Seven Things You Probably Don't Know About Me

Michael tagged me for this some time ago, and I'm just now getting around to it. (See number 2.)

Okay Bob B, I'm tagging you.

1. I started dating my wife in 1973. We broke up when I went into the military following high school. We reunited and got married in 1994. Our son was born in 2000, twenty-six and a half years after our first date.

2. I'm not one to rush into things.

3. I enjoy trading emails with folks, but I'd rather take a beating than chat online.

4. I'm apparently known by friends and coworkers as an easy-going, affable guy, but I have a decided mean streak. I control it, but it's there.

5. When I was fourteen, I signed up for roller derby training school. I did it because I had a crush on one of the skaters in L.A. Her name was Peggy Fowler. I had to drop out before I even started when my parents found out I'd forged my dad's signature on the release form. Life was not pleasant for me for a while after that.

6. I took my first flying lesson in a Cessna 150 when I was thirteen. I ended up getting about fourteen hours of flight time before the money ran out. My instructor back then, a gentleman by the name of Bob Gililand, had been a nineteen year-old civilian instructor for the Army Air Corps during World War II, flying Stearmans. For years, I was the youngest student he'd ever had. During the eighties, he had a couple of eleven year-old students, so my "record" with him fell. I still hold another record with him, though. At the age of thirty, I started flying with Bob again, and seventeen years after my first lesson, I got my Private fixed-wing add-on rating. Thus, of the thousands of students he's had since World War II, I hold the record of the one who took the longest to get a rating.

7. I'm eligible to join the Sons of the American Revolution, but since I'm not planning to look for a job in D.C., I haven't.