25 Things

Inspired by Jacob's post over at the Kaylor blog. More of a personal inventory than anything else:

1. I play bass, drums, and guitar, in order of ability. I am mainly self-taught, with the exception of the guitar, in which a friend of mine showed me how to play basic chords. I've never had a formal lesson on any of those instruments.

2. I love to watch things spin. Especially a washing machine.

3. One of the happiest things that happened to me recently was buying a record player and being able to listen to all my old records again. And not only listen but watch THEM spin as well!

4. I've lived in Texas my whole life but didn't buy my first pickup until a few months ago. To put this in the proper perspective, my parents and my in-laws, who are from Chicago and Michigan respectively, owned pick-ups before I did.

5. I love working with children. Nothing puts a smile on my face like the laughter of children, even if (and sometimes especially if) they're laughing at me!

6. I have been blessed that I have not lost a close family member in the entire time I've been alive. Both of my parents are alive, my sister's still alive, I still have my wife and both children, and her parents are still alive.

7. And yet I still grieve the loss of one who I'm related to but never met: my brother-in-law, Cyndy's brother, who died in an auto accident years before Cyndy and I ever met.

8. I own more CDs and LPs than I'll ever have time to listen to, and yet my collection is small compared to some others I've seen.

9. I've never done drugs, smoked pot, or anything like that, but I accidentally got high at a Foreigner concert from the second-hand smoke, when I was 15. That scared me from ever doing drugs.

10. For reasons I'm not proud of, I can remember every dumb thing I ever did while drunk. I wish I could be like others and NOT remember.

11. I led the Little League in batting average when I was in 6th grade. That was also the only team I ever played on that made it to a playoff game. We lost.

12. I've never had a broken bone. The closest I came was when I took a bad hop off the tip of my middle finger in a softball game that actually flattened the tip of my fingerbone. The doctor said that, because of that, it was technically broken.

13. I've been stitched together more than Frankenstein. Thank God society wasn't as paranoid back in the early 70's as it is today, otherwise I'd have been taken from my parents' home before I was five, because by then I'd sliced various parts of my body through my own clumsiness.

14. I got hit in the head with a baseball bat when I was 8. The doctors had to strap me in a papoose to keep me still while they put the stitches in my forehead, right between my eyes. This would be the last time I got stitches for anything. (However, that nightmare would replay itself almost 20 years later when Nathan smacked his forehead on the edge of the fireplace when he was 2, and the doctors had to strap him down as well. Thankfully, Nathan remembers none of this. Lucky dawg!)

15. I go to church with my third grade homeroom teacher. She still loves me despite all the grief I gave her!

16. I am a Christian. One of these days, I hope to act like one as well. The closest I've ever come is being a hopeful fatalist.

17. I hate pickles. People are actually surprised by this.

18. I've only been married once, and I have every reason to believe this will be the only one. (like anyone else would want to put up with this destructive concoction of OCD, depression, arrogance, and various other neuroses and eccentricities)

19. I don't have a very high opinion of myself. This is just in case you didn't pick this up from earlier items.

20. I also don't have a very high opinion of the human race. Individual people I love; I'm pretty cynical towards everyone else.

21. And yet, for reasons known only to God, my first instinct with everyone is to want to treat them with kindness and trust. I've been burned by that many a time, but hey, I like having friends and more often than not will take the chance with anyone new and let them hurt me.

22. Of the four voices in a choir (soprano, alto, tenor, bass), the only one I can't sing is soprano. If the alto part is within my range and more interesting than the tenor part, I'll sing with the altos. I get this from my mom, who would sing along with the "men only" verses in church when I was a kid.

23. I love old black-and-white movies, especially comedies. Marx Brothers, WC Fields, the Hope/Crosby "Road" pictures. And old-time radio shows, especially Jack Benny.

24. I love it when someone wants to talk about jazz from the 50's and 60's. It rarely happens, but when it does I become like a little kid.

25. I try to live my life according to what Jesus said: "Unless you become like a child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." (Matthew 18:3) This explains why I prefer to associate with children than with grown-ups. At parties, if there are kids there, that's where you'll find me. Grown-ups were a drag when I was a kid; I want to be the grown-up who isn't a drag!

Thanks for indulging me.

In Him and around the corner (and all about me),

Al