Random Facts Meme

I was tagged by Rustin to participate in the following meme… so here are the rules:

1. players start with 8 random facts about themselves.
2. those who are tagged should post these rules and their 8 random facts.
3. players should tag 8 other people and notify them they have been tagged.

I still don't know why this is called a "meme" and I hope this doesn't mean that I'm signing up for some weird club but this is what I've come up with:

1. My athletic abilities are restricted to activities that may be interesting to some (well... me for instance), but don't make you popular when you're growing up in a tiny town in Northwest Kansas. I'm better than most people I've ever met at things like: Knife throwing, Tomahawk throwing, hackey sack (solo), whip cracking, boomerang throwing (and catching) and juggling. I'm also good with a frisbee, but again, there were no teams...
   
2. Although I love to read now, my dad was always bugging me to read when I was in grade school because there were always these book clubs and reading contests in school and he was the school librarian after all.
3. When I first started college, I was about 5'10" and weighed between 115-120 pounds. (pure muscle!) I had really long bangs with a blonde streak in it that I got put in the summer after I graduated from high school after fighting with my dad about it. At the small college I went to, I considered it a triumph to find out that many people thought I was from California instead of Northwest Kansas.
   
4. Nightcrawler is my favorite X-man. When I was in 4th grade, my friends who were a year older than me introduced me to the X-men and Dungeons and Dragons. We were all assigned X-men code names. Adam was Colossus, Tim was Wolverine, Sean was Cyclops and I was obviously Nightcrawler. Just another reason why X-men 3 sucked beyond comprehension...where did he go?
5. From about 4th grade through High School, I started reading the Fellowship of the Ring about 6 times and finally got all the way through it once. But I didn't have the energy to even start the Two Towers. I always felt like such a loser because all my friends (x-men) had read the Lord of the Rings multiple times and had even read the Silmarillian. When we played D&D, and they started arguing about sources for the game that came from Tolkien's masterpiece, I just pretended like I knew what they were talking about. I finally completed the trilogy AND the Silmarillion after the first movie came out.
6. When I was in 8th grade I set a school record for pole vaulting 10' 6" high in a track meet. I loved to pole vault and that was the only reason I went out for track in the first place, because I really don't like to run. If I could go find a pole vault pit and pole somewhere that they'd let me, I'd go out and pole vault for fun. But again, that's one of those things that you just don't find at work out gyms... As you get better at pole vaulting, you start using heavier and heavier poles so that there's more stored energy in the pole as you bend it. I kept going up it pole weight, but got to the point where I'd bend the pole and it would shoot me straight up in the air because I couldn't run fast enough to build forward momentum to go over. So, to get better I was going to have to start running faster. I didn't go out for track after my Freshman year. It's been a long time since I've checked, but to my knowledge the 8th grade record stands.
   
7. In actuality, I am a perfectionist. For example: my wife is always amazed when I fold clothes because she thinks they're so perfect when I do it. I don't agree with her. In fact, that's why I hate folding clothes: I can't get them perfect. Unfortunately, the prominent motivation in my life that always over rides my perfectionism is my laziness.
8. When I was 27 and the music started at the midnight showing of "The Phantom Menace" on opening night, I cried.
   

My perfectionism is showing. I'm not sure if those are the 8 things I want to post... My bigger problem is coming up with eight ‘tags’. I don't have many friends whose blogs I read with any regularity.

Jake
Bill McNeil
Languisher
celia

That's all I've got and I resorted to myspace... sorry.