Well, another birthday come and gone. The big 2-5. The last good one. Car insurance drops, and I can now rent a car without getting extorted. These are the meager joys of a man in his mid-twenties. Isn't it amazing how I'm all of the sudden less of an insurance risk than I was a day ago? Anyways, all in all it was a fantastic birthday, especially compared to last year when I was isolated away from all my friends. Friday night I went out with Adam (it was his birthday) and had dinner with a bunch of folks. This afternoon a few of us headed back to Adam's place for a cookout and a little tennis. Then, after helping my friend EW do a little moving, we headed up to Matt and Tiffanie's place for an excellent home-cooked meal, then just sat around and chilled for awhile until the night was upon us. Good friends, good food, good times - that's what a birthday should be about...
I never do this kind of thing, but I figured, what better opportunity would there be to share some lesser-known facts about yours truly? I've included a list below of 25 interesting points about your humble narrator. Most of my closer friends will know a lot of these already, but I guarantee there are a couple things buried in there that will be new to everybody. This is me at my most utterly self-indulgent; don't expect to see me in such rare form again anytime soon.
Dreams and Ambitions
1. First job ambition: Police detective. I think my mom planted some subliminal messages in my brain here, because her father was a detective. I used to love Perry Mason detective shows, and to this day, I still love a good mystery novel, especially any of the Poirot stories from Agatha Christie.
2. Second job ambition: Architect. This one came out of nowhere.
3. First dream college: Duke. Again, who knows where this came from. But I wanted to go to Duke in a bad way. I used to have a picture of Duke taped up in my room. However, this dream faded fast once I determined what I really wanted to do, and realized that Duke wasn't the right place for me. Not that I could have afforded it anyway.
4. Eventual dream college: Carnegie Mellon. I wanted to go to the best, so I set my sights on it. Got accepted, too. Just couldn't afford it. That pissed me off for the longest time. But in hindsight, thank God it didn't work out. I can't imagine having as great of a time as I did at Tech.
5. Secret life dream: Play on Centre Court at Wimbledon as a professional tennis player. Sadly, my ultimate life dream is impossible. But I've harbored this dream since I was a kid. I'm not greedy or anything - I wouldn't want to win the whole tournament - just one game. Pretty realistic, honestly. Is this too much to ask? I would trade everything right now if I could go back and realize this dream.
Weird Facts
6. I didn't get my first driver's license until I was 17. I don't remember why, but I was extremely nervous about driving and just procrastinated for a long time. Didn't get to drive to school until close to graduation. This definitely goes down as the biggest regret of my youth. In hindsight, it affected so many other things. Had I had a license and a car, I would have been able to attend more social events, get involved more, date more girls, and in general have more fun.
7. I've never consumed any alcohol, tobacco or drugs (minor exception in #11 below). Some people think it's because I'm a prude, and once upon a time that was part of it, but not anymore. I grew up learning that alcohol was completely bad, but I don't believe that anymore; in moderation, it can be a good thing. But not for me. There are two reasons for this: first, all of the above destroyed my family by ruining my father's life. He is to blame, but these substances were the catalysts. Second, I have a highly addictive personality (inherited from my father) and I simply cannot trust myself to drink or consume in moderation. Hence, I avoid them like the plague.
8. I have a famous uncle. More like a step-uncle, but whatever. His name is Mickey Rourke, and he's been an actor for almost 30 years. Best known for his roles in "Diner", and some risque flicks from the 80s. Most recently was in "Sin City". My mother grew up with him for most of his life. Unfortunately I don't think most of the family ever hears from him... not that we are very close with my mother's family, anyways. But it's good party trivia nonetheless...
9. My high school was rated as the best in the nation by Newsweek the year after I graduated. Attending Stanton was one of the best decisions I've made; it prepared me for college so well that Georgia Tech was rarely any harder than high school. And I count my blessings that such a good school was public and free: we could never have afforded private education.
10. I was hit by a car as a very young child. Me and my mom were walking across a busy street in Miami Beach. Actually this is a very fuzzy memory; I was either hit, or almost hit, but it's more dramatic to claim the former. I remember my Mom freaking out, and that's about it.
11. I also consumed drugs accidentally when I was a young child. My father had some in the house back in his wilder days, without my mom's knowledge. Apparently I got ahold of it. Crazy stuff. I just learned this myself a couple of months ago.
