Questions Asked and Answered

By way of stretching and working the metaphorical speed bag before going into the day’s writing, I’m going to work some TMI Tuesday into one of these Answer These Random Questions and Talk Your Friends into Doing the Same copy-pastas you find on Facebook. Also, yes, it’s been too long since posts, so here:

How old are you: Dirt. Okay, 57. Over a month since my birthday and I still laugh to think of it. I honestly can’t get over having lived this long.

Surgeries: For 18 years I had all the scars of Christ, with a carpal tunnel release scar on either hand from 1999 and 2000 and one on my right side for the appendectomy in 1984. Then the robot carved up my lower abdomen digging out my cancerous prostate this summer and wrecked the effect. I’m still a little put out by this.

Tattoos: Absolutely not. I didn’t understand people who drew on themselves in elementary school, either, so maybe it’s just me.

Shot a gun: Yes. I regret not getting more into it, but my observation is that, done right, it is an expensive and time-consuming hobby, and I prefer to allocate my resources elsewhere.

Quit a job: Who hasn’t?

Ever been on TV: Yes. Mainly guy-on-the-street stuff, which is funny, because I couldn’t do normal if I tried. I know, because I have tried. Leopards, spots, and so on.

What do you drive: A “solar yellow” 2000 Jeep Wrangler Sport, the last of the Jeeps that look like real Jeeps, not the ugly bastard spawn of a miscegenation between a Hummer and a Jeep. We’ve been together 17 years as of September. It’s a love affair. Like most of my life, it’s difficult to explain to normies.

Hit a deer? Regrettably, yes.

Fell in love: See above. But, sometimes, as with my wife and Jeep, it’s worked out.

Rode in an ambulance: No occasion to, thank God.

Sang karaoke: To the dismay of everyone in earshot, I did. They were at least as drunk as I was and probably deserved it, though.

Ice skated: A couple of times, actually. It was okay, but not something I would go out of my way to do.

Rode a motorcycle: Never drove one, but rode on the back with my hands gripping the seat bar behind me like a proper heterosexual male.

Stayed in hospital: “Surgeries” covered this.

Favorite fruit: Never considered this. They’re all good to me.

Favorite smell: A mix of fresh brewed coffee and bacon over fresh-polished hardwood floors as a fire snaps away at some well-seasoned logs in the fireplace. Or the sandalwood incense old head shops smelled of in the 1970s (there’s some Old Spice body wash my son got a hold of, the scent of which bears an uncannily precise resemblance to this). Or blooming wisteria, or tea roses. So many to choose from. So I won’t.

The view through my bathroom window just before sunrise. At first I was irritated because I had to get up, but then....

Morning or night: There’s a song by The Who — really, just Pete Townshend on a ukulele with a beautifully understated horn line by John Entwistle in the background — called “Blue, Red, and Grey” which speaks for my attitude towards this question. That is to say, “I love every minute of the day.” Whether drinkin’ and writin’ during the Hour of the Wolf at 3 a.m. or watching the sun burnish the clouds of dawn before lighting up the land, eating lunch in the sun at noon, walking in the afternoon, etc., etc., I can’t imagine why I’d pick just one when I can have ‘em all.

The bright morning light glancing off the evidence of one season transitioning into another. Sometimes you get a neat mix like this.

Skipped school: Yes. I actually had to be talked into it.

Last phone call: My son, calling to tell me not to panic, he’s coming home super-late from a job that went into sudden-death overtime in Salida.

Last text from: My wife, to let me know she got the text I sent her informing her of my safe return over 15 miles of snowpacked road from Del Norte.

Watch someone die: Not the precise moment of death, but close enough. I heard my mom go into death-rattle breathing the night before she died. It was loud and weirdly steady, like one of those old, loud aquarium filter pumps.

Coke or Pepsi: Neither. I do a Diet Dr. Pepper if I absolutely must, which is only after I get up from a midday siesta, which I also avoid when I can.

Favorite pie: Cutie. Seriously, I have to pick one? Get outta here.

Favorite pizza: ideally, a supreme, with everything but the bait fish. Gotta have my onions and black olives with my ground sausage and beef and pepperoni, et al. A Hawaiian with the pineapple is okay, but only in the summer. What, pick one? No.

Favorite season: Happy to be here for all four. I made a point of moving to a part of the country where I could enjoy all four, though winter does seem to predominate here.

Hold your finger down and select copy. Or scratch an armpit with it. Preferably your own.

Then go into your own status, paste. Or eat paste. It makes as much sense.

Change with your answers. Or not. It’s a free country.

Have a day!

Setting your keyboard on fire and walking away like you don’t care that the rest of the house is burning down after you’ve Made Your Point is the new “dropping the mic.” Although that was stupid, too.