I’VE BEEN TAGGED, SO I MUST BE IT

So, my friend in Ohio has tagged me. I suppose I am it, whatever that may mean. I have been compelled – though not forcefully – to list six of my quirks. Apparently this is something she was tagged to do herself; thus I am participating in a long chain of events. I would not consider my decision to involve myself in this a quirk of mine since I generally recycle chain letters and that sort of thing as quickly as possible. But, since I have been tagged, today I shall comply – also because I still feel I owe the readers a nice, long post after having gone missing for about a week. So, without further ado, six quirks.

One:
As yesterday has reminded me, I am afraid of ants. Actually I fear a lot of things: ants, spiders, bees – let's just call it all bugs and bug-like things, snakes, sharks, fish swimming around me, in fact any kind of crowd around me [including once when the wife and I went to a butterfly zoo-like thing and I swear I was being attacked and it freaked me out], small things that move quickly around my feet, I suppose I could go on…

But yesterday it was ants. We had ants in the kitchen – perhaps a dozen or so – but what I saw was that image from Un Chien Andalou with the ants crawling out of the wound in a man’s hand. I saw the ants crawling out everywhere in my mind. It was horrible. Thus we spayed non-toxic bug spray yesterday and today I have been scrubbing the kitchen including washing every glass, dish, plate and piece of silverware that we own. Some may consider this behavior a bit quirky; I just call it cautious and hygienic – that goes for all of my fears in fact: perfectly reasonable caution and cleanliness.

Two:
I love the number nine. I can play with it for hours. Have you ever really considered the number nine? Did you know that every multiple of nine eventually adds up to nine? Let’s take nine times two hundred and seventy-three: Two thousand, four hundred and fifty-seven. Thus 2+4+5+7, which equals 18, and one plus eight equals nine. This works for every possible multiple of nine; I promise.

Further, have you ever considered the first ten multiples of nine? They form a beautiful inverse pattern, as follows: 09, 18, 27, 36, 45, 54, 63, 72, 81, 90. If you can’t see it then I am profoundly sorry for you. And if you do see it and don’t get how elegant numbers can be, how wonderfully, aesthetically remarkable they are, then we need to talk. When I explained the phenomenon of nine to the wife she – a serious arithmophobe – had to admit that it was, and I quote, “hot.”

Which leads me to my next quirk…

Three:
I am ridiculously in love with the wife. I know this may not technically be a quirk, but it quite often feels like one. I mean, surely this can’t be normal. For example, I have an inexplicable propensity for making up songs for the wife – I suppose it is quite explicable: I am in love with her — but, nonetheless, I make up strange, often meaningless songs for her. Sometime they verge on the quite insane, the mildly disgusting, or the flat out wrong. It is just that at that particular moment – the moment of singing – I simply must sing to and/or of her.

I make up stories for her too. Now that isn’t odd in and of itself, but I make up short stories, really short stories. We have a collection of three to eleven words stories somewhere in a notebook. For a while we thought it would be a good idea to write them down, but we have forgotten where that notebook is. Most of these stories followed a simple something does something somewhere narrative line – nothing particularly complex — but it was simply to tell her a story. I think the process emerged when we were living in different states and we would call to say goodnight – both exhausted – and the most I could muster was a very short bedtime story.

I also make stuffed animals for her. Such as Oliphant the Elephant – pictured here. Oli – short for Oliphant – also has a game of her own that I made one birthday for the wife. If you want, you can give it a play. It is quite an absurd little game, but well, perhaps that is fitting. It is chock full of inside jokes and personal quirks of its own, but those would be stories of their own.

I also made her a stuffed stegosaurus named Blum. Blum has a song as well, but that one is just between the wife and me, so you shall just have to remain in ignorance on this one.

Now that I write all this out, this love for the wife definitely has some of the characteristics of a quirk, and I say it qualifies, whatever you might say about it.

Four:
I generally like bad art more than I like the art I am supposed to like. When I say bad art, I don’t mean Thomas Kinkade and other schlock like that. I mean string art, paint-by-numbers, needlepoint ships, and toilet paper cozies.

I have an insane collection of bad art – including six different paint-by-number versions of the “Last Supper.” I find them fascinating, the differences in each one, the divergent patterns that are sold, the unique approaches to handling the paint and relating to the lines. I am especially proud of my collection of paint-by-numbers executed by R.E. Evermann. I don’t know who this guy is – or was – but I found about six or seven by this guy in Iowa over a period of a year or so. I am guessing he passed away and his family was dropping these off at thrift stores as they went through his things. This leads me to why I love bad art.

These are not good art – self-evident, I guess – but someone cared about them. Someone put these paintings, or bits of embroidery, or whatever into a frame and hung them on their living room – or bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, or whatnot – walls for a while. And then something happened. For whatever reason these pieces of bad art had to be disposed of, but they mattered too much to be thrown away, yet no one could be found to keep them. So off they went to the thrift stores, unwanted, but safe from destruction. Here is where I rescue them, give them a new life. Yes there is a component of the ironic involved here – I know these are bad – but I also like them in a quite genuine way. I see these speaking up for an artistic imperative, even if the quality is not high. There is a care and concern in these pieces that I find touching. So, I collect them and appreciate them. Sometimes I buy ones I don’t really like that much, but just have to save them, to keep them from being relegated to the dumpster, from being forgotten.

Five:
What may perhaps be my proudest academic moment is having found a way to legitimately teach Joe Versus The Volcano. It is not so much that I taught this film, but that I am inordinately proud of having done so. That is the quirk. There are far better reasons for me to feel pride – I am pretty sure I am damn good at being a professor. But, still, I found a way to get this film into a class and use it to actually teach my students something – and further, they got it. I shan’t bore you with chunks of my Joe Versus The Volcano lecture here, but let me just say that it is good. [Pause while I pat myself on the back. Pat. Pat. Pat.]

Six:
Finally, my greatest athletic skill in the world is Wiffle Ball. I mean I am professional caliber, if there were such a thing as a professional Wiffle Ball league. I am the Pedro Martinez of Wiffle Ball. I am flat out unhittable. Just call me Cy Young. I end my semesters with a Wiffle Ball game that includes the challenge that if any student gets a hit they receive an automatic A for the semester – they know I don’t really mean that, but even if I did it wouldn’t be a problem. I have a four-foot and an eight-foot curveball, a back-door curveball, a nasty little knuckle-sinker, a wicked rising fastball thrown sidearm that goes from your toes to your nose, and a change-up that will leave you looking like a moron.

Yes folks, I am serious about this. I am a god of Wiffle Ball – at least as far as pitching goes. My hitting remains as it was in Little League – where I had two hits in three years but could draw a walk and steal my way to third like the dickens. I will challenge anyone to Wiffle Ball. Need a ringer for a company picnic this summer? Just bring me along; I am your man.

So, there you go. Those are the six quirks for the day. I freely admit that these are not the only quirks, but they are the six that came to mind today. I wish it to be known that I embrace my quirks; I believe they are what make me so endearing. They also propel me to make sense of stuff, to produce stuff, and to try to figure the world out. They may seem odd – otherwise would they be quirks? – but I contend they are perfectly normal, for me that is. If you want to know if they come together to form a worthwhile totality I suggest you ask the wife. From what she tells me I think they do.