when I was cleaning my room, I sprinkled “Nair” all over my lovely 70’s green shag carpet thinking it was some sort of air freshener. Suddenly the room started smelling very badly and I ran downstairs yelling, “mom the grass in my room is smoking!” I got a nice new gray rug out of it.

Oh, how you’ve opened pandora’s box, my son.

My grandmother managed a hoity toity orthodontics office in Pacific Palisades before they retired. Her boss did my braces when I was a kid. I could not decide which was cooler, that he did Drew Barrymore’s braces or Vin Sculley’s kids. I have to go with Vin, because one time he gave our family a tour of Dodger Stadium DURING a game, and Drew has never even called.

One of his (the orthodontist) colleagues was a visiting doctor from Melbourne, Australia. He and his wife would visit for the summer ever few years, and since his youngest daughter was still in grade school, and only about 18 months older then I was, Carrie (my sister) and I would spend long stretches of the summer just hanging out with her at our grandparent’s home. I was quite certain that she was the single most attractive female creature on the planet. Aussie accents are ridiculously sexy.

She visited again when I was in high school and ended up making out with someone who frequents this blog but shall remain nameless due to their man-whore tendencies back in those days.

I would have been a man-whore if I could have been. I was just too fat. God’s funny, kids.

When Erica and I visited London in 2002, she was living there with her now husband. We crashed on the floor in their flat, and they were wonderful tour guides about town. I realized with a start that I had married a more attractive woman.

I’m giving my children an endless amount of material for future mocking of their mother. For instance, I frequently hear myself say, “When I say _______, I MEAN(repeat the same word)!” It’s ridiculous but I can’t stop myself.

I own every edition of every Superman comic book that was released between 1993 & 1998. We’re talking The Man of Steel, Superman, The Adventures of Superman, Superman in Action Comics, Superboy, Supergirl, and the list goes on.
If there was an embossed edition, I have it. Die-cut cover-got it too…I’m an avid collector.

I took a road trip with a french-horn playing buddy right after I graduated from college. We drove from Michigan through Denver (and a little spring skiing, the first real “mountain” skiing I’d done) we hit a few western National Parks (Arches, etc) and finished at the Grand Canyon. I think we spent one night near the canyon and turned around and came back. Originally it was going to be the two of us and two girls we were friends with (one was my ex-girlfriend). It’s probably best it turned out the way it did.

As a kid, my parents got a call from God to do a family music ministry. Here’s the catch, Mom is tone deaf, and played the guitar, Dad can sort of sing, my sister was 6 and still liked to pull her dress up over her head, and I was 9, and was the musical director. Needless to say, it was a lot more about the “family ministry” than the music. Funny, we didn’t get asked back to too many churches.

I played t-ball as a kid and was the third baseman because I was the only kid that could throw it all the way across the diamond to first.

I played point-gaurd on the varsity basketball team at my small Christian school as a 9th grader. We didn’t win any games.

[quote post="1300"]I realized with a start that I had married a more attractive woman.[/quote]

I love this.

Mike, you had good foresight to create this post. The mind doesn’t stop at a certain number, does it?

1) I will be going to church solo on Easter with the kids. Jason will be playing elsewhere. We have a price for family togetherness. That price is $400. (We will be spending the afternoon and evening together at his grandparents’.) I guess almost anything can be bought. And I’m not complaining!

2) In a marriage class, we were asked to write down separately our favorite date. We both wrote the same night. I was home from college at Thanksgiving. I wanted to see Bobby McFerrin sing at a club. Jason wanted to see the San Francisco Opera perform Die Valkure. The McFerrin concert was GREAT, and let out across the street just as the opera was taking second intermission. Apparently they don’t check tickets that late into the story, because we sneaked in for the last act. -World-class jazz and opera in the same few hours, and great company to go along.