MALE PATTERN FITNESS: Comment on High Five

High Five

December 30, 2006

There's a game bloggers play -- one of them gets "tagged" to reveal five little-known facts about him or herself, and then he or she tags five more people.

I got tagged by Regina Wilshire, author of a terrific blog called The Weight of the Evidence.

This is a tough assignment for me, since I tend to give up so much personal info anyway. But I'll give it a shot.

1. I have a lot in common with George W. Bush

We both get up early, go to bed early, and take a long mid-day break. When he was governor of Texas, he used to go jogging and play video games for two hours in the middle of every workday. I doubt if he gets away with that now, but I suspect he still needs that extended time away from work to be productive, just as I do.

Another odd similarity: We both married our spouses in the same year we started dating. George and Laura met at a backyard barbecue and were married three months later, in November. They were both 31. My wife and I met at a party and got married eight months later, in November. I was 36, she was 31.

And this is the strangest thing we have in common: His father was head of the CIA at the time they got married, and my father ... okay, I guess the parallels kind of peter out at that point.

2. I thought I was going to die during the Northridge earthquake of 1994.

My wife and I had gotten married less than two months earlier, and were living in her apartment in North Hollywood while we waited to close escrow on the townhouse we'd bought.

If you're ever going to be five miles from the epicenter of a semi-major earthquake, that's the time to do it: when your stuff is all packed and ready for a move. The only thing that broke was a small glass vase. Everything else that could've broken was wrapped and boxed.

But none of that was on my mind when the earthquake hit. I later told friends and family that it was like a malevolent giant had picked up the apartment building and was shaking it like a piggy bank. I'd been through earthquakes before, but the shaking had been back-and-forth, which was kind of fun, like surfing in your living room. This was up and down, and I thought my wife and I were goners.

When we not only didn't die, but learned that my wife's apartment building wasn't even damaged, I developed an appreciation for building codes in Southern California. Here's my message to all those anti-government types who want to do away with "intrusive" regulations: Go through an earthquake, then tell me why you think we don't need governments to make rules that ensure public safety.

A postscript: When I got a chance to get LASIK surgery for a story in Men's Health four years later, one of the reasons I jumped on it was my memory of the earthquake. Having to crawl around in the dark on your hands and knees trying to find your glasses, with your heart pounding so hard you think your ribs will break, all the while wondering how your building managed to stay intact and why you weren't buried in rubble ... let's just say 20/20 vision was pretty appealing after all that.

3. My wife and I named our son after a character in a novel.

I had read Dominick Dunne's novel, A Season in Purgatory, and been moved by the actions of a character named Harrison, who does the right thing at great personal cost. Plus, it was close to a family name -- my father and older brother are both named Garrison.

At the time, I didn't know much about the real-life case upon which the novel is based: the murder of Martha Moxley. The more I learned, the less I felt I knew. Did Michael Skakel do it? I used to think so, until I read Robert F. Kennedy's Jr.'s defense of his cousin in the Atlantic Monthly. Now I don't know what to think.

All I know is that Harrison, the hero of Dunne's novel, is a fictional character. So I'm pretty sure he didn't do it.

4. I went to five different schools between kindergarten and high school.

I went to a Catholic school for kindergarten, and then we moved. There was a waiting list for the Catholic school in our new parish, so I went to the local public elementary school for two years, then to the Catholic school for the next four. We moved again, and I went to seventh and eighth grades at a different Catholic school. Then we moved yet again, and I started my freshman year not knowing a single one of my classmates.

I always said I'd never do that to my own kids. We moved to our current house when my son was two, so he has no memory of living anywhere else. Both daughters were born while we lived here. We've had the same address and phone number for 8 1/2 years, which is a record for me.

My work has changed, neighbors have died or moved, my kids have different friends in each grade -- all the real-life stuff that happens to everybody. But I like the fact that my kids have at least one constant in their lives.

I got the idea of one home for my kids from Bob Costas, strangely enough. He started his career in St. Louis, and was still a local broadcaster when I started my journalism career, so I bumped into him a few times in the early '80s before he moved on to NBC.

A few years later -- 1990, I think -- I got an assignment to interview him. I knew he still had a place in St. Louis, but I didn't know he considered it home. Since he was from New York, and worked for a company based in New York, I figured he'd raise his family there.

But he told me something that caught me by surprise: He said his own father had moved his family around so much when he was a kid that he'd vowed he'd never do that to his own kids. He and his wife had decided to plant roots in St. Louis. He would travel to wherever he had to go to do his job, but he'd never uproot the family.

I figured that if Costas could do it, I could.

The postscript is that Costas got divorced and remarried, and I have no idea where he lives now, or how often he sees his kids. But it sure seemed like a good idea when I heard him say it.

5. My original ambition was to be an actor.

I was always the class clown, and by my senior year in high school I was the leading man in our school plays. At that point, writing was just an extension of my class clowning. I was planning to major in theater in college.

But when I mentioned that to a classmate, he said, "That's a shame. You're too good a writer."

I was a senior, and I believe that was the first time anyone had used the words "good" and "writer" in the same sentence to describe me. I hadn't even been picked by my classmates to work on our high school yearbook.

I won't say I decided then and there to change my future college major; I also began to realize I wasn't particularly gifted as an actor, and the idea of nonstop auditions with no guaranteed payoff was unappealing as well. But I know that conversation planted the seed.

When I got to journalism school, I was almost comically unprepared. Most of my classmates had at least worked on high school newspapers and yearbooks, and some had worked on campus or local newspapers before they got to J-school. All I had going for me was that I knew how to read and write and had some natural instincts for putting sentences together.

When I met my wife many years later, she was surprised that I hadn't decided to be a writer until my senior year in high school. She said she'd known since she was a kid that she wanted to write.

I'm still amazed when I meet or hear about young people who have their shit together in high school and are already preparing for their future careers. When my youngest daughter, who's six, talks about how she's going to be a dentist, I just assume she'll get over it. (Although I'm sure she'd make a fine dentist if she sticks to her plans.)

If I had a motto in life, it would be "better late than never." But there's nothing wrong with starting early, either. I just don't know how people do it.

That's it for me. Now, to continue the game, I need to tag five more bloggers. Any suggestions?

Posted by LouSchuler at December 30, 2006 07:21 AM

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How 'bout Alwyn C. and Bill H? That is, if they haven't been tagged already.

Posted by: Rob from Denver at December 31, 2006 11:37 AM

High Five

December 30, 2006

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