Five Things You May Not Know About Me

Tag! I’m “it.” Yep, I got tagged by Cherry at Cherry Extract to do a meme about, well, me! This is not any easy thing for me to do because while I admit upfront that blogging has a vanity aspect to it, I’m the one in control of what I choose to reveal about myself and what I choose to keep to myself. Getting tagged to do something this personal makes me feel a bit uneasy, but I’ll do it, damnit!

Yesterday, I took a long walk with the dog and was mulling over in my mind what I wanted to tell my bloggy friends about myself that they didn’t already know. This wasn’t easy, but I think I’m ready to dive into this and see what comes of it.

1. When I was a kid, I was pretty athletic. I played soccer, loved to skateboard, and for a good year or so, played a lot of volleyball in junior high. But it was gymnastics that was my first love. I used to get out of school early so I could go to the gym and practice for a good 4 hours a day with the hope of making it to the Olympics. The problem was that my ambition and talent were not in sync (i.e., too much ambition, and not enough talent). My frustrations with my physical and psychological limitations eventually made me quit gymnastics and with it my dreams of elite competition. (Side note: I used to “psych” myself out of certain gymnastics “tricks” and get really bummed because my team mates seemed utterly fearless and could do things with ease that took me months to attempt. Bastards!)

2. The creative urge has been strong in me since I was a little kid. With my friends, I used to create elaborate worlds that we would “play” in. Mostly, they were not-so-subtle variations of Planet of the Apes, S.W.A.T., Star Trek, Hogan’s Heros, or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. But we would do a lot of role playing and acting out of scenarios we’d carefully construct. I’m sure the older kids thought we were pretty dumb, but I gotta say that those years of seemingly constant play really had an effect on me. Later, when I got into college, I wanted to become a filmmaker. So, I joined the film club at Diablo Valley College, and eventually became the club president where we all joined forces and tried to raise money for a student film that we wanted to make. I co-wrote the script and we got some coverage in the school paper on how we were trying to raise money to make the movie. But because of petty jealousies, in-fighting, and an overblown script that would have cost a lot of money to produce as a film, the project fell apart and we all went our separate ways (i.e., 4 year universities and film schools). But, I’ll always have this reminder of our efforts: (Note: There’s a lot of cheeky teenage dumb crap stated in this article.)

3. Going into my junior year of high school, I got into a motorcycle accident in Utah. I was riding my brother-in law’s Montesa 250 in a canyon in Pleasant Grove without a helmet, and couldn’t control the bike as I started to slide on a patch of loose sand near a run-off channel. Now, the thing to know about the Montesa is that the clutch, breaks, and gear shift are on the “opposite” side of other bikes. So, as I was coming around this corner, I was starting to use the break (which was the clutch) and wasn’t slowing. In fact, I was starting to slide! Because I wasn’t an experienced rider, I panicked and feverishly tried to regain control of the bike by pushing my weight over to the other side. Well, it worked, but it was too late because I had run out of road and went plunging off the side of the run-off channel to the rocky bottom blow. While I was airborne, everything became a kind of slow motion reality that was brought back to “real time” when I hit the concrete surface. The bike was leaking gasoline pretty badly and the engine was still running. I had this feeling that it was going to explode if I didn’t get the bike upright. So, I pulled myself up off the ground and limped over to the bike and propped it up against the wall. My leg, arm, and mouth were bleeding quite a lot and I noticed right away that I had shattered my teeth. It felt like all of them were a jagged mess, but it only turned out to be the front three. I don’t have much of a memory leaving the canyon and walking back to the main road, but I did get there and was taken to the hospital to be stitched up. Years later, J and I went back to “death gulch” when we went on our camping trip to Utah. While looking around the site of my accident, she told me to look “distraught” before she snapped the photo below (’cause, you know, I could have died in that “gulch.”)

4. This is short one, but I love good Bourbon! My current favorite is Woodford! 🙂

5. I’m a foodie! I love to try new restaurants, but because I’m kind of a snob, they have be really good places where the combinations are creative and, of course, tasty! A show that I really like (but don’t get to see that often) is “Check Please! Bay Area” on KQED. As it says on the show’s website, the program is where “regular diners become amateur food critics of popular and hidden local restaurants.”
Okay, that’s me! Now I get to tag a few folks. Jefito, Jason, and Ms Mamma, you’re “it!”

–PK

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