OCD
Yeah, so I'm mildly OCD about certain things. Or maybe seriously OCD. You be the judge:
12. Bathroom: I am VERY particular about my bathroom. Everything has its right place. And I don't just mean "the toothbrush stays on top of the counter". It has an exact position on the countertop, and it never moves from there. Same goes for the 25 other things on my countertop. This is important because it helps me follow my morning routine, which is so strict it might as well be military. I do things exactly the same every morning. Not just the order in which I do things, but the way I do them. The steps I take to wash in the shower. The specific way I use a towel to dry myself off. The exact order in which I brush my teeth, my hair, shave, etc. It is an exact science. And it has to be, or I'd go crazy - especially because I'm so out of sorts in the morning that, without a routine, I'd be totally lost.
13. Stairs: I have no idea when or where this started, but I count stairs whenever I go up or down them. But I don't just count - somehow I am obsessed with my final count being the number 11. I will skip steps, or slow down, to ensure that I take 11 steps. Small sets of steps are excluded. For very long staircases, I'll count to 11 and start over again in the middle. I've never written about this before: now that I'm doing so, I'm realizing how crazy this must sound to everyone but me.
14. Lists: I am a list-maniac. It is tied to my sense of organization. When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards and comics, and I was obsessed with knowing exactly what I had in inventory, and how much everything was worth. At least once a week, I would update my list, including the price fluctation of the value of each item, and would keep track of how much the whole thing was worth. Nowadays, this weirdness manifests itself in my finances. I keep meticulous accounts of my expenditures, recording every single receipt, and ensuring my accounts match up exactly. It has nothing to do with being tight with money - it just satiates my need to make lists. Plus, I keep voluminous accounts of my movies - I keep an up-to-date list of exactly what I own and what I want to own. I also have a list of every movie I've ever seen, and what rating I gave it.
Trouble
Despite my mild-mannered demeanor, I have a pretty vicious temper. Nowadays it only comes out in competitive venues like sports, but in the past, it's been a problem. Here are a couple cases of trouble I've gotten in:
15. I actually got paddled by the principal in elementary. No joke. Why, you ask? I bit my best friend on the arm. Why, you ask? Well, because he was making monkey noises at me, of course. I'm not joking. Could I make that up?
16. I think the only "C" I ever got on a report card was in Conduct back in like 3rd grade. Back in the good-old-days when you got a grade for behavior. I got in serious trouble for that one...
17. My freshman year of high school, I got four referrals (like demerits) for bad behavior. Some of them were complete bunk (one was for chewing gum on the bus), but one was for fighting, which is bad news at Stanton, even though it was just me and my buddy horsing around. One referral in a year is bad: four is serious trouble. I was seriously worried it would prevent me from getting into college.
18. I was taken to court by a man for throwing rocks at his car. It wasn't really intentional - we were tossing rocks across the street waiting for the bus, and as he drove by, I tried to throw one just as he passed by, but I actually hit his car. He stopped, took down my name and number, and took me to court. I had to do community service and write an essay. Worst part was that it was an old beat-up El Camino anyways. I probably did him a service by chipping off some paint.
History
19. Baseball: Most of you know that I hate baseball. You might not know that I used to be a serious player. Up through middle school, I was a great first basemen, such that I was always on the citywide travelling all-star team. But then, one day, they changed the schedule so that games were played on Wednesday night. That conflicted with church, so we dropped baseball. Slowly, over the course of several years, I stopped watching altogether, and now, I can't stand the sport.
20. Martial Arts: It's pretty common knowledge that I study martial arts. I'm not sure how many people know why I started though. One day at church, when I was 15, me and some friends were on the playground and I decided to pick on this younger kid that was always a punk to everyone. Bad move on my part, because his big, older, redneck brother was there, and when he saw me picking on his brother, he came over and knocked me flat to the ground. My mother was scared for my well-being and decided I needed to learn to defend myself. It was her idea that I start martial arts. I hated the idea. She asked me to take one class, and that if I didn't like it, I didn't ever have to go again. Well, the rest is history...
Firsts
21. Car: 1994 Mercury Tracer ("The Trace"). An icon. RIP.
22. Job: I worked at AccuStaff (now Modis), a temp staffing company. They get thousands of resumes sent to them daily. I was the guy who scanned the resumes into their system and checked that all of the vital information was read properly off the resume. Despite how it sounds, it was a lot of fun, especially for a guy with slight OCD tendencies.
23. Love: Her name was Lindsey, and she went to my church. She was beautiful. All the guys at the church had a crush on her. We dated for a little while, inasmuch as 12-year-olds can date. Nothing more than love letters, meager gifts, and holding hands. But that was big-time back then. I wonder where she is now?
24. Concert: Van's Warped Tour, Jacksonville, 1998. Saw the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Aquabats, and Save Ferris. It was an outdoor concert with several stages, similar to the current Warped Tour, but with a MUCH better lineup than nowadays. Really opened my eyes to music.
25. Fight: Never. Surprised? Hopefully I can keep it that way...
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