A Peek Behind the Curtain — 15 things about me you didn’t know

…and perhaps didn’t want to.

This is, however, 2018, and the need to be transparent is overwhelming me. Plus some of them are kinda strange as I thought of ’em.

1. I grew up in a two-bedroom house with four sisters, a mother and a grandmother. An isolated male buoy in the middle of an estrogen ocean. Some say “that explains a lot.” I say “I learned to pee outside well before my peers.”
2. My grandfather was a Special Ranger in the Texas Rangers before it became part of the Texas Department of Public Safety in 1935.
3. My daughter Stephanie was born in Spain, and holds dual citizenship.
4. I tested out of 83 of my undergraduate credit hours. Gotta love the military’s free CLEP and ACT/Pep tests and programs.
5. My mom and my baby sister passed away at nearly the same time. Their services were a week and a day apart. Family matters.
6. My genealogy includes being related to Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, the dude who invented the bunsen burner (high school chemistry shenanigans!)
7. I once had to run 500 bleachers for getting busted with beer while on my high school golf team. Coach with no sense of humor whatsoever.
8. My mom had to call my HS English teacher to see if I should be at commencement. That’s how bad my high school grades were. In my defense, who the hell studies MacBeth for an entire year??
9. I used to be a runner, clocking 30+ miles per week.
10. I served in the United States Air Force for 13 years, 8 months and 13 days. I almost enlisted in the Marines, as they were going to allow me in right away without my right index finger (needed a waiver for USAF)–the Marine recruiter told me to just claim I was left-handed, and that “they didn’t give a shit.”
11. My first corporate job after leaving the USAF? Engineering Recruiter for Management Recruiters Int’l (3 months). Averaged over 90 calls per day. Second job? Resume writer at Sears Resume Service (2 months).
12. My son Stephen was born exactly one year after I enlisted.
13. I used to be a scratch golfer. Damn, those days are long gone…
14. I made only one B in all my college courses (all the rest A’s). In Meteorology. The instructor was my racquetball partner; he later told me he had no idea, and that he would have given me an A if he’d known he was breaking some sort of record. Asshole.
15. I’ve only had one cell number, and I got it in 1991 (one of those early flip-phones that got hot as hell). I dropped two Motorola StarTac phones into the toilet the same week. Also had a Palm Pilot, and one of those honkin’ big Kyocera 6035s, one of the first with internet access. Mr. Technology, that’s me.

That’s a wrap…

Be Brazen.