Skip to content

5 things you don’t know about me

Michael Golrick tagged me for this meme, which brings me to #1:

1. I’m just insecure and needy enough to have been wondering if I needed to write a friend and say, “hey, tag me.” Talk about feeling like the blogging wallflower.

2. I’m gay… oh, wait, you know that. You might not know that one of my oldest friends is the mother of a guy I dated in high school, a guy who in turn lives or at least lived in the same building as Walter Minkel of sundry LibraryLand venues, who in turn came into an ALA meeting and said “I live in the same building as Harold,” at which point I said “Oh, we dated in high school,” which to my surprise sort of rocked people’s minds (as if teenagers always knew themselves). But anyway…

3. I once qualified for my annual Air Force pistol training just one bullet short of a marksmanship medal. I’m an average shot, but I suspect I got some help from the guy next to me, who was all over the map.

4. As a child, I was addicted to mystery novels–not Nancy Drew, but John Creasey, Agatha Christie, the Toff, etc.–plus thrillers and police procedurals. I read 8-12 of these every week, swapping them out with my dad, who would then take us back to the West Portal branch of San Francisco Public Library to snarf up more books. I caught up with most children’s classics and “important” books in my pre-teen years.

5. I learned to swim at 45. Not only that, after four rounds of adult swimming lessons, I still can’t breathe correctly in the water. I did the honorable thing and turned it into an essay, “Adult Beginner,” which I need to get up my nerve to shop to journals (it’s hard enough to shop around your best work without shopping around your middling work).

I’m tagging Walt Underwood, Janie Hermann, Debi Lewis, Cliff Landis, and “Jane” ( of A Wandering Eyre).

Posted on this day, other years: