Monday, January 16, 2006

A Third of A Hundred Things About Me

I hate these list posts. OK, I hate the idea of them, tho I actually often enjoy the posts. I vowed I would never do one. Here I am breaking that vow. It was going to be 100 items, but I'd just have to start putting in really stupid things hoping someone thought I was "whimsical." Fuck that.

I actually ran across several of these on random blogs I was surfing the other night. It is interesting how a picture of a person arises, and how different that picture might be compared to that same person answering someone else's questions. (We choose what to reveal and how to prioritize, blahblahblah.) Anyway, I don't want to be left behind the advancement of every 25-year-old single woman in the blogosphere (and, be honest, the name "wunelle" made you wonder, no?).

1. I have an irrational hatred for the tinkly sound of trickling liquid. It makes my skin crawl. And the rising-pitch sound of a glass filling up is excruciating. The worst is those radio beer commercials which feature repeated, aggressively-loud sounds of foaming beer filling a glass. I will destroy the radio if I can't quickly turn it off through normal means. Hate it, hate it, HATE it.

2. I have never been drunk. I have never taken any recreational drugs. Of any kind. I may have drunk a (one) complete beer once in junior high or high school. Since then, nothing. A sip of my wife's margarita maybe once a year.

3. I have not even the tiniest regret about this. On the contrary.

4. I am, unfortunately for my wife, I know, unable to connect sex with any kind of adventure or daring. Adventurous sex is a non-sequitur to me.

5. I have a completely pathological interface with food. This will be my undoing. I am a carb addict in the extreme. Veggies are like horrible, mutated, misshapen living things. Icky.

6. My love of Diet Coke is surely described somewhere in the DSM as pathological.

7. I have what is quite honestly perhaps the most stupefyingly amazing job ever. The space shuttle astronauts have me beat, but that's it.

8. I am temperamentally and philosophically quite different from the overwhelming majority of my coworkers. I was warned about this by my vocational counselor.

9. I have had sex with only four women.

10. I cannot recall even the mildest or most innocent same sex encounter or attraction, though I am not strongly squeamish about the idea of it. (OK, I remember a tingly feeling watching Steve Perry sing once in a video. Does that count?)

11. I've been married for nearly 20 years.

12. But not to the same woman.

13. The combination of my being a spendthrift and a machinery geek has led to my owning 25 cars and a dozen motorcycles. I have never gone more than six months after getting a new vehicle before I begin shopping for its replacement. This all profoundly chagrins my wife.

14. This stream of new vehicles seems the greatest possible use of money to me, no matter what every smart money manual says.

15. I always sit down to pee, and have done for as long as I can remember. Unless there's a urinal. Then I'm happy to stand. (See #1 perhaps? I've thought about it, but I don't think that's it.)

16. I'm a bad aim, so my wife should be happy about this (and she is)! I will go on record as saying that I think the penis generally, not just mine specifically, is a lousy aiming device--look at public bathrooms.

17. I have been unhappy with my general shape for as long as I've been aware of it. When I say I've come to accept it, I really mean that I've come to accept being disappointed.

18. I dislike money. I love the things that money gets for me--experiences and toys & gadgets and so on--but money for money's sake seems unclean to me. So many of my coworkers have management of their money as a part-time job. I want nothing to do with this (except to spend it).

19. But for my wife I would have no idea what was in my checkbook and I would be only dimly aware of my credit card balances. My wife finds my approach unacceptable, and my life is better for her care in this matter.

20. I have never checked over my pay stub, in any job no matter how much or how little I was earning. I just don't care. I was conscious of striving to get a job flying with a major airline expressly so that I would earn enough money that I would never have to think about it again.

21. This has not proven itself strictly accurate.

22. I love my wife above all things.

23. I have been quite accomplished as a drummer, even making my living at it for a few years. It was to be my vocation thru high school and into my first year or two of college.

24. However, I have been a fervent student of classical music for 20+ years now--it is my prime enthusiasm in life--and this long ago eclipsed my passion for music with drumming. I still play a bit, but not much.

25. I have no formal training in music, but I have a very good ear and an appreciation of detail that this music requires.

26. I cannot abide opera.

27. I actually listen to a lot of choral and vocal music, but I generally dislike the human voice in music. Maybe it's more accurate to say that I'm particular in the extreme about what I like in a singing voice, and those I can embrace are exceedingly small in number.

28. People I most admire / love / stand in awe of (after # 22, of course):
J.S. Bach
Abraham Lincoln
Richard Dawkins
Stephen Pinker
Virginia Woolf
Maurice Ravel


29. I've had two vasectomies and no reversals. Having my testicles shaved by a 50-year-old woman was NOT sexy. But it was better than the 45-year-old man the first time.

