It looked like fun, so I asked Saintseester to write five questions for me. Here they are:
1. Are you a real fan of something (team, band, etc). How did that come to be?
Alabama Crimson Tide football and Kiss.
The former was because I was born into an Alabama home. My maternal grandfather was a friend of Paul “Bear” Bryant’s and held him in the highest regard. The feeling was cemented listening to my parents talk about the 1979 Sugar Bowl, at which they witnessed the famous Goal Line Stand in person.
I had a brief flirtation with Auburn fanhood in 1982. I was 11, and my parents were divorcing, and I would have breathed sulfur dioxide instead of oxygen had it been an option, so desperate was I to move in a different direction from everyone else.
The latter started because I wanted to fit in with the cool kids in grammar school. It continued and flourished because I experienced an energy with Kiss music that I didn’t experience with anyone else. Doubtless they’ve laid a few eggs in their 34+ years, but they’ve also recorded some of the best rock songs of all time. And the live show is truly nothing like anything else I’ve ever encountered.
I have a single Kiss post I’m working on. I intend it to be my definitive and only statement on what it means to be a Kiss fan. It’ll probably show up sometime in the next few months.
2. Do you have a sentimental keepsake that you would never part with. If so, what is it and how did you come by it? If not, do you have a sentimental memory?
I have a few keepsakes, of course, but I don’t think I own anything that I would never part with. The memories are much more important to me. I’ve never been one to imbue “stuff” with a great deal of significance.
3. When did you first feel like an adult? What triggered the feeling?
I first felt like an adult sometime in the second part of 1997, when I first had to resolve a disagreement with Lea with the realization that we were both “home.” There would be no defensibly putting several miles between the two of us, so what are you going to do about it, husband-type?
As painful as our first six months or so were, Lea and I have a happiness today that I’m coming to realize is truly rare. I thank God for it every day.
4. What one instant in history would you most like to travel back to and witness?
I’ve thought a lot about this one, and believe it or not, it’s the Apollo 11 moon landing.
I was born not quite two years after it happened. My dad told me that he watched it on television lying in the floor at my Aunt Dottie’s house on Logan Martin Lake—a house that I spent some very happy childhood times in—and I’d love to have been lying there with him. I’ve never lost the fascination with space travel that most young folks have at one time or another, and to me, Apollo 11 is the single most fantastic moment in the history of space exploration.
Incidentally, I work in an old NASA building that was built in the 1940s. It’s certain that at one time or another, some real giants walked in the hallways I walk every day. I think of such probably twice weekly or so.
(My runner-up was the signing of the Declaration of Independence.)
5. If money (and time) were no object, what activity would you most want to indulge yourself in?
I would do two things. First, I would pursue all of the degrees I always wanted but didn’t pursue, for fear that I’d starve. I would love a Ph.D. in epistemology, for example. Second, I’d play a lot more chess. Relieved of the daily burden of making a living, I’d love to see if I could reach the rank of grandmaster.
If you want five questions for this thread on your blog, let me know. I’ll do my best.
“It’s already in ample evidence that this vile Jezebel Rowling has made herself a multimillionaire by teaching our innocent lambs to call Satan and have him move through them in desecratory, disgusting rituals,” said Zebediah Righteous, president of IDIOTS. “But by revealing that Dumbledore—a so-called “person” in a position of authority over children—is a damned pillow-biting ass-slammer, that stupid, ignorant bitch is way beyond the pale.”