The Curse of Being Demonstrative

I lived in fear of being bitten by the Five Things tag, not because I'm overly-private, but because I'm overly demonstrative.  I think everyone knows just about everything about me.  I'm an open book. 

Today I was bitten.  So here are Five Things You May Not Have Known About Me:

1. I had an accidental Afro. When I was living in Omaha in 1985, I wanted to have something other than my thin, straight hair.  My friend Jim Jeffers had great hair and could do all the rad 80s hair-band styling of it.  He had a new hair style every week.  So one day I let him talk me into getting something done to my hair.  I asked for a body wave, I got a bizarre looking afro.  It looked horrific.

Shortly after getting it, I went to see "Starship" during their "Built this City" tour (where they had lost Kanter and temporarily forgot how to make music).  At any rate, I was in front and Grace Slick stared at me throughout the entire show.

My friend Simon was convinced it was because of my hair and I reminded her of the 70s.

2. I dislike fish. I write a lot about food, but the careful reader will note that I don't ever write about fish.  No salmon, trout, red snapper, etc.  (The only exception is likely halibut or sea bass).  This is because I never liked catfish, but my dad LOVES catfish.  While we were growing up, he'd go fishing all the time.  Sometimes I feel like fully 25% of my youth was spent saying, "But, really, I don't like catfish!"

3. I like carefully purchased expensive (but not ludicrously so) cars. I have a 99 Saab Wagon which I bought new.  It's working its way up to 100k miles now.  In general, I believe in buying the nicest things you can afford and then taking care of them and making them last forever.

4.  For the love a woman I nearly plummeted to my death. Well, I don't think she would have stopped liking me but ... One time I went hiking with my girlfriend Heidi.  She was pretty fearless all the way around.  It was spring on the Oregon coast and it had been pretty rainy.  We hiked through deep, plush forestland and came to a ledge.  On the left side was cliff straight up for about 100', on the right was a cliff straight down for 100'.  The ledge trail was about 4 feet wide.  It was all loose mud.

Heidi goes on and I stop and say .. um ... maybe this loose mud isn't the best to walk on.  "Naw," she replied, "it's fine, it's just on top, it's rock underneath."  Sure enough it was about an inch of very slippery, viscous mud of over rock.  So she moves on ahead and I follow behind, at one point slipping in the muck and sliding with one let dangling over the ledge and the other foot stopping about an inch from certain death.

She never noticed.

5. I once went shopping door to door for friends.  When I was five or six, so like 1970 or 1971, I went to Scottsbluff, Nebraska, to spend the summer with my Grandparents.  I would do this a lot in my youth.  This was one of the first times.  My parents put me on a little plane which stopped over and over and over and over again until I got to Scottbluff.  I usually flew except one year, for some reason, my parents put me on a Greyhound bus which I found insufferable.

So I was a little kid exiled in Scottsbluff.  What to do?   I don't know if this was at the suggestion of my Grandmother, but I ended up going door to door down 2nd Avenue in Scottsbluff saying to whomever answered, "Hi, I'm here visiting my grandparents.  Is there a little boy here I could play with?"

I remember one woman saying, "Well, I don't, but those people in that house over there do."  So I went over there and said basically the same thing.  That's how I ended up meeting my summer (and occasional Christmas) childhood friend Darek Ravert.

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Funny, but that last one has been riding around in my head for some time now.  I actual have a package of maybe 8 to 12 vignettes from Scottsbluff that I should make a whole post of.  One that always sticks with me was during the 1976 summer Olympics everyone on the street (or so it seemed) left their doors open and people went from house to house watching events and eating.

The rules of this tagging event mean that I have to inflict the tagging meme on five other souls.  These five people must do what I have just done.  Must.

I will now torture:

1.  Robert W. Anderson - Because he's a loveable but very private guy and I like to watch him squirm

 2. Dan Ciruli - Because misery love company and I don't know him well enough yet to call him loveable. And, he's trying to kill me with pushups.

3. Jason Kaneshiro - Who has hit blogging full force this year.

4. Ed Vielmetti - Who may have already been tagged long ago, but I looked back into early November and couldn't find anything so I'm tagging him anyway but fully expect him to say something like 'I was tagged ages ago' and then I'll feel bad.

5. Karen Anderson - ex-iTunes propagandist and fellow Seattlite.

I wish I still had a scanner.  The Afro Jim picture would be good for this post.

Technorati tags: Chain letters, scottsbluff, starship, grace slick, Oregon

Blogged at my house in Seattle with Live Writer

Comments

[Webomatica]

Doh... I definitely enjoyed reading this post... but the reward is having to come up with some tidbits myself...

I'm also wondering about all the fish you missed out eating in China...

[Jim Benson]

For what I lacked in fish, I more than made up in crustaceans!

[Dave]

when you came to Denver with that afro it was unbelievable. I shoulda taken you to the old man haircut barber and had it shaved off. Being a skinhead woulda been better than afro head

[Jim Benson]

Heh,

"I'm just glad I make good copy."
- Dave.

[Webomatica]

You definitely piqued my interest... I eagerly await the afro photograph...

[Dave]

Now that I think of it, your goofy self-potraits are as bad as your afro. You're a good lookin' guy (at least Vivian thinks so). So no more bug-eyed self portriats pleeze