My Seven Things
1. I was named after Erik Estrada. It’s true. My mom was a huge fan of CHiPS. My sister was also named after a 1970’s pop culture icon, but if she wants to out herself on that one, I’ll leave it up to her.
2. I am 6’8”, which is pretty tall. I don’t really care for sports. I play in a street hockey league, but that’s more about organized outdoor drinking than anything else. I was once at a party and LeBron James was there. He gave me the “tall guy nod.” A few years ago, I went to a weekend getaway for tall people in the Poconos. I was there under the pretense that I would be doing a radio story about it, so I walked around and recorded interviews with people all weekend. It was an interesting experience. Apparently there is a whole subculture of tall clubs that do those types of weekend getaways. There are people who just hop from one to the next and their entire social lives revolve around them. I didn’t feel much of a connection with the people there. They seemed wounded in a way that I didn’t really understand. The weekend ended with the annual Harvest Moon Ball, which was decorated in a country western theme. They handed out cowboy hats and I danced with some older women who snapped photos and said they were going to send them to their ex husbands. I never finished the radio story about that.
3. I have a criminal record that makes me ineligible to take the civil service exam. About eight or nine years ago, I was bumming around the country, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. After staying in Florida for close to a year, I found myself back in Pennsylvania, living with my parents and washing dishes at a banquet hall. One of my friends from Florida was driving around the country in a van with his girlfriend. They came to visit me for a couple of days and one day after I got off work, we decided to go to Wal-Mart. When we were walking in, there was a cart by the curb that had a cube of Pepsi underneath. It looked like someone loaded up their car and forgot it, so my friend said, “If that’s still there when we come out, I’m going to grab it.” So we walked out of the store and it was still there. My friend picked it up and started walking and all of a sudden, all these people ran after us. It turns out that it was set up by the people hanging out in the little area marked off for employees taking a smoke break. I don’t know if this is still true, but at the time, if you caught a shoplifter at Wal-Mart, you got a $50 bonus on your paycheck. So they called security, and I didn’t really think it was a big deal, so when the security guard called the cops, I told them that I did it. I didn’t want my friend from out of state getting arrested and having to deal with that hassle. I figured that since I lived there in that small town, they would tell me to stop causing trouble and send me on my way. That was not the case. I was arrested for retail theft, got the whole mug-shots-and-fingerprints treatment and was released. My friend from out of town told me that he was planning on selling some bootleg Star Wars tapes, so he’d have money to chip in on the fine in no time. When he left town a day later, I never heard from him again. The last time I saw him, was on The Tonight Show a couple months ago. He is now the lead singer of a fairly popular band that signed a multi-million-dollar recording contract a couple years back. What bothers me about it to this day is not the money. What bothers me is that we were pretty good friends for a brief period of time and that stupid fine ended it. We’ve both been pretty successful since then. I wish we could compare notes.
4. I was almost completely deaf for an entire week in 2008. I should start by saying that on any given day, I have a significant hearing loss in my left ear—almost 60%. It’s the result of a really bad infection I had when I was really young. Anyway, new neural pathways form, and since then, my brain has done a pretty good job of filling in the gaps. Normally, I enjoy mostly stereo sound. One morning a few months ago, I woke up and I could hear something that sounded like a refrigerator running or like a truck idling outside, only this was coming from inside my head. It was subtle, but it didn’t seem to be messing with my hearing, so I ignored it for the day. When I woke up the next morning, it was like the volume was turned up on the rumbling sound and down on my hearing. I could barely hear my own voice and the sounds that I could hear came at me in a nearly indistinguishable wall of noise. I went to a free clinic that passed me along to a hospital that passed me along to an ENT all in the same day. They diagnosed me with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss and prescribed a ludicrous amount of steroids. On the third day of my predicament, I went to work and told only my direct supervisor what was happening. For the rest of the week, I sat in my cubicle quietly and prayed that my phone wouldn’t ring because I didn’t know if I would be able to hear the person on the other end. When a coworker would say something to me, I would read their lips or just smile and act really busy. At the end of the week, on Friday afternoon, my hearing started to come back. I had lunch with @franktheguy in the park and I could hear his voice. On my way home, a man was playing violin on the subway platform and I could make it out; it wasn’t a confusing wall of indiscernible sounds. That week was the single most terrifying period of time in my life. I didn’t Twitter at all that week.
5. The first time I smoked a cigarette was in 6th grade. It was a Newport. I watched one of the older kids drop it and when no one was looking, I shoved it in my pocket. I held onto it for days and one morning when I was walking to school, I lit it up. I puffed on it a few times and figured out how to inhale. I got so sick I thought I was going to die. Sometime in the following couple years, I started smoking regularly. I gave up the habit long ago, but occasionally I take a puff outside the bar.
6. I used to own a 1972 Yamaha XS650. As impractical as it was, I loved it. I paid for it with a student loan.
7. One of my close friends from back home leaves for Iraq next week. It’s his second tour.
My Seven Things
1. I was named after Erik Estrada. It’s true. My mom was a huge fan of CHiPS. My sister was also named after a 1970’s pop culture icon, but if she wants to out herself on that one, I’ll leave it up to her.
