Evidently, I've been tagged again. This time by Stevie NIXED. The theme of this meme is "Five Things You Don't Know (And Probably Shouldn't Care) About Me." This is actually tougher than it should be, being that I'm slavishly narcissistic enough to have already divulged all the arguably interesting tidbits about my life on this weblog. I mean, I've already blathered on about my crazy kids, my tinnitus, my allergies, my various jobs, my interests, the brilliance of Killing Joke...I mean, what else is there? In any case, I was tagged, so I guess I should play along...
#1 I have never owned a pet. Actually, that's not entirely true. Sometime in the late 70's, my father unsolicitedly and ill-advisedly gave my older sister a pair of budgerigars (or budgies to the aviarily inclined). My sister's first inclination upon receipt of this gift was basically to see how long they'd last without food. As such, my mother and I summarily inherited the task of taking care of the hapless things. Along with a fully equipped little cage, we were given a little book on how to teach your budgies to talk. I immediately mounted a campaign to teach them how to say "Hail Satan." I have two great aunts who are nuns (Sister of Charity, to be precise) and I thought it would've been an absolute scream if I'd taught the birdies to invoke the horned one in their saintly presence, but that plan never got off the ground. I sat for hours by that cage, repeating the phrase over and over again, but they never spoke a word. We also never really got around to naming them. Mom wanted to call one of them "Why" and the other one "Not" (geddit?), but I didn't support that plan in the slightest. Likewise, my mother ignored my suggestions to call them "Hitler" and "Stalin" or "Agamemnon" and "Odysseus". That particular stalemate lasted longer than the birds themselves. Thus, they lived their short, chirpy lives without proper names.
Oh yeah, they died, but not because of any neglect on our part. Well, not exactly. My cousin, Peter, came to stay with us at one point, and he was to sleep on the couch in the living room. The problem with that plan was that the living room was also where we kept the budgie cage, and those little critters loved to greet the day on the really early side (much like my children today), chirping their beaks off like shrill little roosters. In order to curtail this, my mother concocted a plan to dupe them into thinking that it was still night time by covering their cage. This way, they'd keep quiet and Peter could get some sleep. Well, suffice it to say, that plan worked a little too well. I don't know whether it was nyctophobia or possibly that their oxygen was cut off by the towel that enshrouded their cage, but when we examined them later that morning, one of the little yellow guys was all puffed up, flat on his back (in other words, dead). We were all a bit shocked by that, though probably not as much as his feathered compatriot.
The second budgie died about a month later -- either out of loneliness or out of shame of the crippling indignity of his circumstances. We were out in Quogue, and I remember walking out of the house one morning to find my mother out in a corner of our backyard with a little shovel. She'd just buried the second bird and was actually kinda weepy about it.
But, anyway -- apart from those budgies -- I've never owned a pet. Never really wanted one either.
#2 I didn't have a driver's license until 2004.
#3 I have three pencil points embedded in my person, all dating back to grade school. There's one in my cheek (the non-intentional result of a scuffle with a friend in the school library), one in my right wrist (forgot how that one got there) and one in my hip (after I stupidly sat down on it, spearing myself in the process). They're all too deep to fish out at this point. At the time, I'd convinced myself that I was going to prematurely expire from "lead poisoning," until I remembered that pencils were made of graphite.
#4 In 1980, I almost lost my left eye while fly-fishing in Bozeman, Montana. I was visiting my friend, Sean, who'd moved out there with his family from New York (where I'd known him from grade school). In any case, since moving to Montana, he'd developed an interest in fly-fishing. Despite the fact that I wasn't really that much of an outdoorsman (shocker!), I played along, being the City Mouse to my friend's newly-realized Country Mouse persona. Sean, the rest of his family and myself set out for some picturesque creek, flanked by beautifully imposing mountains and lush, rolling hills. They outfitted me with a pair of leaky "weighters". I couldn't have felt more ridiculous, but again -- I was playing along. I was given an impromptu tutorial about how to fly-fish. It wasn't nearly as simple as just dropping your line in the water and waiting for some gullible fish to snap at your bait. No, there was a whole science to fly-fishing. You were supposed to whip your line around (with your prize-winning, hand-tied, hook-concealing "fly" at the end of the line) like an actual insect to attract the fish. Fair enough, I got it. This was several years before "A River Runs Through It," but I'd figured it out. They left me in the reeds with my rod and reel and fly and leaky weighters. I was, of course, instantly miserable, but still game to give it a go. Wading out into the water a little ways, I raised my rod-wielding arm and prepared to do my first cast. After a quick flick of my wrist, my line suddenly started to whip around me (as opposed to fluttering majestically out over the water). Time stood still. I remember thinking in those precious nanoseconds that the sharp little hook currently spiraling around me was looking for a place to land. It swiftly found it, plunging into my face about a quarter of an inch away from my left eye.
I came striding out of the reeds laughing. I wasn't laughing out of bravado, mind you, I was simply laughing because I'd immediately realized where the hook could have gone. I was guffawing out of sheer gratitude. I've never been an especially religious individual, but if I was, I'd probably suggest that there was a bit of divine intervention there. In any case, I walked up to Sean's dad (a doctor, conveniently enough). "I caught something," I beamed, showing off my wound, "can we go home now?" We immediately piled in the car, and Sean's dad sped us to a local medical facility -- lying to the staff that I was his son (despite the fact that I looked nothing like the rest of the family). Utilizing a worryingly frugal amount of anesthetic, the handsomely-tied hook was gradually extricated from my face, and we all repaired to a Pizza Hut where Sean's folks plied me with pitchers of coke and all the slices I could scarf down in order for them to remain in my good, forgiving, non-parent-telling graces.
Not that it's necessarily the result of the experience detailed above, but I don't believe I've touched a fishing rod since. Incidentally, this almost-gruesome episode has nothing to do with why my left eye looks a bit, well, wonky. My left eye looks that way because....
#5 I was basically born without a left eyelid. Gross, right? Well, because of some unfortunate developmental anomalies at the time of my birth, my eyelid was a bit messed up, I have a wicked-deviated septum and my hairline's a little interesting. I underwent plastic surgery on the eyelid as an infant and again as ten year old, and they did as much as they could with it at the time. As a result, my vision in that eye isn't quite up to par, and I'm largely reliant on my right eye. I've had the opportunity since to have the eyelid further corrected, but I figure that since I've already lived this long with it without any serious fallout, I might as well leave it as is. It was a bit of a pain when I was a kid (as children have precious little qualms about asking entirely impolite questions and/or making indelicate observations regarding the physiognomy of their peers), but it wasn't anything I couldn't deal with. I chalk it up to being character-building and leave it at that. There are people out there with sincere problems, and I'm lucky enough not to count myself among them.
Okay, that's five. At this stage of the proceedings, I'm supposed to tag five more people to perpetuate the game. Here goes, then...
Hot Johnny Flowers (sharp of wit and potty of mouth).
Benjamin Wagner (fast-talking executive by day, heartfelt songsmith by night)
Jonathan (Brewer, Patriot, Epicurean)
Mrs. Tanya (she can and will kick your ass, if necessary)
Pat Stack (lingo-slingin' dropper of mad science, yo)
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