Okay, fine.

My pal Johnny “tagged” me. Boy o boy, do I hate stuff like this. But I love Johnny, with his super-good drumming and his deep-theology-talking and his martini-drinkin’, so I’ll do it for him. But all I’m doing is posting the facts. I’m not following any of the other rules. Like a good theonomist, Johnny loves the law. Not me. I’m free from it.

Two warnings. First, some of these are pretty crazy facts. One of my friends once told me that I’m the “great unintentional one-upper,” because I have so many weird stories and such. I told him that, if it made him feel any better, most of the weird stories were miserable experiences.

Second, I don't write facts in bullet-point sentences. I write them in narrative essays. Hey, I'm a writer, and if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it my own way.

At any rate, here are my SEVEN RANDOM FACTS:

1) I have a decent-sized comic book collection. Probably around 300-400. Haven’t bought one in about 20 years, but from ages 10-15 or so, I was a full-on geek, hanging out in comic bok stores talking about how DC was lame and Marvel was the coolest (no duh). In many ways, I still am the geek (no duh).

1) I have a weirdly good ability to do nunchucks (or, nunchaku, as they are known in the martial arts world). During that above-mentioned time period of geekdom, I was also into ninjas and stuff (it was the 80’s, and I was a stuttering kid who sucked at sports), and I thought it would be a cool thing to try and learn. Thad has video somewhere of me doing them at the ComChurch Talent Show a few years ago. Yes, my church has a talent show, and yes, nunchucks were my act.

3) Three years ago, I ran over someone with my car. This fact has the potential to sort of “trump” the whole thing, because it’s really like 15 crazy, random facts in one.
a) I hit a teenage girl, and she lived, and only sustained relatively minor injuries, even though I hit her with a suburban going 45 miles an hour.
b) She sued me, and it went all the way to court, so I had to actually go sit on a witness stand and all that stuff that people usually only experience on TV. In the end, I was absolved. It didn't make the experience much better.
c) I had to ride in a police car.
d) I’m pretty sure I encountered an angel that night on the road, while waiting for the cops to work it all out. She was black and elderly, and very much like a kindly grandmother, only she spoke with authority and supernatural knowledge about the circumstances of the accident. See? Random.
e) I had to have a blood test (sobriety). I passed it, and the hospital charged me $1000. Cool.
f) I had to hire a lawyer for one day (the day after the wreck), and it cost me $1400. Cool.

4) On Halloween night several years ago, I was hit by a drunk driver. It was like one of those pseudo-wrecks in TV car chases, when the good guy tries to knock the bad guy’s car off the road. I was the bad guy. He drove right past me and slammed into the side of my car as he went. I was fine, but my Nissan truck was pretty smashed up. I gave chase, and when we finally pulled over, another car pulled in, and a dude jumped out and started beating up the drunk. Apparently they had history. It was weird.

5) I only have about 70% of my hearing in my left ear (and I own a recording studio, by the way), and when they first discovered it, they thought I might have a brain tumor. I had to lay down in that MRI machine and everything. Not a tumor. Just can’t hear perfectly in one ear.(This is why Keith does the mixing at The MixLab.)

6) I have actually used the “barf bag” on a plane (see above photo). The plane was taxi-ing, about to take off when it happened, and the flight attendant (a very feminine male wearing eye make-up) started screaming like a girl about viruses and stuff, and they parked the plane and made me get off. For several flights after that, I was “flagged” by the TSA folks and searched during security. (For the record, the bag holds about three heaves of stomach stew before overflowing, which mine did. Also for the record, the flight attendants keep plastic shopping bags around in case of overflow.)

7) I once got in a fight with a dog. Long story, but I’ll give the highlights. 14-15 years old. At the house of a friend-of-a-friend. Great Dane. Nobody in the room but me and Marmaduke, who takes a rather erotic liking to my leg. I “resist” (no means no). He perseveres. I continue to resist, and growling/hostility ensues. In a panic, I punch him, pretty hard, in the ear, 2-3 times. This apparently has some affect on his sense of balance, and he backs away, looking stunned and dizzy. Dog owners enter the room, confused. I avoid the randy mutt for the remainder of the day. True story.

Strangely, I’m leaving out tons of story-worthy stuff, including a life-and-death whitewater canoeing incident on the Rio Grande, a fistfight at a funeral, a massive river rat fought – but not killed – with a tennis racket in my first apartment, a mouse in my bed (and on my back!) in my second apartment, a front-end loader bucket landing on my head, and getting kicked out of a Baptist camp for defending a preacher’s from-the-stage use of the word “penis.” All true, all random. I’m living la vida loca, for sure.

I won’t officially “tag” anyone, because I’m too cool for such nonsense, but I will say that I’d love to see what kind of hilarious fun Thad could have with this. Thad, do what you want with that. The rest of my blog pals are off the hook. Johnny, tell Jenni that I’m “breaking the chain,” and please pray that bad things don’t happen to me because of it. Isn’t that what usually happens here?