Know thyself and Nothing in
excess
(inscribed at the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at
Delphi)
Since I’ve now been ‘tagged’ with the 5 Things meme thing, in the spirit of
the first aphorism above I’ll share a bit about myself. I’m not a fan of chain letters
(or, in this case, chain blog posts?), but I confess that I have enjoyed
learning more about the personal lives of some of my favorite bloggers. So on
the off chance that some of my readers would like to know a bit more about me,
I’ll play along…
- In high school some of my buddies and I created the South Lakes High School Sleeping
Club. We had a motto: “We sleep around” (we even had buttons made!). On random
weekend nights we’d sleep on some unsuspecting girl’s lawn and, if we were
lucky, sometimes get invited in the next morning for breakfast. We thought we
were so cool… - I have what my wife might call an inexplicable fascination with a few key TV
shows and comic strips from my childhood: Looney
Tunes, Speed Racer, The Muppet Show, Schoolhouse Rock!, Calvin and Hobbes, The Far Side, etc. I also
think Leave It to
Beaver is one of the (unintentionally) funniest shows of all time. - I’m a huge baseball fan and grew up idolizing Mike Schmidt. I told my
professors during my first summer of doctoral
coursework that I would be leaving class early to see the best third baseman
of all time get inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame and that
they would just have to figure out with me how I could satisfy the rest of my
course requirements. I think the conversation went something like this: “You
want to miss several weeks of your doctoral courses for WHAT?” “It’s a
once-in-a-lifetime event. I have to go now or miss it forever.” “Oh. Umm…
okay.” Kudos to them for helping me figure it out (‘cause I was going no matter
what!). Definitely the highlight of my sports fandom. - I almost flunked out my freshman year at college: a classic case of a kid with a repressive
parent letting loose in a completely unstructured environment. If you told my
former hallmates that I now had a law degree and a doctoral degree and was
teaching at a major research university, they’d laugh in your face. I later
posted that freshman year report card in my classroom to show my eighth-graders
that you can come back from adversity. Not sure any of them bought it (maybe if
I had been making millions instead of a first-year teacher salary…). [On a side note, that middle school’s mascot was the wapiti.] - I have the three cutest, nicest, smartest kids on the planet. I know you
think your kids (or grandkids) are, but actually mine are. Really.
Like John,
now that I’ve shared, in the spirit of the second aphorism above I’ll cut off my part
of the chain here. Tag, no one’s it.
Happy New Year, everyone.
Hi Scott,
An example of how posts like this can reveal some strange intersections. My wife was the choir director at South Lakes HS during your time there (she was there 1986-92). I also spent too much time at the school “volunteering” to work sound and lights for both her concerts and musical productions. However, I can’t say we ever ran into each other. 🙂
Good to know I’m not the only obsessive Michael Jack Schmidt fan out there.
For my entire fifteen years of playing competitive Ultimate, I wore number twenty.