1. I played hoops in college, and although I’ve never
been much above 6-5, I was always listed as 6-6 and 210. It really was
the shoes. That false inch of added height never was much help in the
post, where I wrestled for position most of the time.
2. I find that Levis fit better than Lees, Wranglers, Old Navy–to say
nothing of sweat pants, jogging suites, etc.
3. Berbere sauce on spaghetti pasta–best meal. Chicken or beef doesn’t
matter. My good friend E. is responsible for this.
4. First car was a four-door 85 Ford Tempo–royal blue. Its transmission
crapped out.
5. Born and raised on a parcel of the sold-off Chippewa Indian Reservation
in rural middle Michigan. The reservation was much larger before it was
sold into pieces of land, bit by bit by bit.
6. College literacy caught fire on Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Read ’em all. Started
with Breakfast of Champions and loved the image-doodles.
7. In 1991, my senior year of high school, I set a Beal City High School
record for blocked shots in a season with 91. It’s been broken since.
8. All-time favorite basketball teams: 88-89 Pistons. Hands down. More
recently, Stampede–both of them. But I’d rather watch the college game
when it’s all said and done.
9. My parents met in college at Central Michigan U.–my big brother’s
alma mater, too. I attended for one year before transferring to Park.
10. During the spring of my first year of college, I worked nights stocking
shelves at Kroger. My aisles were pet food and soap. I spent long hours,
late at night, "facing" the small cans of cat food, building
up resentment toward cat spoilers who bought the expensive stuff and mussed
my shelves each day.
11. I think I developed a kind of allergic sensitivity during those hours
in the soap and chemical aisle. Now, when I shop (every other week, D.
and I trade off), I avoid those aisles, only venturing in if I absolutely
must.
12. Class president all four years of high school. And a year younger
than my peers. So what if nobody ran against me after that first election,
freshman year.
13. Childhood don’t go without: Green Lantern Underoos. Crazy for the
Hulk, too.
14. Had three surgeries in 1995: one on my right ankle (bone spurs) and
two on my right shoulder (scope and reconstruction). Too many sprains
and dislocations. And then there was a full week of medical I-don’t-know
when I sliced a four-incher in the top of my scalp–accidentally…long
story, that.
15. Kept a regular opinion column in my college newspaper, The Stylus.
Learned the perils of biting commentary there.
16. Hablo espanol bastamente, pero lo escribo mejor. Shouldn’t that be
the other way around?
17. I was never in the second grade. Went straight to third from first,
like a disoriented base-runner in kickball.
18. Wasn’t any good at baseball, either. Sat on the bench for most of
one season with the Fireballs–the third place team in a four-team league.

19. My best dog was Tony. Got him at the Isabella County pound for five
bucks. Had to have him put to sleep on the Sunday after the C’s in Minnesota–the
only C’s I presented at. Tony was a Cairn Terrier mix (part animal, part
human).
20. In 1984, on the long bus ride home, bullies took my Detroit Tigers
baseball cap and threw it out the window. My mom drove me to find it alongside
Winn Road, in front of a horrid-smelling farm.
21. Childhood homes were heated mostly by wood. J. and I had to pitch the
wood into the basement every Sunday, one wheelbarrow load at a time. One
would pitch; the other would stand in the basement and stack. Many Sundays
devolved into wood-pitching fights, where we would throw the blocks of wood
with the intent of hitting each other. Brutal.
22. Favorite fishing spot: off the dolomite pier at Nates’ Marina, Drummond
Island, Mich. Lots of rock bass hiding in the shadows under boats. We
could see them in the water.
23. Spent Saturday mornings bowling as a kid. Rolled the rock for Orange
Crush at Chippewa Lanes.
24. Dad is a land surveyor. I have an affinity for mechanical pencils
because of it.
25. My son’s birth certificate lists my age as 16 and my partner D.’s
age as 18 when Ph. was born in Missouri. We were both in Michigan at the
time he was delivered–an Aries.
26. Prefer hardwood floors and linoleum to carpet. Unless I’m traveling.
Then I like to emulate Bruce Willis in Die Hard: "Nothing
better than taking your shoes off and feeling the carpet after a day on
airplanes."
27. I can’t find the source, but I like the mantra from Steven Segal,
"Superior effort, superior mental attitude." Yet I’ve never
watched an entire Segal movie. He’s a tough-guy actor, right?
28. First video game addiction? Serpentine–a C64 cartridge and a Slik
Stick. Hours upon hours. Once we had a disk drive (Christmas, 1985), it
was Lance Haffner Final Four–all text basketball. Not long after that,
I figured out how to hack the files to make my own teams.
29. Along Winn Road, the ditches often filled with water during the winter
months. At the bus stop, we’d take turns daring each other to test the
ice. It was only waist deep. Would it hold? I was the youngest, so it
was common for me to get on the bus with a soaked pant leg. But it happened
to Billy N. almost as often; he was older than me, but he would always
take the dare.
30. I worked as an insurance claims adjuster for thirteen months in Saginaw
and Detroit.
31. Shh. Lions fan.
32. I don’t have favorite beer. More of a sampler, especially of local
brews. Cheap domestic pilsners don’t bother me; lite beers don’t bother
me. Wine? Shiraz over anything else.
33. Had an Adam computer for a few years, mainly because Dragon’s Lair
was a blast.
34. Most humbling work experience: United Cerebral Palsy weekend caregiver.
Worked 32 hours on weekends for several months as an undergrad.
35. One movie I could watch over and over: The Truman Show. Soundtrack
is appealing, too. In fact, I’m listening to it now.
36. I lived in Hazel Park, three blocks from Eight Mile, while I worked
in Detroit. Marveled at the old racetrack when I drove by.
37. More than anything about home-owning, plumbing troubles me. I’ve cobbled
through a few hellacious plumbing projects; supply lines are worse than
drains. And I come from a family with simple solutions to conundrums that
present me with big challenges.
38. We once had a dog named Jake who ate through quarter-inch cables.
He was a wild, writhing, horribly out-of-control Rhodesian Ridgeback.
I don’t know what happened to him, which makes me think one of my uncles
took him "hunting." That’s what they said when they, you know,
left and never came home.
39. When my mom died in the summer of 1997, I quit my job in Detroit and
moved to KC. Still not sure why she died. Just didn’t wake up that Wednesday
morning from the age of 48.
40. Bill Laimbeer and me. I took this number in high school and college.
Have a fondness for 40 still.
41. I was a performative minimalist in sports: one touchdown in high school
football, one dunk in a h.s. basketball game, one dunk in a college basketball
game, one double-double in college. This is important, considering I was
never the best player on any of those teams.
42. For lunch lately, I’ve been having one Diet Coke, a Campbell’s Soup
At Hand, and a bag of microwave popcorn. Every workday of the week. And
I’ve cut ten pounds since the holidays, without nary an instance of exercise,
unless teaching counts as exercise.
43. I like cutting the grass, but I’m not into the pristine, homogenous
suburban lawnscape.
44. Purple lilac bushes are my yard decor of choice. There were huge ones
in the front when I was a kid–big enough to hide inside, like a plush-cover
fort with bees swirling.
45. I spent a bunch of recesses inside writing, "I will not…"
in elementary school.
46. I don’t have a full scale family tree nor an abiding interest in my
personal genealogy, but I learned more last fall about my great great
great grandmother, Cora Matilda (Hamilton) Roe (2/13/1870-11/4/1926).
She was married at age 13 to Ephriam Roe. Rather young, since he was thirtysomething.
It’s disputed whether Ephraim was from an Ojibwa Tribe. I have papers
that say he was and papers that say he wasn’t. What’s the paper worth?
Or the information on it? He died near Edmonton in 1929.
47. I wish I made more time for playing euchre. And for reading.
48. I sleep on my back and side mostly. Log position. Almost never remember
dreams.
49. My wallet has an imprinted buck head on it, like it was designed for
a hunter. I never even went through hunter’s safety, although most of my
friends did. My take on hunter’s safety: stay the hell out of the woods
when there are guns blazing.
50. I’ve cut my own hair since 1992. Even the crooked ones were free (or
about 15 cents per cut if you figure the cost of the clippers).
51. If I was stranded with one television channel: Food Network. I don’t
have much time to cook, but I’m endlessly wowed by the combinations, the
ways of making.
52. In tenth grade, I came up with the winning homecoming float idea for
our class: Ollie North says, "Shred the Red Raiders."
53. I thought I could do this in one sitting, but it’s late. More tomorrow.
54. I’ve endured a broken left wrist, four shoulder dislocations, a separated
shoulder, a half-dozen ankle sprains and numerous stitches from gashes,
mostly from basketball.
55. I was at the last Grateful Dead concert–Soldier Field, summer of
1995. Drove straight back to KC in time for Lollapalooza at Sandstone
Amphitheater, which included Sinead O’Connor and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones.
56. I am–like my mom was–ultra-sensitive to poison ivy. I can pick it
up from pollen just by walking through the woods. Had the poison ivy every
summer that I’ve lived in Missouri.
57. I like walking. Unless it’s inside a shopping mall. Then I suffer
from full-body lethargy. Malls exhaust me.
58. Clothing taste: comfort over style. And a weak sense of style, too.
59. D. and I have more synthetic houseplants than real ones. We can’t
work out a watering schedule for the real ones. Authentic plants either
drown or dry up.
60. In the German tradition, we opened gifts on Christmas Eve most of
my childhood. Although we didn’t have the candles on the tree (which is
my understanding of the cause for unwrapping on the Eve rather than the
next morning), it had the practical effect of allowing the adults to sleep
in. And they did. Didn’t matter if the kids were up at five.
61. First CD: Tom Petty, Full Moon Fever. Still have it, but I
don’t listen to it much.
62. I never learned to dive. My dad is a terrific swimmer, but I had too
active an imagination to go head first into a lake. What’s below the murky
surface? Rocks, stumps, lake sturgeon…. Terrifying.
