Okay, since one of my best buds, Cathy Jo Nelson, tagged me for this meme, I suppose I’ll take my best shot at it.

1) I’ve been engaged six times. Budge was my sixth fiancee’ and wears the third diamond ring I’ve purchased. Hers is hers alone. I didn’t try to recycle with her. That may be why we’ve lasted so long, going on 13 years as of this writing, while six of the seven other couples married the same year we were have already divorced.

2) I can’t swim AT ALL. Whoever said fat people can float well are either full of poop or they don’t know many fat people. I float like a ’59 Cadillac carrying six rhinos and a baby elephant. Since I can’t swim, I don’t particularly like water, the lone exception being rivers (ironic, isn’t it?), so when I have to attend pool parties or lake outings, I wear the loudest colored neon swim trunks imaginable. That way, when I go under for the third time, I’ll be easy to spot from the surface . . . I hope.

3) In my younger and wilder teenage years, I was involved in a couple of high speed chases in Marilyn, my ’69 Super Sport Chevelle complete with a 396 ci big block engine. One time, I thought I’d gotten away scott free only to sneak home and find the trooper in the front yard waiting for me. He was my mom’s second cousin and knew my car as soon as I went by him at, well, at pretty high speeds. He didn’t even bother chasing me; he just went home and told Mama and the two of them waited for me to get home. One look at how Mama looked at me and he didn’t even write me a ticket, even though I asked him to take me to jail. It’d have been better than what Mama had in store.

4) I was the final recipient of the “Silver Flounder” trophy after my freshman wrestling season. This award was given to the worst wrestler on the varsity team and, believe me, I was the worst wrestler on the team. My record was 1-24 and the lone win was by forfeit because my opponent-to-be tripped getting off the team bus and knocked himself out on the pavement. Other than that, my “best” match was getting pinned in 45 seconds. Most of the time, I didn’t make it past 25 seconds.

5) I have a ginormous indented scar on the outside of my left thigh where a piece of wooden jeep bumper went through my car door and into my leg down to the bone. I was on the way to visit my grandparents when I ran a red light in my ’79 Mustang. My thought process was interesting, but much too involved for such a short blog post.

6) I once rolled my own arm up in the electric window of my wife’s car. She was standing outside the driver’s side door talking to me and anyone who knows me knows I talk mostly with my hands. So I had one arm out the window and was rolling the electric window up with the opposite hand until I realized that I’d pinched my upper arm in the rising window. It was bad enough that I had a red welt all the way around my left arm. Budge maintains it is the dumbest thing she has ever seen me do.

7) I am an ice cream addict. I’ve managed to give up my other, multitudinous vices, most of which wouldn’t do to elaborate on in a family oriented blog, but I’ve not quite managed to kick the ice cream monkey off my back. People ask me what my favorite flavor is, but that’s an impossible question. No such thing as “bad” ice cream exists. ANY ice cream is better than NO ice cream 🙂 Budge knows of the other vices I’ve managed to overcome, some with her help, so she indulges my ice cream habit.

So, there’s seven things you probably could have led a wonderful and fulfilling life without knowing. Let’s see, Cathy Jo has already tagged most of the people I know, so I’ll tap three people and, actually, only one of them knows I exist. Picachu I choose Doug Johnson, the Blue Skunk; Scott McCleod, of Dangerously Irrelevant; and Rob Darrow, of California Dreamin‘. Now, I know Doug is spending the week South of the Border like a good Minnesotan should so he’ll probably get this late. Hopefully, the other two will have something set up that alerts them that they are now “it.”