The Author

Eight random things about me that people may not have know at one point in time, but thanks to the internet and Facebook (especially) are now accessible for public knowledge. If you are the former soccer coach for Olympic High School, I apologize for all the times I wished you dead.  

1. I dislike swimming in the ocean because I am irrationally terrified of sharks. Think about it, sharks are basically just teeth and stomach with an added dimension of movement that you, the swimmer, cannot easily negotiate. One moment you are snorkeling or floating on waves, the next you are missing a leg or arm because the pariah of an animal attacked you from below. This will happen, without fail, every time you enter the ocean. I'll take a bear or a pack of wolves over the ocean any day. 

2. The deep end of a swimming pool makes me uneasy for the same reason listed above. Can I really trust that door-looking-latch at the bottom of the pool or that gutter along the pool's edge to not suddenly turn recreation into a watery colosseum of swimmer vs. beast for the enjoyment of the on-looking life guard? Can you? 

3. I do not currently own a cell phone and have no plans to amend this affliction. Some may call me a luddite. They would be mistaken, as a Google search provided me the correct spelling for that word. 

4. The only reason I started running was to keep in shape for soccer. When I was one of three people cut from both the varsity and junior varsity soccer teams in my high school, I joined the cross country team to spite the soccer coach. I hated running and continued to hate running until I realized runs longer than 6 miles make an excellent catharsis for real life. If I go longer than three days without running, I start to feel crazy. 

5. At the end of the school year from 1999 to 2001, the first thing I would do after receiving my yearbook was to smudge out the existence of the high school soccer coach with a permanent black pen. This included every reference from picture to name to acknowledging pronoun. Being dead to me, the soccer coach was then referred to exclusively as the black smudge. 

6. I considered myself fairly liberal until February of 2011, when my cousin and I went to an ice climbing festival in Cody, WY. It only took one day before I was tearing through deserted canyons in a jeep to cut the molars out of deer skulls, shoot a gun at frozen rivers, and push free-standing rock pillars down cliffs just to see the destruction. Naturally, we fueled all our activities with Pabst tall boys. 

7. My tendency to run away started at four when I spotted a very large spider on the side of my childhood home. Determining that one of us had to go, I packed up my room and prepared to leave. When this move was vetoed by my mother, I raged for hours, destroying the majority of my belongings and leaving my room a heaping mess of clothing, overturned furniture and broken toys. Grounded until the room became righted, I spent the better part of the next two days locked in my room cleaning and developing an avoidant attachment disorder to most material possessions. 

8. The biggest lessons I've learned about love have come from watching my nephew and niece grow and watching my uncle die. These life events cracked me open and forced me to grow bigger and more full than all the definitions that I'd previously used to define myself. I did not start viewing myself as an adult until I'd gained my niece and nephew and lost my uncle.