When I was at the game show JEOPARDY! in 1998, I was wearing my red Chucks through the entire warmup.
I swore I told this story before, but I cannot find it.
For reasons that defy logical explanation, I have long had a grand affection for red Converse sneaker, the Chuck Taylor variety, preferably high tops. I have other colors, but I tend to favor the red ones.
Moreover, it’s the color that gets the most unsolicited, and usually positive, comments, usually along the lines of, “I wish I had the guts to wear them.”
Someone gave us a Christmas ornament some years back that looked like red Chucks.
When I was at the game show JEOPARDY! in 1998, I was wearing my red Chucks through the entire warm-up, then, got all tradition in changing into uncomfortable, relatively new shoes for the actual games. I was convinced that was a fatal error on my part. I might have fared better with the Chucks.
We bought our current house in May 2000, a week before our first wedding anniversary. I was in the backyard, removing some branches. Unfortunately, someone had thrown some used lumber in the pile, not immediately visible. I stepped on a nail, which went through my red Chucks.
I pulled the nail out, and hobbled what felt like an interminable distance to the front of the house, hopped up to the front porch, opened the front door, and yelled to my wife. She replied, “I’m upstairs!” I replied, “Come DOWN!”
She drove me to the urgent care place, 20 minutes before it closed. They numbed my foot, before removing little bits of my red Chuck Taylor sneakers from the hole in my foot.
I may have thrown them away after we got home. *** Note: I have been nominated by my buddy Lisa over at Peripheral Perceptions to participate in the Five Photos, Five Stories meme, which simply says I should post a photo each day for five consecutive days and attach a story to the photo. It can be fiction or non-fiction, a poem or a short paragraph and each day nominate another blogger for the challenge.
The problem is that almost all my posts are stories and have pictures. So I’m cheating and writing only one new post. And I’m nominating YOU!
The thing I remember most about the 1964-65 World’s Fair in NYC , as was true of many people, was the Belgian waffle.
My April was much better than my March, but between blog connectivity problems (more anon), and back pain that kept me out of work for a couple of days, followed by four days out of town for work training, which compressed other tasks, I didn’t a chance to update the April Rambling since April 17. Moreover, I discovered some links from as much as two years ago I was GOING to use but they fell through the cracks. Meaning that I’ll do another one at the end of the month. Always said that if blogging got too hard, I would not do it. And this, comparatively, is the easy post I need right now.
An article about depression I was going to include in a different blog post. Some of the earlier posts from this blog I liked too. The blogger also linked to the TEDx talk Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we share. “The opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality, and it was vitality that seemed to seep away from me at that moment.” When I imagine many people’s understanding of depression, I think of that famous scene in the movie Moonstuck where the Nicolas Cage character says “I’m in love with you,” and the Cher character slaps him and says, “Snap out of it,” as though that were the answer.
Sometimes I offer…information unsolicited, but most of the time I don’t say anything unless asked rather than appear to be a “know-it-all”. How do YOU decide when to share a fact and when to remain silent?
I say less and less, barring someone potentially coming to bodily harm. That is unless we’re having an interactive conversation about a mutually interesting topic, like the chat I recently had with our departing intern about music, which involved Woody Guthrie, the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album, and Sly & the Family Stone.
Apropos of nothing, almost every time I read something about swimming, the Peter Gabriel song I Go Swimming, from the live album, pops into my head, especially that opening bass line.
It occurred to me that this picture has many of the elements of my “favorite outfit”. To wit:
HAT: always wear a hat or cap outdoors for protection from the sun. I find most hats don’t fit me. My head’s too big, and I don’t mean that metaphorically. I had these two porkpie hats, but they’ve gone MIA; the wife put them away for the winter and I haven’t seen them since. I’ve discovered that adjustable caps with a plastic band don’t fit me either; they tend to sit on top of my head like a crown. By comparison, caps with a cloth adjustable ban DO tend to fit me.
LONG SLEEVES: even in summer, unless it’s going to be 90 degrees F, in which case, I slather on the sunscreen. Again, a precaution against severe burning.
PANTS: solid color, usually black or blue, almost always long, as opposed to shorts.
SNEAKERS: almost always these, rather than shoes, when not at work or church, usually Chuck Taylor, and at least once a week, the red Chucks. People LOVE the red Chucks; every time I’m wearing them, at least three people compliment me.
When I was on JEOPARDY! a dozen years ago, I was wearing my red Chucks during the warm-up games. but when I was selected to play, I changed into new, uncomfortable hard-soled shoes, much to my fellow contestants’ disappointment. To this day, I figure if I were wearing my red Chucks, I would have been more relaxed and therefore would have played better. I feel as though, as a former retailer of comics-related products, I ought to have an opinion on the new Wonder Woman costume; since I haven’t the title in nearly two decades, I don’t. A friend of mine sent this “fix” to the change, about which I’m neither here nor there. I am actually more vaguely irritated in her diminished powers; there is some comic booky rationale for it, but it’s disappointing, regardless.
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I swore I told this story before, but I cannot find it. 
