Kirkepiscatoid

Ok, hat tip to Ruth at Ruth's Visions and Revisions for this one. For her 100th post, she listed 100 things about herself. Well, I'm way past 100 posts, so I guess I'll do 100 things about me in honor of HER 100th post!!!!!

1. As illustrated by my "election poster" above for the 1968 presidential election, I was taught at an early age by my grandmother to dislike Richard Nixon. My grandmother used to tell me, "That SOB Richard Nixon is so crooked, when he dies, they'll have to screw him into the ground."

2. I am left handed.

3. I have longer ring fingers than index fingers. This means I may have gotten more testosterone in utero.

4. I have never voted for a Republican for President, or for the governor of Missouri, or for U.S. Senator.

5. I have been baptized three times, confirmed twice, and in a moment of childhood desperation, even did the "wordless book" in the secrecy of the toolshed. Someone was handing out tracts at the state fair and they scared me about Hell. I was only 8 or 9 at the time. I stopped being afraid of Hell about age 13. I stopped believing there was a Hell outside of my own ears at about age 14.

6. I am an only child (although many people guess that I had several older brothers.) I made sure I would be an only child by giving my stepdad the mumps. He got mumps orchitis and became sterile.

7. I have lived along a 90 mile stretch of U.S. Hwy. 63 for 46.5 of my 48 years.

8. When I die, I will be the 5th and last generation to be buried in the family plot in Macon, MO.

9. As a small child, I had an imaginary friend named Piedmont Peemine.

10. My childhood dog was a little fat rat terrier named Peetee. (ok, it's becoming obvious I liked the letter P as a child, isn't it?)

11. I had a 3.79 GPA in college....just missed Summa Cum Laude.

12. I taught myself to read at age 3 1/2. No one believed it until my grandmother goaded me into reading the sports page of the Macon Chronicle-Herald.

13. I got my first gray hair at age 25. I have never once had the desire to color my hair, although I am now more salt than pepper.

14. In 1978, I was named an "Outstanding High School Writer in America" by the National Council of Teachers of English. Of all the Missouri winners, I was from the smallest town. Almost everyone else was from Hickman or Rock Bridge in Columbia.

15. I was a John J. Pershing Scholar at Truman State University here in Kirksville.

16. I once won $100 on a lottery ticket on a day I was going to buy a $99 microwave. The microwave lasted almost 15 years. I got my $1 worth!

17. I never owned a dishwasher until I was 40 years old.

18. I never owned a stick of furniture that was not either a hand-me-down from relatives, or from a dead old lady's estate sale, until I was 36. I bought a recliner. I still have the same recliner. Ok, so I don't buy a lot of furniture.

19. All the women in my family historically avoid buying women's jeans. There is a mindset that they are built flimsier than men's jeans, and therefore are not as good a bargain. I don't think any female relative in my family has bought a pair of women's jeans in 30 years. Also, big calves run in my family and most women's jeans are too small in the thighs/calves. Levi's 569's and 550's are popular in my family. The men and women steal each other's jeans a lot.

20. I am a character in three novels, all published in the 1990's. It's fun to have a friend who is a novelist!

21. My grandmother says that the first time they took me to the shoe store, around age two, to buy my first pair of shoes other than those ugly-assed white high top baby shoes, I waddled over, grabbed a pair of cowboy boots, and said "WANT DAT!" I now own 17 pairs, last time I counted.

22. Another telling two year old story...my grandmother says when I fell and cried, and someone would come over to pick me up, I would push them away and yell, "NOOOOOOOOO!" One could argue I'm still that way.

23. I served on a university board of trustees for six years. That was very interesting!

24. Other than when I lived in a college dorm, I don't think I've ever been without a dog. Even when I did live in the dorm, my dog was at home.

25. I saw a tornado knock down the radio tower at the Mo. Highway Patrol headquarters in Macon--I think it was like 1968 or 1969. Rather than becoming afraid of tornadoes, I have been fascinated by their power ever since.

26. The biggest fish I have ever caught is a 43 lb. catfish.

27. I bat left handed but golf right handed. I can shoot a pistol with roughly equal skill with either hand. I am left eye dominant but my golf pro says I use my right eye as dominant when I do things right handed.