30. I was born a twin. My brother, Bobby, died of SIDS at four months.

31. He and I had different birthdays. I was born before midnight on June 28th, and he was born a while after midnight on June 29th.

32. My father died at age 35, when I was 6. He was unexpectedly felled by a heart attack, leaving my mother with three young children. The autopsy revealed no obvious predisposition; but it seems it was a blood clot killed him, probably a result of being a longtime smoker.

33. It took me nine years to get my four year degree.

34. I was a mediocre student, tending not to buy the books I should have and to not do the studying that was needed. I had no motivation to do well because I had no interest in what I was studying, and no desire for what any degree would get me. My motivation was chiefly that I did not want the stigma of going thru life without a degree. (Looking back, this is odd; this does not now seem something that would be likely to motivate me.)

35. I have worked as a groundskeeper, a bartender (in spite of #2), a motorcycle salesman, a taxi driver, a drummer, a school bus driver, a radio voice talent, a fast food joint assistant manager, a city bus driver, a flight instructor, a sales clerk, a computer temp and an airline pilot.

finis

(Maybe there'll be a sequel!)

13 comments:

Lucy said...

My father was a twin with a separate birthday. The doctor thought it sad so changed his birthdate to be like his twin's. You're the only other person I've heard of with that situation.

wstachour said...

Another long post for another time, but 7 or 8 years ago I returned to my old hometown after 25 years away and went to the graveyard to look at my dad's and brother's headstones. I have a photo somewhere, and I don't now remember if the tombstone reflects our different birthdays or not. I'll have to check. (It might just be months without days.)

Lucy said...

We celebrate my father's "real" birthday and his "legal" birthday. I never thought about what date I'd use in his obituary, etc. I did ask for his preferred euphemism, though. He plans to "pass away". I plan to use like 50 of my favorite euphemisms from my oboituary blog in my own, including "God plucked one of His most precious flowers." I may even write a few new ones.

Kate said...

I don't even have 100 things to say about myself and I'd be hard pressed to write 35. How about this?

35. I'm redundant.
36. See 35.
37. See 36.
38. See 37.

;-)

wstachour said...

Kate--too clever! (I could have got one more out of that: 36. I ain't clever!) I originally posted months ago about how I could never find a hundred things to say. Guess I was right.

Esbee--Do you want an epitaph on your tombstone? And if so, what would it say?

Lucy said...

I don't know. Hmmm.

If I died tomorrow, I'd be interred with my Mom, and the church in which she is interred doesn't allow but dates and names.

Mandy said...

Interesting list! I think that, by the way, not drinking makes you an *excellent* choice for a bartender - lessens the temptation to take your work home with you.

I don't think that I'd be able to come up with a list of 100 things, either. It's not that there aren't 100 things I could say about myself, I suppose, it's just that I could never remember them all at the same time. And it would take way too long.

Heather B. said...

Your list of 35 totally kicks my list of 100's ass.

That is a "wow" kind of list, now I need to redo mine, because it sucks. And everyone else is more interesting than mine.

Also, you may have mentioned this and due to the fact that I can't pay attention to anything ever, do you work for a commercial airline or do you fly privately?

wstachour said...

Hi, Heather. Don't let Lizzie read that comment--you've seen how she berates Chairborne Stranger for not reading her posts!

I do fly for an airline, a cargo airline, and have done this as a profession for a decade or so. That's the stupefyingly amazing job I refer to. If you comb thru the archives you'll fine regular and tedious posts about airline life!

And BTW, no list will make me half as cool as you ;-) ESPECIALLY with the new template!

Joshua said...

When I read the part about who you admire most, I automatically assumed "#22" meant Emmitt Smith, then I reread it and figured out what it really meant.

Shows a bit about me, I think

mango said...

Please do a sequel... I have just noticed these and they are awesome! Really intimate and interesting... I feel like I've been given a glimpse into your mind.

Born a twin, but not now a twin... wow. How (if at all) do you think that has influenced you in your life?

Thanks for sharing :)

wstachour said...

I've seen stuff about twins' strange melding of the minds, and of things akin to the tingling phantom limb of amputees. Honestly, I'm not aware of anything. I think he died so young that there wasn't enough time for him to have any influence over how my life unfolded. And as for something beyond this, I'm just not aware of anything.

dbackdad said...

Don't be shocked by me commenting on an ancient post. I had just never ventured to your not yet disavowed area. Fascinating stuff!