Author Emily Giffin, 40, shared 25 things you don’t know about her with Us Weekly. Her new book, Where We Belong, is available now.
1. I do not like speed. I have not driven on a highway since 1996 and have never been on a roller coaster.
2. I can name any Brady Bunch episode in 10 seconds or fewer and cannot be stumped in even the most obscure trivia question related to that show.
3. I am obsessed with typefaces and fonts. My favorite is Nicholas Cochin.
4. If I could do anything besides write, and get paid for it, I would be a professional baby naming consultant or a therapist.
5. I was the men’s basketball manager at Wake Forest University during the Tim Duncan era. Once, when we were playing Carolina on the road in a televised game, I left the jerseys behind. A police escort barely got them to the game on time.
6. I am good at keeping secrets. My own and others.
7. I think I might have mixed up my identical twin sons shortly after they were brought home from the hospital. We will never know the truth.
8. I love winter, and January is my favorite month of the year.
9. I can say the alphabet as quickly backwards as I can forwards.
10. My parents are on far ends of the political spectrum — which is why I think I’m so moderate and lukewarm about politics.
11. I have a mild, diagnosed case of prosopagnosia a.k.a. “face blindness.” At least once a week, I’m embarrassed by not recognizing someone I should know.
12. I got into Harvard Law School, but went to Virginia. After graduation, I practiced law at a Manhattan firm for five years.
13. When I was in high school, my boyfriend and I got jobs together at a restaurant. Our first paychecks came and he got 50 cents more per hour than I. It became my first “legal” claim, and I demanded that the manager pay me back wages at the end of the summer.
14. I take an insane number of photographs. It is a rare day when my camera does not see action.
15. I am very noise sensitive and can’t stand the sound of radio or television commercials. My children have adopted my mantra: “commercials are pollution in the home.”
16. I have been No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list five times, but have never been number one. My husband calls me the Buffalo Bills of writers.
17. The only time I ever spanked one of my three children was right inside the gates of Epcot.
18. I believed in Santa Claus until the seventh grade.
19. About once a month, I dream that Jennifer Aniston and I are BFFs.
20. I met my husband at LaGuardia Airport.
21. My favorite colors are orange and pink. My whole office is decorated in that color scheme.
22. My first celebrity crush was River Phoenix; my current crush is Adrian Grenier.
23. My first kiss was with a French exchange student named Sebastian. It was a true French kiss. Ha.
24. I was supposed to meet a friend at the fountain between the World Trade Center towers on 9/11 at 9 a.m. I moved to London five days later in the first international flight that left the country.
25. I have no sense of direction. As in none. For several months after moving into our new house, I turned left at the top of the stairs to get to my daughter’s room instead of right.
