Your life list, non-sportswriting version

Novelist, I can't compare to your life, but I'll do what I can. :-[

• Had/Have a wonderful set of parents who were as honest and forthright and loving as a person could have. My (step)daughter is slowly starting to see what a POS her father is. I was lucky not to have a split family. My dad and mom were the ideal parents who didn't let me get away with much but still allowed freedom if not abused. I can only hope I'm half the dad my father is/was.
• Saw the 1994 World Cup in Dallas.
• Been to Cooperstown twice. Great little town and of course HOF.
• played for a prep soccer power's first regional championship team and played in a state championship game
• Played college soccer for two years and once scored a goal against a top-10 team.
• Been to Japan where me and family was the minority. What a unique experience that was.
• I've had a healthy life, something I've taken for granted until my son was born. He's fine too, but he's already had two minor surgeries and been on more medicines/antibiotics than I'll probably ever be.
• Saw Montana Magic in Kansas City in the playoffs.
• Been married to a wonderful and understanding woman for more than five years, and she's blessed me with three wonderful kids.
• Have had the pleasure of working for three great SEs since I graduated from college almost eight years ago. Being an ASE for about six of those years has taught me a lot while working for those fellas.

 

My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we'd make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it.

 

Let's add on to my other list...

-Ran a 4:26 mile
-Ran a 25:57 8K in college
-Ran a 6:57 Beer Mile (Beer/Lap/Beer/Lap/Beer/Lap/Beer/Lap)
-Did a feature on a Major League Baseball player while only a junior in college
-Maxed out on the bench at 280
-Largest runner on my cross country team, but somehow managed to shut them all up when I finished higher than them at each race

 

I'm envious.

 

Yes, but you have the hottest avatar here

 

This has been a very entertaining thread. Personally, I'm not sure I would consider all of these "accomplishments," but it's been an interesting 30 years or so. In no particular order:

have broken my arms twice each, once both at the same time
landed in the ER on Mother's Day 1985 after trying to make my mom breakfast
threw up at the base of Mount Rushmore
got bucked off a horse on a trail at Yellowstone
have visited exactly half of the 50 states, as well as DC
toured the White House
got the worst sunburn of my life (and a jellyfish sting to boot) on a trip to Hilton Head
learned to water ski on Lake Okoboji
learned to snow ski in Vail, the week of my 18th birthday
visited both Disneyland and Disney World
later worked at Disney World
worked for two years for my favorite baseball team
moved to Atlanta, where I knew not a single soul, for my first "real" job
still in Atlanta, eight years later
took a train trip across eastern Ontario
posed for photos with the Mounties guarding the Canadian Parliament (I posed, they just stood there stoically)
survived the inevitable ax falling at si.com and lived to tell about it
almost lost my wallet (literally) at the Sportsbook at Caesar's
made my first trip to "the continent" this spring
was present for my NHL team's first-ever Stanley Cup playoff game

 

Sirs, Madames,

More or less random order:

--evidently, difficult to toilet train
--saw Stonehenge
--smuggled a live tortoise through Canadian customs ... both tortoise and I were age 12
--won autographed 60s Leafs hockey stick as most improved player in hockey league
--cried when I realized my father had sawn it in pieces for tomato planting
-- boxed a guy who was a couple of yrs away from NY State Golden Gloves championship (and national semis), he was two years older than me (15 vs 13), lost but wasn't knocked down, cut or really hurt
--school record in half, first guy in school history to break two
--provincial title in relay
--drunkenly threw up on the captain of the football team
--slept in my car on Daytona Beach for two weeks in homeless-style vacation
--smuggled a joint into Mexico (accidently)
--drove 8,000 miles +, from Toronto to Belize and side trips for On The Road-inspired vacation
--worked as a doorman in The Shamrock Hotel during a beer strike
--black belt in karate (drew a cop 4" taller and 50 pounds heavier than me in black belt tournament)
--got hit in the face by baseball bat (accident, not attack)
--developed allergies to (-caine-series) pain-killers and codeine and found out hard way
--married at spring training, best man at wedding was a major league all-star
--was kept awake all night by John Mayberry humping Dominican hookers in the neighbouring hotel room
--made it through every line of every Nancy Drew putting daughters to bed
--mushrooms on millenium New Years
--took a whizz in Red Square on the next New Year's
--buried my mother
--got to hang out with a trio of (literary) heroes, Budd Schulberg (held his Oscar), Morley Callaghan (beers even) and Joe Mitchell, in their dotage
--daughter No. 1 made it into a school I couldn't get into (U of T downtown)
--taught a university class I failed (magazine writing)
--stood on the set of the Today show (every time I'm in NY)
--States: missing Alaska, Hawaii (was in Delaware most briefly, five minutes, turning around on the NJ Turnpike or whatever, missed my turn-off in Philly)
--Provinces: all but no territories

YHS, etc

 

Add two --
-- Saw two presidential inaugurations.
-- Got drunk with David Halberstam.
-- Sang "Heartbreak Hotel" (the Spinal Tap version) with two friends at Elvis's grave at Graceland.
-- Saw the Edmund Fitzgerald sail the big lake.

 

Have thought of a few more ...

* Threw up on the steps of Town Hall on a drunken Sunday afternoon
* Drank in the same pub where the Fathers of Confederation tipped up in Ch'town.
* Survived a night at the American Inn in Gary, Indiana
* Crossed the American/Canadian border with half a gram of hash stuffed in bra
* Survived two nights in Fort McMurray
* Watched Robyn Regehr, Erik Christensen and many others play their first major junior hockey games
* Had my picture taken with Paul Henderson
* Was waitressing and served Peter MacKay, who walked out without tipping me
* Had Scotty Bowman's cell number in my Palm Pilot (I will never lose that clipping!)
* Got stuck for four hours on a Marine Atlantic ferry bound in ice between Port-aux-Basques and Sydney
* Stood on Castle Mountain lookout and saw the Bow Valley beneath me
* Stood on an ice glacier in Jasper National Park
* Was the first daughter in my extended family to graduate from university
* Was the first female child in my home town to play Little League
* Skipped a grade
* Graduated high school at 16
* Had university degree by 19
* Scored a lot of goals, caught a lot of balls and hit a few ... but have yet to win a provincial championship

 

Outing alert -- Flash is Wonder Woman.

 

Naw, shush. I just like to make sure life is worth living ... you know that old saying about going to the grave looking like you've lived with a martini glass in one hand ...

And oh yeah ...

* Quit smoking
* Created a drink and named it after me
* Got drunk and told an entire Internet board to fuck off