Ten Things About Me Which May or May Not Be Interesting

I was tagged by Charmaine to do this.  I take no responsibility as to whether any of them are "interesting" or not.

1.  I have a pathological fear of needles, as a result of having had the entire series of 14 rabies shots at the age of 3, including those in the stomach.

2.  Although I've only done it a couple of times and those were 40 years ago, I absolutely love flying in a glider; the serenity and quiet (except for air rushing around the cockpit) have to be experienced to be believed.

3.  Aside from a 3-day cruise to the Bahamas with my family many decades ago, my only trip outside the U. S. was to Edmonton, Alberta, in 2005.  I fell in love with the landscape of the prairies which I found totally awe-inspiring -- there's so much sky. Of course, that was late summer, and the weather was beautiful; I can't even begin to imagine what winter there is like.  I do hope to go back eventually.  In the summer.

4.  Back in the  70s, I was a member of a 4-person improvisational comedy group.  We created and performed our own material for a number of years semi-professionally.  The situation was a remarkable one:  the four of us fit together and worked together perfectly.  If one of us got an idea, we could take off and riff on it for hours at a time, each of us contributing pretty much equally.  It was the most wonderfully and profoundly creative experience of my life.  

5 & 6.  I am strongly left-dominant; I'm lefthanded, my left eye is my stronger, my left leg slightly longer than my right.  I also cannot remember peoples' names.  The first truly thorough scientific study of lefthandedness which was performed about 25 years ago found that the single strongest correlated characteristic among lefthanded people is difficulty with remembering names.  That's my excuse; I'm sticking to it.

7.  For 3 1/2 years, my African Gray parrot and I walked every day the weather was decent about 2 to 3 miles along our local Riverwalk.  He became fairly well-known as a result, and appeared in both the local newspaper and on one of the local tv newscasts.  Probably our most interesting experience was once when we ran into the members of a local camera club who were helping a number of mentally challenged individuals learn to take photographs; they asked if they could photograph him, and we spent over half an hour with them taking every imaginable kind of picture of him.  They very obviously enjoyed the experience a great deal; so did the bird, because he's a lil' ego-glutton who loves attention.

8.  My undergraduate collegiate career was rather checkered; I was, at various times, a pre-ministerial student, a physics major, and an English major.  After dawdling about for some time, at my parents' insistence I finally graduated,  with a degree in English but minors in physics and math.  I was only one course short of having another minor in history.  

9.  I was born and raised in the hills of Tennessee.  That officially makes me a hillbilly.  However, since I was fortunate enough to receive an education, I have been formally promoted to the status of a Mountain William.  

10.  I am considering the possibility of greeting my arrival at the age of 65 later this year by going skydiving for the first time.  I'll let you know how that one works out.

The End