2. I am 6’8”, which is pretty tall. I don’t really care for sports. I play in a street hockey league, but that’s more about organized outdoor drinking than anything else. I was once at a party and LeBron James was there. He gave me the “tall guy nod.” A few years ago, I went to a weekend getaway for tall people in the Poconos. I was there under the pretense that I would be doing a radio story about it, so I walked around and recorded interviews with people all weekend. It was an interesting experience. Apparently there is a whole subculture of tall clubs that do those types of weekend getaways. There are people who just hop from one to the next and their entire social lives revolve around them. I didn’t feel much of a connection with the people there. They seemed wounded in a way that I didn’t really understand. The weekend ended with the annual Harvest Moon Ball, which was decorated in a country western theme. They handed out cowboy hats and I danced with some older women who snapped photos and said they were going to send them to their ex husbands. I never finished the radio story about that.
3. I have a criminal record that makes me ineligible to take the civil service exam. About eight or nine years ago, I was bumming around the country, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life. After staying in Florida for close to a year, I found myself back in Pennsylvania, living with my parents and washing dishes at a banquet hall. One of my friends from Florida was driving around the country in a van with his girlfriend. They came to visit me for a couple of days and one day after I got off work, we decided to go to Wal-Mart. When we were walking in, there was a cart by the curb that had a cube of Pepsi underneath. It looked like someone loaded up their car and forgot it, so my friend said, “If that’s still there when we come out, I’m going to grab it.” So we walked out of the store and it was still there. My friend picked it up and started walking and all of a sudden, all these people ran after us. It turns out that it was set up by the people hanging out in the little area marked off for employees taking a smoke break. I don’t know if this is still true, but at the time, if you caught a shoplifter at Wal-Mart, you got a $50 bonus on your paycheck. So they called security, and I didn’t really think it was a big deal, so when the security guard called the cops, I told them that I did it. I didn’t want my friend from out of state getting arrested and having to deal with that hassle. I figured that since I lived there in that small town, they would tell me to stop causing trouble and send me on my way. That was not the case. I was arrested for retail theft, got the whole mug-shots-and-fingerprints treatment and was released. My friend from out of town told me that he was planning on selling some bootleg Star Wars tapes, so he’d have money to chip in on the fine in no time. When he left town a day later, I never heard from him again. The last time I saw him, was on The Tonight Show a couple months ago. He is now the lead singer of a fairly popular band that signed a multi-million-dollar recording contract a couple years back. What bothers me about it to this day is not the money. What bothers me is that we were pretty good friends for a brief period of time and that stupid fine ended it. We’ve both been pretty successful since then. I wish we could compare notes.
4. I was almost completely deaf for an entire week in 2008. I should start by saying that on any given day, I have a significant hearing loss in my left ear—almost 60%. It’s the result of a really bad infection I had when I was really young. Anyway, new neural pathways form, and since then, my brain has done a pretty good job of filling in the gaps. Normally, I enjoy mostly stereo sound. One morning a few months ago, I woke up and I could hear something that sounded like a refrigerator running or like a truck idling outside, only this was coming from inside my head. It was subtle, but it didn’t seem to be messing with my hearing, so I ignored it for the day. When I woke up the next morning, it was like the volume was turned up on the rumbling sound and down on my hearing. I could barely hear my own voice and the sounds that I could hear came at me in a nearly indistinguishable wall of noise. I went to a free clinic that passed me along to a hospital that passed me along to an ENT all in the same day. They diagnosed me with Sudden Sensorineural Hearing Loss and prescribed a ludicrous amount of steroids. On the third day of my predicament, I went to work and told only my direct supervisor what was happening. For the rest of the week, I sat in my cubicle quietly and prayed that my phone wouldn’t ring because I didn’t know if I would be able to hear the person on the other end. When a coworker would say something to me, I would read their lips or just smile and act really busy. At the end of the week, on Friday afternoon, my hearing started to come back. I had lunch with @franktheguy in the park and I could hear his voice. On my way home, a man was playing violin on the subway platform and I could make it out; it wasn’t a confusing wall of indiscernible sounds. That week was the single most terrifying period of time in my life. I didn’t Twitter at all that week.
5. The first time I smoked a cigarette was in 6th grade. It was a Newport. I watched one of the older kids drop it and when no one was looking, I shoved it in my pocket. I held onto it for days and one morning when I was walking to school, I lit it up. I puffed on it a few times and figured out how to inhale. I got so sick I thought I was going to die. Sometime in the following couple years, I started smoking regularly. I gave up the habit long ago, but occasionally I take a puff outside the bar.
6. I used to own a 1972 Yamaha XS650. As impractical as it was, I loved it. I paid for it with a student loan.
7. One of my close friends from back home leaves for Iraq next week. It’s his second tour.