28. I once put 360,000 miles on a single pickup truck. Yeah, it was two engines and 3 transmissions later, but I still sold it for $350 when I got rid of it.

29. I can put a pencil in each hand and write forward with the right hand and backwards with the left hand. I can also write upside down this way too.

30. I can still put my foot behind my head at age 48. You would think this would have benefit for potential sexual encounters but it doesn't.

31. I have fixed things with epoxy and duct tape that should never have been fixed with either...things like c-pap face masks and microscopes.

32. My grandmother believed in worming children who play in the pasture barefoot, but she never used "people wormer". She used horse paste wormer from Orscheln's. I can remember her making a proportion to figure out how much to give 50 lb. me compared to an 800 lb. horse. She would smear it on two Ritz crackers and tell me to eat it. It tasted like apple flavored school glue.

33. If I could be given 5 minutes doing something that no longer exists, I would spend my 5 minutes sniffing freshly mimeographed school papers.

34. When I got my front tooth crowned, I told my dentist to "beat it up so it looks real." He cut a tiny chip in the bottom edge and angled it down with the drill, like he'd fix a real chipped tooth and I thought it was perfect. He thought I was crazy. I told him, "My teeth are perfectly imperfect, why ruin a good thing?"

35. There were so many divorces and re-marriages in my family that at one time, I had five sets of grandparents. Now I only have one left.

36. I am pretty adventurous about food, especially hot and spicy food. I like sushi and refer to it as "bait."

37. My favorite comfort food is pickled eggs. My dad used to tend bar when he was laid off in the winter from bricklaying, and I really liked "bar food."

38. I cannot stand mustard and mayonnaise. I can smell and taste them down to the parts per billion.

39. I have continually owned Ford F-series pickup trucks for 27 years. I am on Truck #4. The first one was the one that lasted 360,000 miles.

40. The architect of the church I presently attend was the architect of the church I attended in childhood, but they were diferent denominations.

41. I am a distant relative of the first U.S. Senator from Missouri, David Barton.

42. I graduated 4th in a high school class of 113. My high school counselor, however, said I "did not have the temperament for college" and encouraged me to either go into the military or to technical school. I ignored her advice.

43. I can send and receive Morse code at 20 words per minute. When I was younger, I was a ham radio operator. I still have a license but have not been on the air in years. The internet superceded it!

44. At age 9 I had a poem published in "Wee Wisdom Magazine".

45. My secret skill is writing funny lyrics for songs, and writing "Baxter Black-style cowboy poetry" for birthday parties and 25th/50th wedding anniversaries.

46. I am an excellent cook, but people tend to think since I live alone I must be incapable of cooking. When I bring something to a church carry-in, people act shocked that I made it myself. This pisses me off.

47. Four times in my life, friends and relatives have sent me into a house first where someone has died and didn't show up among the living for several days. I guess, even though my world revolves around little jars/bags/buckets of formalin containing surgical specimens and biopsies, they think b/c I had to do autopsies as part of my training, that it makes me immune to the smell of rotting human flesh.

48. The secret related to #47--dead bodies (simply as their state of being dead) sort of annoy me, in the sense that you always "have to do something with them." If you encounter one, you have to stop what you're doing and call the law. If you work in a hospital, moving them is not easy--they are literally "dead weight" and you have to do things like use the "gurney with the secret hidden compartment" so it looks like you are pushing an empty gurney down the hall instead of a dead person. (You'll probably never look at anyone pushing an empty gurney in a hospital quite the same ever again, now!)

In my days of working around a busier hospital morgue, arranging funeral home pickups were not always easy. Sometimes you could not even hardly get rid of them, if they were homeless. It could take weeks to get the county to assume disposition of them.

I have to be very careful about this annoyance in front of other people. They can mistakenly see it as a callousness for human life. Quite the opposite. In my mind, Elvis has left the building--the humanity is gone--and I would be sort of stuck with the disposition of a large piece of meat. I don't find it incongruous at all to grieve the loss of a human being while at the same time being annoyed about the disposition of the carcass in which it used to be housed. But other people can't always understand that so I have to be careful.

