FriendBurst Blog

A LIST OF LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ABOUT ME…

I am the son of a prizefighter; however, he had stopped fighting professionally a few years before I was born.

The hospital I was born in doesn’t exist anymore.

The street I lived on for the first two years of my life doesn’t exist anymore.

When I was eight years old, I got stuck in the mud up to my hips, and the only way I could get out was to leave my boots buried in the mud.  My dad had to go back with me and dig them out, because the boots were brand new. My mother was livid.

I collect paper money from all over the world.

I have NEVER liked milk.

When I was between the ages of 7 and 13, I raised rabbits.  I had as many as 60 at one time.

I once punched a guy in the face because he told me I wasn’t funny.

When I was about nine years old, my mother and aunt took me with them to see a psychic.  She told me that one day I would be in business for a little while with a blonde-haired man with glasses, who I would meet at another place where we both worked.  About 25 years later I met Al at Central Freight Lines, where we both worked, and we had a blast for a while selling novelties at flea markets.

One of my ears sits higher and sticks out farther than the other one.

Being from Mesquite, Texas, the rodeo capital of North America, When I was 16 years old, I rode a bull.  That was the ONE time in my life when I did that. Cowboys are friggin’ insane…

In school no one ever picked me for their baseball team, because I would swing at ANYTHING, feeling certain that I could hit whatever was thrown at me.  I couldn’t.

I LOVED music in school.  I played tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, a smattering of keyboards, and percussion.  However, I was kicked out of band at the end of my junior year in high school because I was “a bad influence on the younger students.”

I owned a business in junior high school called the Caribbean Currency Club.

If it lives in the water, I don’t eat it.

My friend, Ronald Gaines (RIP), and I used to “go out looking for people who were out looking for a fight.”

According to a psychic medium I know, the spirit of my friend, Ronald Gaines (RIP), often rides around with me in my pickup.

I talked on the CB radio for years and years, and have “shot skip” on sideband to MANY, MANY foreign countries.  I used to talk to a guy named Frank in Zimbabwe on a regular basis.

I went to high school with Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger’s ex.

When I was 16 years old, I almost died from a cottonmouth bite, which I received while swimming in Lake Whitney.  I had been told that snakes will not bite underwater.  That turned out to be bullshit.

I played foosball for many years, winning money and trophies in tournaments.

When I was about five, I fell in the mud at the construction site behind my house and got my pants filthy.  To hide the fact that I had been someplace I wasn’t supposed to be, I turned my pants inside out, thinking my mother wouldn’t notice. She did.

I started cooking for myself when I was six years old.

When I was eight years old, my brother and I saw a misty cloud come through the wall of our bedroom from another room and exit through an exterior wall.  The room became very cold when this happened, so we were sure it was a ghost.  I still am sure that’s what it was.

The very earliest thing I remember from my life (when I must have been around six months old or so) is my dog, Skippy, standing over me, looking down with that loving gaze that dogs have.

I have broken six of my ten toes.

My white band marching shoes were stolen at the State Fair of Texas when I was in 10th grade.

I once hit my older brother, John (RIP), in the head with a bed slat.

My older brother, John (RIP), once punched me in the face and called me a queer.  I found out about 25 years later that he was gay.

I haven’t eaten an egg (other than cooked into something baked) since I was about six years old.

Probably my favorite sandwich in the entire world:  Two slices of toasted wheat bread, mustard on both slices of bread, three pieces of thick-sliced fried baloney, lettuce, chopped banana peppers, crushed fritos.

I used to take LSD when I was in my late teens.

I was the Valedictorian of my first grade class, at the Little Red Schoolhouse, a private school in Mesquite, Texas.

At the ripe old age of 17, I was the manager of a pool hall in Dallas called The Corner Pocket.

When I was 18, I fell backward off a scaffold from about 25 feet in the air and landed in a pit full of mud, uninjured.  (Do you see a pattern here, me and mud?)

I once knocked myself out for a couple of minutes by running full steam into a door frame.

For about a year, I drove a forklift in a freezer where the temperature was kept at 15 degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

The only airplane I’ve EVER flown in was a two-seat Cessna, when I was in my early 20′s.

My favorite comic book characters were Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor.

My first “girlfriend” was named Cathy (when we were in 2nd grade), and I was known as “Cathy’s Clown,” which was a song popular in the early 1960′s.

Even though I have worn my hair long most of my days on this planet, for about the first eight years of my life it was kept basically shaved, and I went by the nickname “Onionhead.”

In 1979, my friend Rick and I had a REAL UFO encounter in southeastern Oklahoma.

I once wrote to Hillary Clinton, telling her what an asshole she was for saying that all people who had seen UFOs were crazy.

I played Sam Houston in the school play, “Remember the Alamo,” in 5th grade.

From the age of about 10 to the age of about 15, I had a pet snapping turtle that weighed around 35 pounds.  He would walk around with me just like a dog.

When I was 19 years old, I “wrestled” a bear by the name of “Victor,” who used to appear at carnivals, bars, and other events.  I didn’t win.

At the age of 10, I almost drowned while belly-boarding in Oceanside, California.

While working as a reporter for the Pony Express, my high school newspaper, I interviewed the senior George Bush while he was still a senator in Texas.  I can’t remember anything at all about what he said.

With a .22 rifle, I used to be able to hit an aspirin sitting on a stump from 60 yards away.  (Think it’s easy?  Try it.)

When I was 16, I drove a Plymouth Satellite for about 60 yards down Buckner Boulevard in Dallas with its left two wheels about five feet in the air…  Accidentally.

I have lived in at least three haunted houses.

I have worn glasses since I was seven years old, and probably needed them since I was six years old.

I can type about 100 words a minute on an ergonomic keyboard, on a good day.

I have never, ever operated a cash register.

Even though I’ve never used it much since, I felt compelled to take two years of German in high school.

The first teacher I remember thinking was really sexy was my 7th grade science teacher, Imelda Rodriguez.

I attract mosquitoes like Brad Pitt attracts women.

I was one of the first people in north Texas to be infected with the West Nile Virus. There were no lasting effects, LOL…

I reinvented myself in 2010, by going into a line of work my mom would have never believed, LOL…  I don’t think she would have ever expected the terms “banker” or “officer” to be associated with my name.