25 Random Things About me

I think I did this already, but I don't suppose there is any rule against randomly doing another one.

1. My hair was bright red as a child. It turned brown many years ago, but I have never been reconciled to it, and it always looks wrong in the mirror.

2. I have always considered the dense freckles on my arm to be a connection to my grandmother, who has the same. I finally mentioned that to her in a telephone conversation we had not long ago.

3. My wife and I have attended the Corvallis Friends Meeting for some years, off and on. I never seriously considered calling myself a "Christian" at any time, nor did I ever feel the slightest urge to declare Jesus Christ my personal Lord and Savior. But a few years ago, I was driving along and started turning the phrase "Friends of christ" over in my head, and concluded that, all issues of the supernatural aside, I certainly felt entirely comfortable declaring that (to the extent such a statement has meaning), I was "a friend of Christ". Suddenly I burst into tears, which was quite distracting since I was driving at the time, and I considered pulling over to contemplate the matter at more length, but in the end I just went on to my destination. This is probably as close as I am ever likely to get to a conversion experience, and doubtless not nearly enough to get me into Heaven*, but it was quite odd and surprising.

4. *I do not believe in an afterlife.

5. If I ever become the owner of an apartment building, the apartments will not have numbers, but names. I am thinking that the building will be called the Mark Twain, and the apartments will have names like "The Tom Sawyer Suite". Wouldn;t you like to have "Pudd'nhead Wilson Suite, Mark Twain Apartments, 369 Maple Street" for an address?

6. I am very fond of rats, have enjoyed petting and playing with them since I was a small child and befriended the rats my father used in his psychology research, was delighted in 1984 when I learned that my new friends (including the one who became my wife) kept rats.

7. I currently do not have any pets of any description, neither rats nor cats nor dogs. It feels weird.

8. I currently do not have any children living at home, and doubt whether I ever will. It feels weird.

9. There is a five-foot-long stuffed facsimile of a catfish about ten feet to my right. I bought it at a garage sale.

10. There is a twelve-inch globe of Earth's Moon about four feet to the right and upward from the catfish. My parents bought it during the Apollo Moon landings. I'm not sure why I have it and not them or my brothers.

11. I have two brothers, born in succeeding years (John in 1960, David in 1961, Tom in 1962). We gave one another an unhappy childhood. This is not a joke, we were in fact unhappy, and it was in large part due to our mutual hostility.

12. I have a fabulous sweater which evolved gradually out of a tie-dyed thermal undershirt, over more than twenty years of mending. You can see it on my Facebook profile, among other places.

13. I love my wife very much.

14. I read comic books, and have since I was a small child. Although my reading habits have always been eclectic, at present I read almost nothing except graphic novels which I check out from the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library, and ghraphic novels which I buy at Matt's Cavalcade of Comics Cards and collectibles and then donate to the Library.

15. I have a great fondness for the big, bright full Moon such as we have tonight.

16. The sliver-thin new Moon is also very special to me, because of an occasion when one of my kids saw it and burst out laughing, saying, "Moon 'tending be fingernail!" Damn, I could have lived a thousand years and never had that thought.

17. I have worn black socks almost exclusively since I first joined the Navy.

18. Whenever I see a reference to commercial sea traffic, I think of my wife's father, who died when she was a little girl.

19. I live in a house which depends on an oil burner for heat.

20. I recently turned my bed so its head, rather than its right side, was against the wall.

21. I have an injury to my back which has come and gone for years, but in the last few days has come and come and come.

22. I still have no tattoos.

23. Over the last thirty years, I have gone from jockey shorts to bikini briefs to boxers.

24. I have used Old Spice deodorant by preference for years, under the impression that it was my father's brand. Then a memory was knocked loose in my head and I remembered that it was actually Old Space shaving cream that he used. His deororant was Right Guard.

25. I had a gold crown come loose last summer, and it's been in a dish of nicknacks near the bed ever since, waiting for me to have the time and the money to get it put back.

//The Magic Eight-Ball says, "You never know when some little fact will turn out to be important."\\