Everything About Me but the Kitchen Sink (That Too)

A Wall with a Past, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 24"
private collection, Mercer Island, Washington

This tag is courtesy Kim of Creating Space. She's requested I divulge seven "unusual" things about me. Here the problem is not coming up with seven offbeat traits/events. It's deciding which to leave out. Oh well, here's a sampling of my quirks:

1. As I've mentioned (numerous times), I was born breech, entering this world ass-backwards and I've been doing things in a roundabout way ever since. Example:

2.

I once dislocated my toe while helping my son learn his spelling words. Don't ask.

3. My eyes are afflicted with a corneal disorder which affects 1 out of 2000 Americans. My uncorrected eyes see something (beyond a certain distance) like this:

Marcel Duchamp
Nude Descending a Staircase

I only wish I could paint what I see.

4. On the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, I am a INFJ, which purportedly occurs in 1% of the population. Kindred spirits include Geoffrey Chaucer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Eleanor Roosevelt, Carl Jung, Mother Teresa, and Martin Luther King Jr. (As best as I can surmise, these findings were gleaned from the online test-taking results in the hard drives of these folks' discarded i-Books.) Wow, I guess I'm the underachiever in the group. That makes me even more unusual.

Then again, I've not lived a life completely devoid of attainment. Examples:

5. I was the valedictorian of my high school class, graduating with a grade point average of 97.425. I was also one of the Top Ten Magazine Salesmen in our senior class's primary fundraiser. For this I received a goldtone trophy in the form of a comely young woman. (Yes, I still have it. It resides in a place of honor in a cardboard box along with my Proficiency in Two Foreign Languages Award, My Best All Round Girl Award, my aforementioned Valedictorian Award, and an assortment of letters from various dignitaries, among them a state senator and the President of the company my dad worked for, congratulating me on a job well done.) For the record, I honed my art sales skills selling little prints in white plastic frames door-to-door in the fourth grade. I sold the hell out of stuff like this:

6. A small photograph of my own painting Heart's Destiny appears in the current issue of The Santa Fean. The feature is called "Fall Art Openings." And no, the photo wasn't taken at an opening. Get this: the photographer wandered into our gallery one afternoon just after Bennie had sold Heart's Destiny. A mood of festivity prevailed, so the photographer snapped a picture of Bennie, the buyer (the woman on the far left), a friend of the buyer, and yes, the painting. How's that for uncanny timing?

Where was I? In the studio painting of course.

7. AND my kitchen sink was immortalized on the cover of a literary magazine called...what else? The Kitchen Sink.

Oakley took the photograph.

I now tag 7 highly unusual (in the very best of ways) people:

1. The Moody Minstrel (who resides in The Land of the Rising Sun)
2. Ron (who Vents)
3. Lee (who dreams Chrysalis Dreams)
4. Jo (who Celebrates Life)
5. Peg (who hears Angel Voices)
6. Todd (who makes Pottery for Peace)
7. Paschal (aka murat11).

Your turn to confess.