63. A combination of teachers whose good advice I followed persistently
kept my interest and compelled me to study English, composition, rhetoric,
and everything under the Sun that converges within this sprawling, rich
field.
64. Places I’ve spent six weeks studying or training without ever taking
up residence: Denver, Colorado and Xalapa, Veracruzana.
65. I prefer cheap shampoo.
66. I like Blue Moon ice cream better than any other flavor. What flavor
is it? Can’t be sure. Maybe that’s why I like it.
67. In the summer of 1992, my brother and I moved the entire Chemistry
Department at Central Michigan University, cart by precious cart, into
its new facility. Ultraviolet spectrometers, centrifuge equipment and
so on.
68. Days until my 30th birthday.
69. I tend to keep a messy office and a clean desk.
70. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. Nerd Ropes. Black licorice. In that order.
71. Most interesting place during my study-stay in Mexico: La Plaza de
Los Tres Culturas in D.F. where protesters were killed and forcefully
dispersed just before the ’68 Olympics. After that, Xico. Then Huatulco.
72. I’ve been in my current full-time job–athletics administration–for
almost seven years.
73. I don’t care if it’s grilled over charcoal or gas-heated lava rocks,
as long as it tastes good.
74. Year I was born. On Cinco de Mayo: Taurus.
75. No tattoos or piercings.
76. I was once my son’s brother. No joke.
77. Coca-Cola over Pepsi-Cola. Had Pibb in my great-grandparents’ Sheboygan,
Wisc., basement before it made its popular comeback.
78. Took freshman comp with Dr. Phil Dillman at CMU. Scored a B, he became
a friend, gave me lots of books in exchange for yard work. When I visited
Michigan in the summer of 1993, I drove him to Ann Arbor where he was
diagnosed with the cancer that took his life a two years later.
79. Never cared for pet rodents, but we kept rabbits and a guinea pig
(who was blind from chewing through an electrical cord).
80. I have started a lot of books I haven’t finished yet. Lots.
81. Wore size 14 shoes at the age of 13. Still do. Well, no, not the same
pair of shoes.
82. Early in high school, I refused to write an essay declaring my religious
values on the grounds that it wasn’t anybody’s business. After a parent-teacher
conference (thick with teacher-talk centered on my transgression), we
agreed that I would write it for my mom, who was an early childhood teacher.
She gave me a B, noting that I didn’t spend sufficient time on it.
83. I don’t care for golf.
84. I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls.
85. Two vivid oral reading memories: A Summer in the South with
my mom, and Where the Red Fern Grows with my uncle G.
86. My first time on an airplane was when I was in kindergarten. My brother
and I flew with two of our grandmothers to Seattle shortly after Mt. St.
Helens erupted. Ashy.
87. I keep a mileage log, noting how much gas and how many miles every time
I fill up. It’s ridiculous, according to D., since I never use the data
for anything. It’s just spinning into a data-list, vehicular narrative.
What could be more productive while the fuel flows? Windshield washing?
88. I have a difficult time telling people no when they approach me for
favors. As a result, I get buried in odds and ends.
89. On the first "official" night of the Gulf War, I went by myself
to watch Edward Scissorhands for a review speech I had to deliver
in a high school class.
90. My older brother was a wiz with Legos. We had a small, white suitcase
filled most of the way with them. One time he built a grand ship–far
better than anything I could have done. I carried it to the top bunk and
released it into the air. It flew straight to the wooden chair where,
when it landed, it smashed into bits.
91. Payback for the time he busted a rotten squash on my face, giving
me my first bloody nose.
92. Car radio auto-set on 1. R&B and hip-hop, 2. Adult Urban, 3.Kansas
NPR, 4. UMKC NPR, 5. Suburban Pop, 6. Hip-hop.
93. My elbows and pinkies are double-jointed.
94. I shoot pool left handed, except when I play on Yahoo! Then I use the
mouse with my right hand, which explains why I’m woeful in both settings.
95. I rooted for the Cleveland Browns passionately during the Bernie Kosar
era–Ozzie Newsome, Kevin Mack, Webster Slaughter, and on and on. I was
ridiculed for wearing a Browns jacket during most of junior high. Now
Ph. wears it when he wants to sport a "vintage" look.
96. I played the trombone for a few weeks. Beyond that, I’m musically inept.
97. D. and I knew each other for 17 years before we got married last summer.

98. My first professional conference was the C’s in Atlanta. V.V. delivered
the keynote, "On the Rhetoric and Precedents of Racism." I remember
it vividly.
99. My dad sent D. an email the other day to wish her well with student
teaching. He reminded her that my mom was an early childhood teacher, and
he had this to say: "For her, teaching was play." I could elaborate
a lengthy, complicated teaching philosophy, but I won’t do that here, since
I’m at the end of the list. I really like that nugget, not just for the
ways it reflects my mom’s approach to teaching or D.’s, but my own, too.

100. In case I don’t see you, good afternoon, good evening and goodnight.