Tagged – 8 Little Facts About Me

My good friend and fellow writer Jillian (The Write Way Home) tagged me with a little game where I’m supposed to come up with some factoids about myself. I’ve got some downtime between training classes, so I thought I’d see if I can’t pump out stuff that’s somewhat fascinating (riiiight…) and interesting (sure…) about your ol’ pal, TKT.

First, here are the rules:

– Post the rules before giving the facts.
– Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves
– People who are tagged need to write on their own blog about their eight things
– At the end of the your blog you need to tag (hopefully) six people and list their names
– Leave them a comment on their blog, telling them they have been tagged and not to forget to read your blog.

1. My middle name honestly and truly is Kingsley. I’ve had a lot of people accuse me of trying to make up a ‘more author-ly’ name for myself, but I swear on everything holy, it’s mine. I got it because it was my great, great grandfather’s last name. Since he only had daughters who ended up getting married, the name died with him…or so he thought! I’ve passed on the name to my little guy and I expect he’ll do the same for my grandson.

2. I don’t drink caffeine. I won’t say I’ve never drank caffeine, but I don’t anymore. I used to drink Diet Coke like it was water back in the day and it used to give me wicked headaches if I didn’t pour a can down my throat by 10:30 am. I don’t like anything to have that much control over me, so I kicked the habit, cold turkey. Now, I drink mostly water, juice and caffeine free Diet Coke.

3. I used to have a pet tarantula. My parents got me ‘Spike’ when I was in 5th grade. He was a Mexican Red-Legged monster and probably one of the coolest creatures on the planet. Spike was docile, touchable and completely relaxed. I brought him with me when I moved to California and that’s where he died almost 14 years later. I buried him in the front yard of the apartment complex I lived in.

4. I have an extremely short attention span. It’s almost like a sickness. I can’t stay sitting still for too long in one place, otherwise I go absolutely crazy. If I’m eating in a restaurant and I’m finished eating, I’ve got an internal timer of about 30 minutes before I start getting antsy. I hate that I’m like this, but I’m one of those people who doesn’t like to waste time doing nothing.

5. I can’t sleep without my ‘special’ pillowcase. I never thought I’d admit this, but I have a pillowcase that I have to have otherwise, sleep is a difficult thing for me. At first I thought it was the pillow itself, but my wife debunked that theory. The one I use seems to stay cool to the touch no matter what, regardless of what pillow it’s on. I’ve had the dumb thing since I lived with my parents. I don’t think I can ever get rid of it. I know. I’m weird.

6. I can’t stand that my hair is steadily turning gray. I’ve tried dying it, but since it grows so quickly, it needs to be cut and the gray is there waiting for me as a hard reminder that I’m getting older every day (aren’t we all?). I don’t think of myself as vain, but it’s been weird to look in the mirror and see my dad looking back at me.

7. I used to be a huge scaredy cat when it came to horror movies. It got to the point where I would have nightmares about scarecrows coming to life, hatched wielding maniacs, you name it. I’m not sure when I turned the corner, but I got into writing stories about creepy things and actually got kind of good at it. I wrote a story in 7th grade called The Boogyman (got an A+!) and wrote a story called The Legend of Jake Hade that got published in a midwestern student magazine.

8. I was not a good student in high school. The only thing I cared about was writing and reading. If it didn’t fall under those categories, I didn’t give it much time. It got to the point where I had creative writing classes created just for me. It was great. Every day for an hour, I would sit in my English teacher’s classroom and write for a solid hour. My only requirement? Have something to submit by the end of the semester. I did and my story (see above) got published. Even so, I barely got out of high school with my average to sub-par grades.

8.5. I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. I absolutely HATE being called ‘Tom.’ I’ll introduce myself as ‘Thomas’ and people will insist on calling me ‘Tom’ and it drives me insane. I’d truly rather they called me a$$hole or something. Is that crazy?
(a pox on those who refer to me as ‘Tom’ in the comments after reading this)

Okay. That should do it for me. I’m going to have to find some people to tag…and I may not. The blogs I read people don’t usually like to do these things, so I probably won’t pester them with this stuff. I’ll cheat a little and leave it open-ended:

If you want to participate, go right ahead. Just let me know that you did it so I can check it out myself.

Deal? Solid.