I Guess I'm "It"

I (and Vesper if she is game) have had the honor of been tagged by Marie. As she so aptly put it, I now have the honor being tremendously boring to all 3 readers of this blog by providing "Seven random things about myself that you neither know nor care to know". So, without further boring adieu...

1) I have an unnervingly addictive personality. Really, at times it scares me. I often praise the powers of the universe that I was raised to never go near addictive substances or practices. Unless you count Hot Tamales as an addictive substance.

2) My mother's pet name for me is scoombeata. (Pronounced scoom-bee-ah-tah) The first syllable of that phonetic mess rhymes with zoom. In her defense her and her 2 younger siblings have developed a vast and mysterious vocabulary over the years of make believe words. So, I think she just applied this language skill to give pet-names to each of her children. Or our nicknames were derived from the sounds she made while we were crowning during the birth process. I can just she her screaming my nickname primevally with flecks of spit flying from her violet-hued face.

3) All four of my first molars came in without enamel. So, I have four fancy crowns in my mouth. (Too bad it's not my front teeth so I can't put together any oral bling.)

4) I used to hate eating chicken so much that when I was younger I faked that I was allergic to it by making strange sounds in my throat every time we ate it. This worked for a year or so. When my mother finally saw through that and I was forced to stay at the table until I had finished my chicken dinner I would wait until my mother's back was turned and stuff as much chicken as I could into the tracks underneath the table before she turned back around. Eventually I learned to overcome my hatred and completely forgot about the chicken that I had crammed underneath the table. That is, until around 10 years later when my mother was under the table trying to figure out why it wouldn't close back up after being expanded for Thanksgiving and found the petrified pieces of chicken.

5) In the summer between 8th grade and high school I was playing for a traveling, select sort of basketball team that had George Karl's son Koby on the squad. As neat as it was to be on the same team as somebody who is now in the NBA (who at the time was 2 years younger and rarely got into games) the real point of this numbered point is that my team did not qualify for nationals so I quit the team to start playing summer ball with my soon to be high school team. Well, the coach (who was excellent friends with and future agent of George Karl) did not take too kindly to this and got George Karl to "talk" to me about commitment and how I should stay with the team throughout the summer. This turned into an on again, off again feud between George Karl, myself, and the coach over the summer. I was even used an example of how spoiled and shitty, I mean, spoiled and entitled young basketball players are in Karl's book "This Game's the Best: So Why Don't They Quit Screwing With It". (You can even read my father's response to the book. It's the second comment on the page.) Though the disappointing thing is that the story in the book is obviously me, it is 75% false. I've been kicking around whether or not to blog about this story in detail for the last 8 months or so but have decided that it's really quite silly to drag their names through the ineffectual and unimportant mud of my blog so long after the fact, and for no good reason. (Though I do have a snappy title for the blog waiting to be edited on blogger "If This Game's the Best: Why Lie About It.)

6) I've been in the same room as my parents when...well...you know. (In their defense they must have thought I was asleep...though the memory is seared DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEPLY into my consciousness. Not in their defense, it was a hotel room and I was 12 years old. I have NOT considered writing a blog about this "experience")

7) When I was in sixth grade, like most sixth grade boys, I was fascinated by fire. Unlike most sixth grade boys I would carry around in my jacket pocket various flammable liquids. Such as nasty old perfume samples lifted from my father's drawer or different aerosols. I was so bored in class one day that I raised my hand and asked to go to the bathroom. Once inside the bathroom I pulled the plastic garbage can away from the wall, grabbed some paper towels, doused them in musky cologne and put a lighter to them and walked out of the door back to class. When the embers of the garbage can were found on the floor of the bathroom the teachers at school placed the blame immediately upon my troubled class mate Dave. He had a history of such shinanagans (and to be fair, I did too, but I was just clever enough never to get caught) and he had used the restroom earlier that day. Though I had used the same restroom I was never questioned an certainly never volunteered any information. It's been long enough now that I don't feel too guilty about it and actually chuckle a bit at the experience...but that doesn't change the fact that I'm a coward for not speaking up.

Well, there you have it. My tagging has been fulfilled. And since I don't believe in passing along chain blogs I will not tag 7 others so thy have to go through this same exercise like some people we know.