"it's daddy when he was nine" (the kids)
Nine is, of course, a terribly significant age. Those fans of Whitley Strieber's Communion series are aware that nine is the age of initiation into the "Secret School" when the space visitors attempt to enlighten (or indoctrinate) young, tractable minds. Well, as far as I know, I have never been visited by aliens from other worlds.
Many stories surround this 6th century woman who became nearly as famous as St. Patrick in Ireland. One story says that as a young woman she feared that though she wanted to devote her life to God she'd be married, so she prayed to be made ugly, and she was turned into a very ugly young woman. After taking holy orders, so the story goes, she was physically transformed into the most beautiful woman any had ever seen. She cared for, and apparantly miraculously healed, the sick and lame and deaf and blind; she had a gift with animals rivaling St. Francis's; she was responsible for an incredible range of miraculous events! None was more miraculous than this: when a group of clergy paid a visit, she realized she had nothing worthy to serve them; Brigid's tub of bathwater, so it is said, turned into the finest beer, and a cheerful feast was enjoyed by all. Also note: Brigid is the saint of students. Coincidence?
Born February 1, 1952 (yes, that makes me a "boomer"), my patron (matron?) saint is Brigid of Ireland.
In my hometown of Seattle, WA I was a young Huskies fan, and I had a T-shirt that proclaimed I was a member of the Miss Seafair (a hydroplane) crew. I don't recall ever actually being allowed to do more than look at Miss Seafair ... I was only a few years old at the time. Still, I am Seattle born, and I DO like grunge! Well, I did; it's pretty much defunct. It's the perfect mate to my guitar-playing style. I have a candy apple red Stratocaster (OK, so it's the Japanese produced Strat; it's still a Fender!) and a LOT of pedals (Turbo, Overdrive, Choral, Reverb, Metal) that make a single, aggressive thrum sound like I'm a member of Black Flag or Nirvana. I'd learned guitar (well, sort of) in the 60's, and I can still play nearly every three-chord song the British Invasion was able to produce. I wish I could play surf guitar.
NOTE: favourite place on the planet: The Lake District, England.
In 1995 I was hooked on Acrophobia; I'd play on my free time in my office at school, and it propelled me into buying my first computer: a CTX with an AMD processor running Windows 95 (and it still works!).
ANOTHER NOTE: free-time activity: junk television viewing.
I remember being on the school yard of Cowan Ave. Elementary School deciding I was going to be a teacher. I was about eight, and I knew then I would be a math teacher. "After all," I thought, "all the answers are in the back of the book." So I majored in math/science, later decided I'd probably become a physicist (those were the days of the space race!), and, naturally, wound up teaching English. I love stories. Many say I love digressions. So what! Digressions are just stories, aren't they?
YET ANOTHER NOTE: favorite film: Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-up.