Thanks to my friend Misha Ben-david, I am commissioned to share 7 things about myself that most people dont know. Here goes: 1. I was about six years old when my Aunt Helen took me to the Ohio State Fair. While we were riding the Octopus, something went wrong, and we were stuck nearly upside down at the top for an hour. As the blood rushed up into our heads, I gave serious thought to panicking, but was unable to determine how it would help, so I decided against it. 2. In seventh grade, I wrote a play called Both Sides Now, after the song, which I used as a sort of theme to a story about various people who were being ignored, being allowed to slip away from their families, their friends, and society itself. The English teacher I showed it to arranged for us to produce it as an afterschool assembly, but I was too terrified to be there. I left school early that day. 3. My father was an Army officer, and when he was working at Fort Belvoir and the Pentagon, we lived in a two-story house in Virginia. One Saturday, we packed a picnic and went to Rehoboth Beach, Maryland, for the day. We got back after dark and headed for our various rooms with only streetlights through the open blinds to guide us. As I entered my bedroom, I flipped on the light and went straight to the window to close the blind, but just as I touched it, there was a loud, sharp CRACK right there in front of me. I was only 10, but Id been watching The Avengers (the old British secret-agent show, not the cartoon) long enough to recognize a gunshot when I heard one. I dropped to the floor and called out: Papa, I need you to do exactly as I say, okay? Dont walk in, just reach around and turn off my bedroom light, and then CRAWL into the room, please? My father had heard the crack, too. He did as Id said, hollering down the hall to my mom and brother to lie down in the hallway and dont turn on any lights. My father led me out to the hall too, and then he went to the phone and called the police. There were two more CRACKS from the dining room, and then the shooting stopped. A very tall policeman came to look at the bullet hole in my window and got his uniform cap caught in the pink fishnet that was suspended over my bed. This was during Vietnam, and with my father doing a lot of work at the Pentagon, I was just certain we had been targeted by Bad Guys for something related to Papas work. But the police eventually determined that some teenagers had been shooting cans off of a fence that ran behind our house, not realizing that their shots were proceeding right INTO our house. Anti-climactic, but I guess it was just as well that we WERENT really, yknow, marked for death. 4. I used to write and sing jingles and do a little voice work on the radio. When I was asked to come up with some custom music for a TV spot for a retirement community in San Antonio, I wrote a pretty little acoustic, finger-picking guitar piece with one line of lyric -- A caring place to call home -- recorded it, and then produced the spot, too. The client loved it, and it was picked up and used in all their other markets as well. It wasnt until years later, while playing through some of my old songbooks, that I realized the chord sequence Id used was plagiarized from an obscure John Denver song. To this day, I hang my head in shame. 5. On a business trip to Los Angeles, I drove a rented van up Laurel Canyon one night, up and up to the very top, where the road dwindled to nothing more than a dusty trail with a bit of loose gravel on it. It was that iconic view, LA at night from high in the hills, with the lights of the city spread out far below, and the stars spread out above. I got out to take a picture, and I was so enthralled by the view that I didnt realize I was stepping off the edge of the trail. My foot slid into soft soil that fell away under it, and I really thought I was going down the side of the mountain, but I was able to catch myself a few feet down. It was worth it for that view! 6. I once worked as a volunteer for Dr. Carl Sagan for a week, during the 20th Annual Planetary Sciences Conference in Austin, Texas. I had a job at the time, but I took off anyway -- I just couldnt resist the chance to be part of that. I got to sit in on several lectures, and I actually understood about half of what was being said! 7. As a volunteer for Dr. Jane Goodalls organization, I briefly served as a babysitter for an orphaned Barbary Ape. He was even younger than the baby in the photo I accidentally posted before posting THIS (~ sigh ~), and his hair was so yellow it was green. He apparently liked me -- gave me kisses on the ear and sat on my lap staring at me. I miss him!
Posted on: Sun, 17 Nov 2013 03:42:47 +0000
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