13 More or Less Random Facts About Me The idea of this is to share a bunch of random facts that people might not know about you and then to assign a number to anyone who likes what you wrote and theyll have to share that many facts. Ive like several peoples posts on this and they all assign different numbers or no numbers at all. So - read this, like this, and share any number of facts you want - between the numbers 5 and 15. 1. I have hydrocephalus as a result of head injuries from the use of forceps when I was born. The doctor who delivered me told my parents that the odds against my surviving the night were 100 to 1. He wasnt finished - he added that might not be the worst thing since the odds were a million to 1 against me being a vegetable - who would never walk, talk, or be able to care for myself at all. Only decades later did I realize that he made up these odds on the spot - this is a common way doctors in similar situations open up a discussion that leads to passive euthanasia or institutional warehousing. 2. My first shunt was at 5 months old. That lasted until I was three years old. A new surgeon in town implanted a VP shunt at that time. It did not work perfectly. I had headaches almost every day until I was ten years old, when I outgrew the shunt. My parents had to massage the shunt when I got a headache, which was the result of increased intracranial pressure. The same surgeon who implanted the prior shunt when I was 3 implanted the new one - this one a VA. At that time, pressure related headaches became a thing of the past. Shortly after, I started getting migraines occasionally, although they wouldnt be diagnosed for another 15 years. My current shunt is about 48 years old. (BTW, this is an extremely *good* history as far as shunts go - 50% fail within 2 years) 3. When I was 5 years old, I won the school talent contest for my age group and performed in a city-wide show. I sang Take Me Out to the Ball Game and Daisy. I wore a sailor suit. This thrilled my grandfather, who was a sailor in WW I and also taught me Take Me Out to the Ball Game. (Yes, there are pictures - somewhere) 4. In 5th grade, my Core teacher (homeroom, social studies, English) called my teachers for a conference. She expressed a few concerns. For one, she said I didnt pay enough attention in class. She also thought I was emotionally unresponsive - and confirmed this by holding me after school one day and trying to *get* me to cry (I have no recollection of this attempt. I either blocked it out or - more likely - she didnt really make an impression. Once my parents vented and threatened to report her to the principal for highly unprofessional conduct, they went home and told me only that the teacher complained I wasnt paying enough attention. A month later, one of my friends told my mother he was afraid the teacher was going to kill me because for the past month I raised my hand every time she made a spelling or grammatical error and corrected her. 5. Growing up, the only news we heard of other families who had children with hydrocephalus was that they had eventually died. This made *some* kind of impression on me, but I still cant exactly pin down what that was. Its only been in recent years Ive started to appreciate the impact it must have had on my parents. 6. Looking back, the 5th grade wasnt a banner year. I was picked and targeted by a student about a foot taller than me for special torment. At first, I only noticed that I was tripping on the stairs. Soon, I noticed a laughing face that was always right near me when it happened. It escalated to shoves and more. It came to a climax when another adaptive gym guy and I were sent back to hour Core room because we couldnt (awww) participate in that days activity. The tormenter came by and gave a punch at me. I shoved back. He then shoved my head against the wall. I tried to retaliated - and then the pain hit. I collapsed, he ran off and the other student ran for help. The rest of that day is really fuzzy. I think I went home. The student whod been tormenting me got something like a week suspension - and I was told he had a history of this type of behavior. It took several years for me to get over the urge to look over my shoulder. 7. For almost all of Middle School, the lunchroom monitor thought my name was George. While I had no specific plans, I thought this could be useful some day. I was exposed by a friend of mine who was there when she called me George and he corrected her. 8. I got a lot of the garden-variety types of bullying in middle school and there was a definite pattern. Any time I was shoved around, etc., there was no response from the school authorities. OTOH, *every* time I shoved back, I ended up in the principals office with the one who started it. My parents thought the Viet Nam War was responsible for my distrust of authority. They were mistaken - the principal and assorted minor figures in middle school deserve the credit for that. 9. When I was 12, I had a police escort for two days on my morning paper route. My father was on a town committee investigating allegations of bribery and someone had phoned in death threats against the members. I didnt take it seriously, until day 3, when I lost my escort; its awful lonely on the streets at 5:30 am. 10. By the time I was 18, Id been baptized 2 times and confirmed 2 rimes. I also spent one term as a token teen Deacon on the board of an historic church in Rochester. None of it stuck. Since 18 or thereabouts, Ive been pretty consistently nonreligious and dont view myself as spiritual, either. 11. Ive had a copy of Rules for Radicals with me since I was 15. I generally give copies away and then replace the old one. I am on copy number 4 or 5. My first one was given to me by a youth minister when I was 15. 12. During the 1990s, the term cousin and later AC (autistic cousin) gained some popularity in the autism community. The terms origin comes from a story I told about Xenia Grant (who was then Kathy Lissner-Grant) meeting me for the first time. I wrote and published the account and other goings on under the pen name Steve Cousins. I no longer have a copy of the article, which I kind of regret. You can read a little about it here. 13. I get ideas all the time. On a good day, maybe 1 in 10 approaches the level of anything Id call good or better. John Munnis Jr, Marsha Rose Katz, Avi Blackmore, Kassiane Alexandra S.
Posted on: Mon, 25 Nov 2013 14:04:25 +0000
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