing us. I then saw behind us, that as we had been watching the man, that several rows of monkey had themselves gathered behind us to watch us !

I gasped, and one of the little bastards made a leap for me, clutched onto my back and chomped down. Hard. Five rabies shots later I am maybe a bit wiser.

So, as to your previous question, maybe I did learn something after all : Never turn your back on a monkey.

6. You write openly and with humor on your blog about you and Manboy’s difficulties to conceive. For example:

Do you find blogging about such a personal issue cathartic? Have you heard from other women with similar struggles?

Blogging about infertility has been a huge source of relief and support for me. It’s helped me come to terms with things in a way that has helped me to be more open and natural in real life, without expecting anything in return from others around me. The blogging community has been my secret garden’s cheerleader through things that even those closest to me might not get. It’s pure magic, baby.

I have heard from quite a number of women with similar struggles, via email and comments. I follow a few blogs of women with infertility issues as well. I guess it’s a subject that often isolates women and couples, so it’s nice to not be so alone.

7. You say you used to believe you were a little boy, and that everyone was playing a joke on me by making me think I was a girl. My sister once tried to pee standing up but, in her defense, she was 5. How long did your belief last and why do you think you felt that way?

I didn’t only try to pee standing up, I taught myself how to.

I dunno, I guess i could go into all the reasons that lead me to being in therapy today, but it would be more fun to take the (also true) shortcut of saying that my favorite movie was The Jerk. And if he could be black, why couldn’t I be a boy? As a child I had a quite vivid imagination and often had difficulties separating fantasy from reality. It’s an INFP thing, I think.

8. You say you were “the tallest girl in the whole wide universe by the age thirteen”. I was the shortest boy in the whole wide universe and spent many nights stretching my legs trying to grow some height. How did you handle something you felt insecure about?

By locking myself in a bathroom stall, squeezing my eyes shut hard, and praying God to have mercy on me, and to make me stop growing.

Seriously, I was frighteningly shy, and being a beanpole didn’t help things. I thought that my height was abhorrent and that it was all that anyone saw. Especially the cute short boys I had crushes on!

9. You have made some pretty keen observations on your blog, such as “Do turkeys have armpits?” What else in this world boggles your mind?

- Why do I say such stupid things when I am nervous ?
- Is someone filming my life from inside my retina?
- What is my dog dreaming about when he makes those weird little noises in his sleep?

10. The First Lady of your adopted country, aside from being smoking hot, likes to hit herself over the head with her guitar. What do people mistake about you that you would want them to know?

Touché. I had to think a bit hard about this one. One truth is that I’m not as strong as I act. On the other hand, I’m not sure that I want them to know?

Bonus: You might be selling your home that has this view? What’s the asking price?

Actually, that view, though not far from my house, is not the actual view from my window.

This is :

(Check out the inside …)

And this is the view from where my dog goes poo :

The asking price? I dunno, I sold my soul to buy the place, I think I should get at least 150,000 € back out of the deal. Why, do you wanna make me an offer?

Thanks so much, Sassy, for an entertaining interview!

If anyone wants to take part in Neil’s Great Interview Experiment, e-mail him at: neilochka at yahoo dot com.