Five surprises from Gillibrand’s book

Her revelation that an “older male colleague” called her “porky” made headlines, but that’s not the only eyebrow-raising tidbit from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s book, Off the Sidelines: Raise Your Voice, Change the World, released on Tuesday.

Here are five bits of info you might not know about the New York Democrat:

A profanity pro

{mosads}Gillibrand admits she inherited her grandmother’s “facility for colorful language,” although she tends to “keep it to one or two expletives at a time.”

“Once, when [former] Senator Joe Lieberman [I-Conn.], an elegant and religious man, asked me about the status of a bill, I responded with a recitation of political obstacles that apparently included an epithet I’m sure very few, if any, others had ever used in his presence.

A few minutes later, a staffer pulled me aside and said, “You just said ‘F— me’ in front of Joe Lieberman!” I hadn’t even noticed, and Lieberman hadn’t flinched. God bless his polite heart.” 

Keep the kitties away

“I am extremely allergic to cats,” Gillibrand writes.

“One of my office rules is that I need advance warning before walking into homes with cats, so I can take an antihistamine.” One of her two sons even made a sign that’s posted above the desk of one of her aides: “It reads, NO CATS.”

Call her ‘Tina’

Gillibrand grew up being called “Tina” because her big brother couldn’t pronounce her name as a baby.

“Still, to this day I adore hearing someone shout ‘Tina!’ from across a crowded room. It’s a sure sign of family or a very old friend.”

She had a fake ID at age 15

“By age fifteen, we had terrible fake IDs. Not that any of us drank — we just wanted to tag along to the Lark Tavern with my older brother, Doug, and his friends.”

Words of wisdom

“ ‘You don’t want to look up years from now and find your family is gone.’ To this day, that was the single most important piece of advice I have been given about serving in Congress.”