Seven Things

I was tagged by my friend Jules for the following meme about a week ago. I thought she had some interesting things to share about herself, so I decided to give it a go too. As you'll see below, the rules say to tag seven people, but I'm not big on that so I'll just leave it open to anyone who wants to pick it up and do it.

The Rules of the Tag Game:
1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are my seven things:

1. Growing up I always thought the rock group KISS was the epitome of cool. Loud controversial music, rebels through and through and girls by the score lining up to . . . well you know. Come on, what pre-teen age boy wasn't going to want a piece of that? Well, exactly one week before my thirteenth birthday, my older sister (six years my senior) won tickets to the concert they were playing at in Long Beach, CA. A local radio station, 94.7 KMET, was doing a a promo for the show and she won for fourth row seats! After hours and hours of begging, groveling and pleading my sister began to cave. I continued to try and win her over by offering to do any and all of her chores for the rest of her life. (I was almost there.) It wasn't until I agreed to pay for all the gas as well as for the parking and to buy her a concert tee that she finally gave in and agreed to take me. I'm pretty sure if she hadn't have been dumped by her boyfriend a couple of weeks earlier I never would have stood a chance of getting to go. As it was, she took great pride in rubbing it in his face that her kid brother got to go and he didn't! The concert rocked by the way.


2. On a dare I once ate an entire pot of habanero laden chilly beans in one sitting. There was close to a gallon in the pot when I started and there wasn't a speck of it left when I stopped. Can anybody spell MORON? Just goes to show you, with enough peer pressure and an extremely large amount of alcohol, any grown man can be transformed into a complete idiot. I will spare you the details, but it's safe to assume that the next day my bathroom was under a hazmat lock down!


3. I am deathly afraid of the ocean. Ever since I saw the movie "JAWS" I can't bring myself to even go to the beach. Putting my toes in the sand immediately starts that damn sound track with the eerie music, "Da-Dump... Da-Dump Da-Dump..." Just typing that gives me the hebe-jebe's.


4. Outside of my immediate family, and of course the doctors I've seen throughout my life, there is one thing about my physical appearance I've never shared with anyone else before. For whatever reason, be it freedom from shame or the release from a lifelong burden, I feel compelled to share this with all of you.

I could give you the medical definition for this syndrome, but for simplicity I'll just spell it out in layman's terms. I was born with, for lack of a better phrase, a third nipple. Now if that caused you to chuckle, I suppose I can understand. It's taken me a long time to come to grips with this and I guess taken out of context it would sound pretty funny. Well, if you'll indulge me, you'll see why it's much more than that.

Your natural inclination would be to assume this deformity is on my torso, but in fact it is on my left leg, just above the kneecap. Weird huh? As a result, I've never felt comfortable wearing a pair of short pants in public. I suppose I could, but the whole idea is just too embarrassing for me to even consider. I've tried for years to see if I could have it surgically removed, but for a variety of reasons, it's just not possible. Just once I'd like to be able to sit next to a pool in a pair of shorts and not feel like the whole world would be staring at me.


5. On a lighter note. When I was thirteen or fourteen years old, on the way home from school one afternoon, my friends and I decided to stop at the 7-11 store and play some pinball. This was when you could play a game for a quarter. Anybody old enough to remember those days? I think it was about my third coin that I started on a tear, racking up free games like there was no tomorrow. It seemed like I could do no wrong. Every time a ball would come down I'd send it back up through the targets hitting everything in site.

I can't recall exactly how many games I ended up earning, but it was enough that I completely lost track of time. What I do remember was that a few hours and a couple of Slurpee's later, a very unimpressed man walked through the door. It was my dad, and boy was he pissed! It was well past dinner time and I had not bothered to call and check in. My mother of course, was worried sick. I'm sure she had me pictured dead along the roadside somewhere or kidnapped by some wacko.

So there was dad, looking at me with a scowl that only a father can truly master, and he said, "Do you have any idea what %*$#ing time it is young man?" Now a smart kid would have humbly said, "No sir," but I had a ball in play and I was only a few points away from winning my umpteenth free game, so I kept playing and said something like, "Nah..." Let's just say that was the wrong answer! My dad looked like Grizzly Adams on steroids and came absolutely unglued. Without saying another word, he went to the back of the machine and ripped the power cord right out of the wall! My two friends, who for some reason had stayed for my marathon gaming exhibition, scattered. I think they might still be running to this day. As for me, I began a very, very long term of being grounded.


6. I once saw the the inside of a Mexican jail. On a trip to Tijuana two of the locals got into a scuffle with my three friends (different ones) and I that led to the police coming in and removing us. We were handcuffed and put into their patrol car. Let me tell you, that ten minute ride to the station was probably the longest drive of my life, either before that moment or since. The cops that took us, kept talking to us in Spanish, but none of us could make out what the heck they were saying. It wasn't until we got to the police station that we were able to communicate with one of the officers there. This corrupt SOB told us we were looking at some pretty significant jail time unless of course we wanted to pay a fine and avoid the whole court system. Big surprise, he could only take cash for this little transaction. Two hours later and $500 apiece, we were free to go.


7. I love to tell stories, and some of my favorite ones are fiction. So I must confess that the only fact in any of these things about me is that I did like the group KISS growing up. Outside of that, everything else was completely false. I have two older brothers and no sister. I've eaten some funky things before, but greased lightning isn't one of them. I'm like a fish when it comes to the ocean. Diving, swimming or just hanging out on the shore, I love it all. I was blessed with only two nipples, and they are both right where they're are supposed to be thankyouverymuch. I like pinball, but I was never that good at it. I've been to Tijuana but never in one of their jails.

Now you've got to admit the first six were a lot more interesting than the last one weren't they?

Ciao