49. I seriously don't know which I like better, sunrises or sunsets.

50. When I am truly sad, angry, or distressed, I can't stand for people to rush in and comfort me. I have to sit with my own pain alone for some unspecified period of time before I'll let anyone in.

51. Although I am certainly capable of being intensely happy, I don't like to be that way for long. My German-American background has taught me to never "tempt the fates" and in that weird, Teutonic way, being happy invites the spirits of calamity to your doorstep.

52. Puppy smell is one of the finest smells I know.

53. Horse sweat smell is almost as good.

54. My "normal" mood is "minimally disgruntled but pleasantly flip and funny at the same time."

55. I have secretly desired most of my adult life to learn to play a musical instrument, but have never acted on that desire b/c 1) I'm afraid I can't devote the time to it; 2) I can't decide on just one instrument and fear I could not be "serious" about just one; and 3) I don't think I could stand to play in front of others.

56. However, in light of #55, I did sort of teach myself to play the harmonica by ear...but I won't play in front of others with very rare exceptions.

57. There are lots of days I'd rather spend with dogs than with people.

58. I hold most people at arms length except for a very very few--and those very very few are sometimes amazed at the depth of my loyalty to them.

59. I intensely dislike the word "love" as it is used in the English language because it is so overused and trite. How can a word based on infinite combinations of "eros", "philos" and "agape" possibly be used to describe a flavor of ice cream?

60. I have never understood the purpose of makeup, moisturizer, painted nails, hair coloring products, hair restoration products, clothing that is uncomfortable for the sake of "attractiveness" or cosmetic surgery. Why would anyone want to be anything other than who they are? Why would people want others to be attracted to who you think you'd like to be other than who you are? I have heard people explain their reasons for this in many ways, but ultimately, I am just incapable of "getting it." It simply bewilders me b/c it doesn't register on my radar. Period.

61. I have always been grateful that after I first visited Trinity, no one followed up my visit with one of those dorky "church hospitality/check out your spirituality" visits. If they had, I would have run like hell, screaming, in the opposite direction. This is why discussion about "following up on our visitors" at the Bishop's Committee meeting makes my stomach churn.

62. My favorite way to eat oatmeal is with garlic, salt, and hot sauce.

63. I secretly like to eat Gerber Meat Sticks now and then. I pretend I'm buying them for the dogs. Vienna sausages don't taste the same.

64. I accidentally ate three dog cookies once before someone told me they were dog cookies. I thought they were some kind of granola cookie.

65. I accidentally drank potpourri on my aunt's stove once. I thought it was hot tea until a pinecone popped up to the top of my mug. Even then, I had not made the total connection. I looked at her and said, "Hey, what kind of tea is this? It has pinecones and shit in it!"

66. I like sour cream on my french fries. Or vinegar. I prefer either to ketchup.

67. I have always owned male dogs.

68. I really like sauerkraut. Not just with polish sausages, corned beef, etc. but I make this really kick ass dish made of italian sausage, kraut, beef broth, golden raisins, garlic, and McCormack's Caribbean Jerk seasoning. People think it sounds really weird till they eat it!

69. I have been a St. Louis Cardinals baseball fan as long as I can remember being aware of baseball. Again, you have my grandmother to thank for that. We buried her in the jacket and hat she wore when she would go to St. Louis to the ballgames. When the Cards were in the 2006 World Series, I took red and white flowers to my grandmother's grave every day (my buddy Dave and I were joking we were asking for intercession from St. Frances of Macon.)

70. My first computer was a Commodore 64.

71. I remember when my dad's boss had the first microwave I ever saw. It was 1972. His kids and I entertained ourselves by exploding hot dogs in it.

72. 1972 was also the first year we had air conditioning. Missouri summers were just as sweltering back then as they are now, with air conditioning.

73. Remembering "life without A/C" became very important in the summer of 1998. I remodeled my house and ended up being without A/C all summer. My co-workers thought I was psychotic for "roughing it out." I think there were only 4 days I was miserable. The rest of the time, I knew enough tricks to make it "tolerable."

74. My first bicycle was a Western Auto Western Flyer.

75. For the first ten years of my life, I had a different last name. Like Bill Clinton, I saved my money (deposit bottles, mostly) and paid for my own name change so I would be the same as my mom and my stepdad.

