Random Memory Meme

[aadler]

 
Just for the heck of it: List ten things you’ve never said on LJ. Doesn’t have to be personal or weird, just things that have never come up. For instance —

1. My wife and I have to lock our front gate with a carabiner, because one of our dogs has figured out how to open gates.
2. During three distinct periods when I was in college, I was dating that institution’s entire women’s judo team.
3. I have an autograph from one of the living Medal of Honor recipients.
4. My mother used to constantly confide other people’s secrets to me, always cautioning, “Now, you can’t tell this to anyone else.” My feeling about that, though I don’t remember ever voicing it, was, Wouldn’t the same principle mean you shouldn’t be telling me? As a result of that, I have ever since been exceedingly reluctant to share confidential information, mine or anyone else’s. (As an example, I’ve kept a secret about my wife that even she doesn’t know … not ‘doesn’t know I know’, she doesn’t even know the thing itself.)
5. In an aggregate 23 years of dating, I never had an Asian girlfriend. My son has never had a non-Asian girlfriend.
6. I can recite the phone number of my family’s home in 1969, but not the number of the last land-line I ever had in my own home.
7. Back when I was still in grade school, I was once caught in the last dying remnants of a hurricane. I lived well inland, and it had lost almost all its force by then, but I still remember the power of that wind.
8. I acquired my first firearm in 1974. Currently I own five, including the only rifle I’ve ever possessed, but over the years I sold, gave away — or, in one instance, had stolen from me — five others. Calibers ranged from .22 short to .45 auto … and in all those years, including three combat deployments (but not counting training exercises with MILES gear and blank ammunition), I’ve never had cause to point a firearm at another person.
9. My grandmother, who could remember the headlines announcing the first successful airplane flight, stayed up all night to watch the telecast of the first moon landing. I went to bed early because it was boring. Perhaps to make up for that, my daughter is named for a female astronaut.
10. My wife and I were both the shortest members of our birth families. Random genetics … and the mix has finally stabilized, because my daughter is average female (shorter than many, but not most), and my son is almost 6'2".