1. I am an only child. And I find my parents to be two of the stupidest, retarded and ass-backward people I have ever met on the planet. I am the result of a warm six-pack on a hot July night in a Kansas campground.

2. I have never seen the ocean or the mountains. I’ve also never ridden on an airplane (planes crash, you know) or have been inside of an airport or to a concert, and I haven’t attended church since 1982.

3. Nobody has seen me sneeze since 1987 in 3rd grade. There is a reason for this. When I sneeze, my eyes tear up like crazy and I need to blow my nose & wipe the eyes for a good 10 minutes. I got tired of people saying, “why are you crying??” right after I sneezed. I’ve stopped literally thousands of sneezes in public with the basic “index finger to the right nostril and holding the breath” technique.

4. I do not own a cell phone, nor do I ever want to. I still think it’s not safe to put something like that so close your head. I will cry the day I have to get a cell phone. Plus there’s the other issue of annoying cell phone rings, not wanting to be bothered while I’m out and doing things, battery recharging issues, cell phone plans, “anytime minutes” and all that b.s.

5. I have Tinnitus, which is basically constant low-pitched ringing of the ears. I’ve had it all my life, and it’s gotten worse. I only hear the ringing (sounds like when volume is turned up on blank cassette tape hiss or a furnace running) when there’s no background noise, but it makes it hard to hear convos in loud crowded places, as well as whispers and low sounds. Strangely, my right ear is worse than the left ear, which typically doesn’t happen when it comes to hearing loss, it’s usually evenly distributed. I’ve also failed every hearing test I’ve ever taken, which also resulted in numerous tests & hours of missed c l a s s time. I can hear fine in most situations.

6. I was right-handed for the first 4 years of my life. Right-handed scissors, right-handed glove, right-handed drawing & writing. Then one sunny early afternoon day out in the backyard, I was playing catch with my dad (plastic bat, whiffle ball) and I went after the ball, picked it up and threw it. Suddenly I heard screaming, and I was terrified and shocked as hell with both of my parents screaming at me. Then I hear, “do you know what you just did??!?!” and I was like, “ummm, no?”, and my dad said, “you threw that ball left-handed!” “Oh,” I thought. So into the trash went the right-handed scissors & glove, and now suddenly my right-handed chicken scratch handwriting had turned into left-handed legible English literature. Yeah I was only 4, so what. 1 out of every 9 people are left-handed, I’m special, damn it. Tho later on I learned to do things with both hands.

7. I have a re-occurring nightmare of tornadoes. I’ve have hundreds of them in my life, and they all basically end up with the sky turning dark, the wind picking up, and then the funnel cloud appearing from the sky, the sound of wind, the feeling of me tensing up and trying to run to the basement / for cover and then waking up exhausted. But I’m also a weather buff. Weather has always fascinated me, and when you live in the Chicago area, weather is always a topic. I think that NOVA special I watched on PBS in 1984 about these killer 1984 Wisconsin tornadoes is what probably caught my interest in the genre. I’ve wanted to be a Meteorologist since I was 6, but ya know, too stupid / don’t wanna go for the 8 years of college & end up reading off a teleprompter in a warehouse with a bunch of stupid phony idiots newscasters in some one-horse town.

And if you already knew # 5…

8. I have never tried an illegal substance (including Mary Jane), nor do I have any desire to. I’ve seen enough destruction in people’s lives & my own to know better.