My friend (and frequent Simple Trick commenter) Jennifer Broschinsky maintains a blog/diary over at LiveJournal, where she occasionally posts up one of the personal surveys that make the rounds of that online community. For the journaler/blogger, the point of these exercises is to reveal things about yourself that you might not think to write about without prompting. The point for the reader is to gain some insight into what makes your friends tick. Think of these surveys as the online equivalent of the handwritten notes we used to pass around in boring high school classes, the ones that asked embarrassing questions and which we always hesitated to return because we figured we’d look like a dork whichever way we answered.

A while back Jen put up a collection of topics that all began with “Five Things You May Not Know About…” I thought her answers were pretty interesting, and the questions that prompted them fairly stimulating, so naturally I nicked the thing for my own blog. Below are my answers to the “Five Things” survey. Enjoy!

Five Things You May Not Know About My Time in School are:

1. Mr. Bridge, my high-school AP English teacher thought I was a potential troublemaker because I frequently wore a trenchcoat and dark sunglasses. Back then, such attire was merely a fashion statement; today, it would be grounds for taking me into police custody.
2. I used to wear two smart-alecky buttons on the lapel of my trenchcoat. (It was was a fashion requirement in the ’80s to declare your attitude to the world through the medium of smart-alecky buttons. Think of them as an early, somewhat limited form of blogging.) My buttons of choice read, “Just Visiting This Planet,” and “Don’t Tell Me What Kind of Day to Have.” In case you’re wondering, yes, I still have them. Somewhere.
3. When I was in 5th grade, I won a reading contest by plowing through some 30,000 pages in about eight months. (I’m not exaggerating. I don’t remember the exact number, and the documentation isn’t handy as I’m typing this, but it really was somewhere in the neighborhood of 30K. I can’t remember now what it was like to have enough time to read that much in a single year.)
4. During my first year in middle school, the school itself was brand-new and still under construction.
5. My all-time favorite teacher was Mr. Gilham (5th grade), closely followed by Mr. Harvey (various high school English and writing classes).

Five Things You May Not Know About the Job (Jobs) I Have (or Had) are:

1. My first job was running antique “changeover” projectors with carbon-arc lamps in a little, single-screen, neighborhood movie theater in Draper, Utah. (If you don’t understand what I just described, feel free to ask…)
2. My second job was running state-of-the-art, platter-style projectors at a seven-screen (later nine-screen) multiplex in Sandy, Utah.
3. My first two jobs were the best ones I’ve ever had.
4. The weirdest job I ever had was a temporary gig as one of those supermarket product demonstrators, the folks who pass out food samples. I earned minimum wage, stood on my feet for eight hours with only a couple of bathroom breaks, and got to keep whatever product I didn’t distribute. The day I demo’d those frosted holiday cookies, I somehow managed not to hand out very much product… 🙂
5. The absolute worst job I’ve ever had was working as a customer-service phone-drone for American Express Traveler’s Cheques. It was a bad fit, and I should’ve left after a couple of months, but I tried to stick it out. As a result, I spent the majority of an entire year at the bottom of an emotional black-hole that sucked out my very soul and crushed it into a fine paste of sub-atomic particles, and all for minimum wage and no benefits…

Five Things You May Not Know About My Online Life are:

1. I first used the Internet in late 1998.
2. The first thing I did on-line was download a trailer for Star Wars: Episode I.
3. I routinely follow about 30 blogs and on-line journals.
4. I use an aggregator service called Bloglines to easily stay on top of all those blogs and journals.
5. One of the funniest things I’ve ever run across on-line is <a
   href=”http://tachyonresearch.com/gallery/Yoda-in-Ireland?page=1″>Yoda’s vacation photos from Ireland.

