Eight crazy facts

Venomous Kate has requested a list of eight things she doesn't know about me, which may be difficult given (1) I've posted an incredible amount of personal crap over the past eleven years and (2) she has a damnably long memory. Still, the effort must be made, so:

1. An Army story: at my last post, the S1 officer, a sterling fellow with a tendency toward self-aggrandizement, announced that he was organizing a post bridge tournament, complete with American Contract Bridge League sanction. After too many drinks at the NCO club one night, I said something to the effect that I could beat him with an unrepentant spades player as a partner. I was duly invited to put up or shut up; my partner (that sort of spades player) and I took third place out of eight, which was not impressive, but the Colonel's team finished fifth.

2. Only once have I ever been hit in the face with a pie — but it was a doozy.

3. Once I hid an Easter egg too well; it surfaced in summertime, after we started a desperate search to ascertain the source of That Godawful Smell.

4. My first car had AM radio only; I swore I would turn it into a proper rockin' machine, and bought a combination radio/cassette player, which I duly bolted into the dash, looping a metal strap around a convenient bar just this side of the cowl. It was a couple of days before I discovered that said bar was a linkage for the windshield wipers, which would no longer operate with the stereo in place. Three guesses what the weather was like that day. (I eventually found a floor mount.)

5. Items don't come off my want list until I actually get them; one 1963 record I'd wanted for ages finally arrived in my collection in 2002.

6. I missed one spelling word in all of grade school. ("Occurred," from which I omitted one of the Rs.)

7. During my Hacking Old Radios period (roughly 1960-1963), I dropped a pair of scissors onto a live 110-volt line. The fireworks were spectacular, and one old Bakelite case mutated into something vaguely Daliesque.

8. Another Army story: Few things are quite as disturbing as being assigned to an impromptu work detail after you've just washed and pressed all of your fatigues. You can't duck a GI party, though, so I requested latrine duty, and I scrubbed down those showers and troughs in my birthday suit. The corporal said he was going to write me up for being out of uniform, but the lack of repercussions suggests he didn't. Besides, the place sparkled.
   

Just a few pages from my unauthorized autobiography.