That damn meme..

Well, I've been tagged by Joe and Gina, so I may as well play along.

Five Things You Probably Don't Know About Me

1. I once spent the night in a Mexican jail for being drunk and disorderly and insulting a Federale. They threw me and my friend in a dank, damp, smelly cell with a hole in the floor for puke, shit, and piss. A non-smoker, I spent the first few hours bumming cigarettes from some blond dude with a Vanilla Ice haircut. At first, in my drunken state, I thought it was really cool to be in a Mexican jail. As my sobriety returned, however, I decided that it sucked.

2. I once had (maybe still do) very impressive calculus skills, though I never really knew how to solve the problems "properly." So I'd get As on all my calculus exams even though I couldn't show my work and the work that I did show was often incorrect. I don't know how I knew the answers. I really don't.

3. Yesterday my cousin married my sixth grade girlfriend who is nearly ten years his senior. She introduced me to the Pixies and illicit substances, but not until 12th grade.

4. I didn't start writing poetry until I was almost 26 years old. The very first poem I ever sent out was published. This happened a couple of times. Then I didn't publish anything for five years or so.

5. I have never had a driver's license and have never owned a car, something I share with Kasey Mohammad, who also shares my birthday but is ten years older. However, in my early twenties, I used to sometimes drive my pal Erik's car when he was too drunk to and I was only slightly less drunk. One time I came within inches of slamming his car into a gas tank at a Shell station. Then I drove flawlessly for the next forty miles home, though I still couldn't work the manual transmission worth a shit.