FourBux

I’ve been tagged

So, it seems that I have been tagged by BabyChaos. Not unlike the real game of tag, I guess I’m “it.” I have to play the bad guy though: I am going to blatantly disregard the third rule below, which is to tag eight other bloggers. Which, by default, also eliminates rule four. The reasons for this are two-fold:
One - I am the last person in the English-speaking world to have gotten into blogging. Hence, everyone else has already done this in one form or another. Much like Amway, there’s nobody left to rope in.
Two - This is primarily the reason that I dislike MySpace, so rather than inch toward that line, I’m just going to conscientiously object. Sorry to be the party pooper in the group, but someone has to be, right? And this may change if I wander across eight poor souls in need of click-throughs.

The Rules

1. Post the rules first.
2. If you are tagged you have to tell your faithful blogging public 8 random facts about yourself in a post on your blog. It can be habits, an idea, facts or just um… stuff.
3. At the end of your post, choose eight other bloggers you’d like to know something about and tag them.
4. Leave a comment telling them you’ve tagged them and that they will need to read your post on your blog.

Since I’m disobeying the rules though, these will be quality confessions. Of course after the jump…

The things

1. I once broke into a home. Rather, I aided someone who did. My friend had to go to the bathroom and didn’t want to walk the half a block back to my house. I pulled weeds in the owner’s yard every weekend that summer as punishment. The eight-year-old kid that was strong enough to pull a door off the jamb? His family moved away before he could be punished. He’s probably in prison.
2. My teachers wanted to skip me two grades when I was in elementary school. As much as I wanted to, my family wouldn’t let me, which, in the long run, worked to my advantage. See, I was a little bit of a late bloomer, and was small until college. I also was an antagonistic smart ass. Yes, was. I would have surely been killed if I pulled any of the stunts I did and was any smaller going through school.
3. I was home taught for my Freshman and Sophomore years in high school. And I don’t mean home schooled, either. I taught myself those two years, going through the curriculum, and riding my bike to a centralized location only for testing. After two years I decided that if I was gong to get any kind of scholarship to college I’d better graduate in a class larger than one person. Once I got to high school as an upper classman, I had a weird blend of advanced subjects and stupid freshman core classes. I ended up graduating eighth in my class.
4. While playing golf, I once drove a golf ball a documented 379 yards, beating the second-place finisher by almost 100 yards. We were having a long ball contest and it was measured by the golf course greenskeeper. For those of you keeping score, that’s almost four football fields. I was about five foot four inches tall at the time. Today, older and taller, I can’t even see that far.
5. I once had a family convinced that I had been hit by a car in front of their house. Luckily, I wasn’t hurt because it was a Corvette and the hood was sloped, or so I said. Looking back, I can’t imagine why I thought it was important for them to think that. It wasn’t even their car…
6. In reality, I’m a complete introvert, to the point of being shy in public situations. I’m not all that impressed with this tidbit, so it may change later. Tune in next week!
7. Maybe this can make up for it: my grandfather on my mother’s side was a graphic designer before it was even an actual job title. During the sixties and seventies, he was an ad man at Campbell-Ewald, and worked on the early Chevrolet and GM accounts in Detroit. He looked like Walt Disney, had martini lunches, smoked and drove huge convertibles, and I idolized him. Truth be told, it’s probably why I became a designer, although it’s not as glamourous in today’s world. He died the summer before I was born.
8. The only time in my life that I was genuinely afraid for my life was when my wife and I did the 25-mile South Rim to North Rim hike across the Grand Canyon, and it was dark and close to freezing when we finally crested the other side. Because it was dark, we couldn’t see the trail any further ahead than the few feet our little flashlights would illuminate, which also attracted bugs, which in turn attracted bats. Note to self: wife does not like bats. We could hear (sometimes large) animals above us on one side of the trail and knew that the big drop into the canyon was on the other side. If I were to make a suggestion to someone who was about to make the hike, I’d recommend not stopping at every little waterfall along the way to take pictures. Just buy the postcards in the gift shop and save yourself some misery.
9. In college once, I got tired of my roommate leaving his crap all over the dorm room, so in a fit of passive aggressive-ness, I added the words “sloppy, yet satisfying” to the ends of several of his answers on his Human Sexuality take-home final. Because I’m also a student of handwriting (read: nerd counterfeiter), even after I showed it to him before turning it in, he refused to believe that he hadn’t written it, so they were his answers and must be accurate. Surprisingly, his professor wasn’t amused. Subsequently neither was my roommate.

That concludes the prepared portion of my remarks.

Any questions?