Mitch Joel tagged me with the “Eight Things You Don’t Know About Me” meme. I did this once before. At the end of 2006, a similar meme was making the rounds, this one limited to five tidbits, and I participated. Since my life is pretty much an open book, it’s not easy to think of eight additional things people probably don’t know about me—and even harder to think of eight that you might find even remotely interesting.

These would be more intriguing if there was an additional requirement, something along the lines of, “The eight things must be embarrassing.” You know, the kind of stuff people send anonymously to PostSecret. “I did time in jail” or “I used to snort lines of coke before going into management meetings” would make for better reading than the uplifting, offbeat, or just plain boring facts that tend to get listed here. Of course, it would also make for far less uptake of the meme, wouldn’t it?

Anyway, not that any of it matters, here are my eight things:

1. I have a back condition called spondylolisthesis, a forward displacement of one vertebra on its lower neighbor. It hasn’t troubled me in a long time, but when I was in my early 20s, I wore a back brace and walked with a cane. I spent a couple years seeing a doctor who told me my choices were either to live with it or have a spinal fusion. Later, when it was particularly bad, I saw another doctor who said, “Do these exercises, you’ll be fine.” It worked.
2. One night shortly after we were married, Michele couldn’t sleep so I taught her to play backgammon. She kicked my ass on the very first game. She’s has been routinely kicking my ass ever since. I’m pretty good, but I just can’t beat her.
3. In high school, I won a gold medal in debate. Most of the credit goes to my brilliant debate partner, Dave Herst, whom I haven’t seen or heard from in years (and can’t find by Googling him). But we won all four debates at a tournament, two affirmative and two negative. If memory serves, the National Forensic League topic that year was, “Resolved: That the U.S. jury system be significantly changed.”
4. I have been to the summit of Mt. Whitney, the highest point in the continental U.S., twice. In fact, I used to do a lot of backpacking before I married a woman whose idea of roughing it is staying a hotel where room service shuts down at midnight. I’ve done a few legs of the John Muir trail, bagged most of the San Gorgonia Wilderness Nine Peaks, and spent a fair amount of time in the Sierra Nevada backcountry.
5. For years, I drove an International Scout. My grandfather co-owned a company called Los Angeles Shower Door with his two brothers, and bought a fleet of International trucks, and got them to throw in the Scout at some ridiculously low price. I was in high school at the time. When I finally decided to get rid of it after something like 10 years, one of my best friends insisted on buying it, and he drove it for another 15 or 20 years. The picture is me, my dog (at the time), and my Scout, circa 1973. Dig the curtains, which my friend Bob Ramirez helped me install, along with wood paneling.
   
   
   
6. I was a cubmaster. Originally, I was the Cub Scout pack committee chairman, volunteering to help get a pack launched so my son could belong to it. But when the cubmaster bailed, there was nobody else willing to step into the job, so I did it. When Ben graduated into Boy Scouts, I was an assistant scoutmaster until we moved from L.A. to the Bay Area and Ben lost interest.
7. I wear earplugs to bed. When we first moved up here, Michele couldn’t sleep because of the quiet. In L.A., we heard all kinds of sounds at night—traffic, helicopters, sirens. Our house in Concord is in the hills where you sometimes might hear an owl hoot. To help her sleep without the noise, Michele started listening to talk radio. While those sounds soothed her to sleep, I couldn’t help but listen, so I began using earplugs. I got so accustomed to them that now I can’t sleep without them, even when I’m alone in a hotel room.
8. I have been to more provinces in Canada than most Canadians. I’ve been to British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Nova Scotia, Quebec, Newfoundland and Saskatchewan. I’ve made it a life goal to get to the rest.

So now I’m supposed to tag eight people myself, if I play this game by the rules. So here goes: Sallie Goetsch - Tom Foremski - Brian Solis - Lee Aase - Steve Crescenzo - David Murray - Ron Shewchuk - Heidi Miller.