76. I never saw much of the relatives with my original last name throughout my childhood. When I was 17, I went looking for them. My favorite cousin, J., is from that side of the family. He had just been born when I discovered that side of the family. I'm glad I went looking for them all--I can't imagine what my life would be like without J.

77. I've worn glasses since I was 17. People think I'm weird that I don't want to either have Lasik surgery or wear contacts. Yes, I handle people pieces in formalin all day long, but I think it's gross to touch your eyeballs!

78. One of the pluses about having once been a schoolteacher is you know the names of esoteric supplies....like that stuff they sprinkle on puke at school (VoBan) and the stuff you spray to make graffiti go away (VandalAway and GoofOff are the two I remember....)

79. I once impressed the hell out of my vicar by making graffiti on the sidewalk (painted hand prints) disappear with GoofOff. He thinks I know how to fix everything and often asks me to fix very obscure items. I like having one person in my life who thinks I can fix everything, even if it isn't true.

80. The book of Isaiah is my favorite book in the Bible.

81. Mark is my favorite Gospel.

82. I think the person in the Bible who probably is most like me is Simon Peter. He and I kind of rush headalong into things but we're good hearted. I can imagine myself cutting off someone's ear and saying something like "oh, shit" afterwards.

83. I have always identifed more with Harry Truman than any other president b/c we both have the speech of "real" rural north Missourians. I have a copy of his memorial service at the National Cathedral and his burial in Independence (Harry was Baptist but Bess was Episcopalian, so he got a BCP 1928 funeral). When I die, I want the same Bible readings read, and the prayer called "A Prayer for Missouri" that was used at his National Cathedral service read.

84. My uncle died at age 11 in a hunting accident, when I was eight months old. As a child, I used to imagine what my life would have been like having an uncle that was more like an older brother.

85. There probably isn't a week go by that I don't have a short moment of missing my grandparents who lived across the road from me--even though my grandpa died in 1990 and my granny died in 2002.

86. I was the physician who officially pronounced my grandmother dead and signed my grandmother's death certificate as the physician certifying her death. She died at 2 a.m. on a cold February morning and I could not see the sense of calling in her doc to pronounce her dead. She was a fairly private person and I think she would kind have liked it that way.

87. My family bought my first dog (a rat terrier named Peetee) before I was born, with the intent that he would be "my dog."

88. I have had two dreams in my life where I really felt God appeared, and both times he looked like George Burns.

89. I once saw a "burning bush" in which the bush was not consumed (sort of)...there is a phenomena where the sunrise further east is reflected in the clouds and sort of "projected" in the sky. That phenomenon was right behind a shrubby tree on the horizon. It made the tree look like it was on fire and not being burned. I stood and looked at it for several minutes, just because it was so cool. What a neat natural phenomenon!

90. I really dig eclipses, both solar and lunar. I like to scare little children in making them think I made the moon disappear or the sun disappear. I made my favorite cousin J. cry by doing that many years ago.

91. I also used to tell J. he was adopted and that any hefty woman wearing a halter top that happened by was his mother. He never believed me after a while, imagine that!

92. Now J. is the person who has the right to pull the plug on me in my living will...he now has the ultimate ability to get even!

93. As a child, if you had given me a blank sheet of paper and asked me to draw anything, I would either have drawn a fireworks stand or a farm with fences and long-eared equines behind the fences.

94. I used to think my grandfather had the ability to fix everything. That's probably why I like that role now and then.

95. I have never been too worked up about not having heirs. I have a feeling that the DNA in my family is really screwed up and it's not going to hurt for some of it to dead-end.

96. When I lived in Columbia, I used to take vacations in Kirksville. People found that really really strange. I still usually "stay home" on vacation weeks and maybe take a "real vacation trip" once a year.

97. Christmas is my least favorite holiday; 4th of July and Halloween are my favorites.

98. I get tired of my birthday (March 27th) often falling on Holy Week. It sucks to have your birthday on Good Friday.

99. I would never change a single thing about me or avoid a single thing that has happened in my life if I could go back in time. I just would not choose to live some things twice!

...and finally....

100. When I die, I believe I will see all my dogs first before I see other people.

But enough about me, I hope some of my blogfriends will follow on Ruth's lead like I did!