I’m not anonymous enough to post anything prurient on here. Not that I have that many salacious things to talk about.
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When I was eight I stopped eating pizza and stopped wearing jeans. I’m not sure why, because I actually liked pizza, and wore jeans quite often. Maybe I was being intentionally counter-culture because everyone else I knew loved pizza and jeans. I did start eating pizza again, but to this day I have never worn jeans.
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I once owned a pet bird named 28. I tried to get him to predict the winners of sporting events. About 50% of the time, he was right.
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I met James Ellroy at a book signing. When he found out I was studying history, he claimed that he wanted to study history too. He told me he was writing a non-fiction book on Warren G. Harding, which I’ve never heard elsewhere. To this day I’m still not sure whether he was being serious about it.
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My childhood home had a bathroom in the basement. One day I sat down on the toilet and right across from me was the largest spider I have ever seen. It had to be a foot across from leg tip to leg tip. My mom bashed its stubby yellow body in with a shoe. I never went to the bathroom there again.
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Around the age of 9 I started getting severe migraine headaches. I’d throw up for hours while my head throbbed in pain. On one occasion I threw up constantly for over 24 hours. I learned to develop an active imagination, because there was little else I could do during migraine attacks.
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tygre and i own a big fluffy cat named Louie and a smaller black cat named India. Louie likes to howl, eat, and vomit (usually in that order).
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I didn’t study computer programming at college because my high-school guidance counselor told me that programming was never going to be a viable field. This was in 1989.
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I work in a field that couldn’t have existed twenty years ago, at least in any recognizable form. The other people who work in my office don’t understand exactly what I do, but often I don’t either.
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I once lost a high-school computer programming competition by about 30 seconds, because I forgot to provide a backup disk. This was also in 1989.
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I graduated from high school at age 15, and have a doctorate from Oxford in a subject I didn’t even take a class in until my sophomore year of college. And I’m not sure how I managed either. I sometimes say things like “When I was smart…”
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My best friend from high-school, the valedictorian of our class, is now a pro wrestling announcer and part-time television actor. This is not a surprise to anybody who knew him back then.
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I played in the first cricket match I ever saw live. I was a fast bowler until I hurt my back; then I tried offspin, more successfully.
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I almost took a job at Fort Hays State College in Fort Hays, Kansas, after I had gotten divorced and was forced to move back to the US and was a wee bit desperate for work.
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My Myers-Briggs type is “Healer”; it is more a curse than a blessing. I keep wanting to help people unnecessarily. I would want to be something else, if I could live with myself.
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Places I have been mistakenly thought to be from, not including England: Canada, Germany, Wales, Scotland, France, Russia, India.
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tygre first “met” me here on the SDMB, but didn’t work up the courage to write to me until we were both on another board.
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Jay Ferguson of Sloan stepped on my foot at a club where they were playing. I’m sure it was an accident. Now if it were Chris Murphy…he would have done it on purpose.
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I think my mom was always sad that I never learned to play the piano. I just don’t have any musical skill.
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If I can, I’d like to retire to Spain, if only for the food. I love Spanish cooking and have at least ten Spanish cookbooks knocking around here.
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I worked as a supermarket cashier for one summer. Now I always try to be nice to cashiers.
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I was obsessed with road maps when I was young. I’d sit for hours tracing a road from state to state on a map. I was also obsessed with road signs. I suppose I was a roadgeek before the Internet made it easier to be one.
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I love card games. But I’m also a very shy person who sometimes has trouble interacting with people. I guess I’m more interested in the mechanics, or maybe even the idea of card games, instead of playing them.
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As I said in #22, I’m a very shy person, and I never had a lot of dates. But somehow I managed to date (or the equivalent of date) women born in Germany, Zambia, Canada, England, Norway, and Saudi Arabia. Most of those were “one-and-done,” though (and not in the prurient sense, either).
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tygre and I sometimes travel hundreds of miles to go to a supermarket. This doesn’t make sense until you understand that this is Jungle Jim’s we’re talking about. OK, it still probably doesn’t make sense.
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I miss living in England, but I can’t imagine living there now. I can’t imagine what life would have been like without tygre, honestly.