Five Things You May Not Know About Where I Live are:

1. The mountains that surround the Salt Lake Valley are very tall and near to the city, making it feel as if we live at the bottom of an enormous bowl.
2. The shape of the Valley and the prevailing wind patterns cause an annual winter “temperature inversion”. The result of this phenomenon is that Salt Lake often has a denser smog layer than much larger cities like Los Angeles, and it gets extremely cold this time of the year. Unless you drive up one of the canyons and rise above the inversion layer, where it becomes quite pleasant.
3. Everyone associates Utah with snow-skiing or red-rock desert, but the state actually has just about every type of terrain you can imagine, from yellow-sand desert to Midwestern-style farm ground to high alpine forest, all within a
   few hours drive.
4. Because of #3, a lot more movies, TV shows and commercials are filmed here than most people realize.
5. Utahns have our own condiment, fry sauce, which is virtually unknown outside of this state. The exact recipe varies depending on where you’re eating, but it’s basically a mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise (the popular Training Table restaurants make theirs with barbecue sauce instead of ketchup). I don’t know for sure, but I’ve heard this stuff was originally created by a local fast-food chain called Arctic Circle.

Five Things You May Not Know About My Core Personality are:

1. I’m pretty much a softie. I get my feelings hurt easily, and I constantly worry about hurting the feelings of others.
2. I don’t mind change, I just don’t like to be around when it happens.
3. I enjoy a good debate, but not an argument.
4. I’m a loyal friend… unless you really, really piss me off.
5. I can be stubborn as a barnyard mule at times, and I inherited this trait from both of my parents (they argue over which of them I most take after in this respect).

Five Things You May Not Know About My Home Life are:

1. I am an only child, and no, I wasn’t lonely while growing up, at least not in the sense that people always seem to mean when they ask me that question.
2. I still live in the same house in which I grew up.
3. I live with a neurotic border collie named Shadow.
4. I refer to my basement as “The Archive” because I store all of my collectibles and files down there.
5. My dad runs an automotive shop in my backyard, so the driveway is always crowded with junk cars.

Five Things You May Not Know that I Desperately Want are:

1. Time to travel at a leisurely pace and really get to know the places I visit instead of just passing through.
2. My name on the spine of a best-selling novel. Or maybe a movie screen. Either would be acceptable.
3. An elegant, relaxed life that isn’t just about trying to make enough money to cover the bills.
4. To be the “go-to” guy, the expert on some esoteric subject that people need to seek out. Unfortunately, the only subject in which I’m really an expert is pop culture, and everybody knows about that.
5. Respect.

Five Embarrassing Fannish Admissions I Have That You May Not Know are:

1. I once actually used the “my hands are dirty, too, what are you afraid of?” line from The Empire Strikes Back on a girl. The scary thing is that it worked…
2. I still have all of my childhood Star Wars toys. Complete with accessories and, in a couple of cases, the original boxes. (I did play with the toys as a kid, it’s just that the boxes never got thrown away and I was lucky enough not to lose anything.)
3. When I was a kid, our kitchen floor had a circular pattern in the linoleum, and I used to pretend these circles were Star Trek-style transporter pads that I could use to beam myself to other parts of the house.
4. The movie Free Enterprise feels like a documentary about my life. (If you haven’t heard of this film, don’t feel bad; it’s pretty obscure. Here’s the official web site.)
5. I can identify any episode of Classic Star Trek by title within the first 60 seconds. (Same with the original Battlestar Galactica, too, if you want to get really scary.)

Five Things You May Not Know About What I Do in a Typical Day are:

1. I tend to hit the “snooze” button a half dozen times before I finally wake all the way up.
2. On most days I stay up until midnight, at least. I’d like to say I’m doing something productive during that time, but I’m usually watching TV, trying to read, or both at the same time.
3. I listen to NPR on the way to and from work. Despite its reputation for being liberal, I believe this network actually presents the most balanced news on the radio.
4. I eat out three or four nights a week, on average.
5. I buy coffee on the way to work instead of making it for myself, usually from the Maverik (they seem to have the best coffee among the mud-dispensing convenience stores). Sometimes I splurge and hit a drive-thru espresso shack.

Five Things You May Not Know that are Really Important to My Character are:

1. My uncle died from Lou Gehrig’s Disease when I was eighteen, an event that is still shaping how I view the world and my family relationships. No, I won’t elaborate on that.
2. I have little tolerance for stupid people or poorly behaved children (which are often the offspring of stupid people, it seems).
3. My mother always told me I wasn’t capable of lying to her, and I believed it.
4. I think people never stop learning, unless they choose to.
5. I was always taught that there are only two kinds of people, the jerks and everybody else. Color, religion, and politics don’t matter as much as how we treat people.
   Unfortunately, natural selection seems to favor the jerks.