Wherein I Get Tagged

The Sphinxy one tagged me, and since I was casting around for my next post I thought: Why not? It’s “Six Random Things About Me.” Or maybe it’s “eight.” I’m not sure but I’ll go for six, because there surely aren’t eight things that folks don’t know about me. First, here are the rules. Let’s see how many of them I manage to follow.

The Rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1. I played football from 7th through 12th grade. I loved it, even though I almost always played on losing teams. At that time, Charleston was the smallest school in our district and we seldom had more than 20 kids out for football, not even enough to field two full squads. Most of the other schools had at least forty kids out, and some had seventy to eighty. We lost a lot, but we played hard. I played halfback on offense and either cornerback or safety on defense. I played a lot more defense than offense. In my junior and senior years our whole defensive backfield made all district.

2. I grew up in the country where hunting and fishing expanded our larder. That means I’ve had guns most of my life. I got my first pistol, a .22, at about fifteen. By the time I was 18 I had a shotgun (12 gauge) and a couple of rifles, a Remington 30.06 and a Browning Lever action .22. I sold the shotgun and the Remington when we needed money early in my first marriage, but I still have the Browning. I now have three pistols, a Colt Trooper .357, a Sig 228 9mm, and a Uberti single action .357. I know there are “gun nuts” out there, but most people I know who own guns are responsible and careful with them. I don’t understand sometimes the vehement resistance I see in folks to gun ownership. A gun is a tool, albeit a dangerous one that you should always exercise caution around. I do a fair amount of shooting at the range and enjoy it. I never pick up a gun without making sure it’s unloaded. I practice so that I know how to shoot and I keep my weapons clean. I’ve taught my son how to shoot and how to load and unload guns so that he understands and respects them. Respect is the key, it seems to me, not fear.

3. I may be an adult but I still love naps. Lana says my superhero name is “The Napping Avenger.” In a perfect world I’d have a siesta every day. I find them both pleasant and very energizing. I get a lot more work done on days that I nap than on those I don’t.

4. I begin every rest period by telling a story to myself. I’ll create a scenario, such as being transported to an alternate earth where none of the great SF, Fantasy, and Horror novels have been written, and then I’ll spin out a story of what I might do in that world over the course of dozen nights or so. I switch up stories all the time, although I often go back and retell stories with variations. It’s just how I get off to sleep.

5. My favorite games growing up were war games, and I played very elaborate ones all by myself. (I lived six miles away from the nearest kid my age.) I created one game where I used seeds from various trees as soldiers. Walnuts, Chinaberries, Acorns, yellow berries, hickory nuts, and others. Each type of seed represented a different race of beings (a precursor to the Talera stories perhaps). The acorns were tribal, with each oak tree producing it’s own tribe. We had two chinaberry trees in our back yard and the chinaberries became my favorite group. I developed a two party political system for them, a religion in which the Emperor was worshipped as a god, and a military that included an army, navy, air force, and mercenary forces. There were numerous tales of heroism that I came up with for the Chinaberries. Some day I’ll have to tell you about the “Lost legion.”

6. Next to war games, my favorite games growing up involved football. I created my own football “league” of teams using empty shotgun shells for the players. Each year after dove season, where a lot of folks would hunt on our land, I’d go and gather up all the empty shells and then the existing teams would hold a “draft.” I had an elaborate set of rules for how the pieces played, and I used a large rectangular piece of Formica as the “field.” My four teams were the Mongols, the Saxons, the Knights, and the Marauders.

And now I break the rules. I’m not going to tag anyone, but anyone who wants to take part please feel free to do so.

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