Update: Results are in the extended entry.

Want to know what it's about? See the Shamming/Sharing intro post.

Is this anecdote something I'm sharing with you or something I'm shamming you with?

Before we leave Chicago I'll share with you two other specific (and much shorter *cough* *Simon* *cough*) memories I have of my time there.

The first deals with a Snickers bar. Two brothers, one Snickers bar. The equitable way to split it? One would cut it in half and the other would pick which piece he wanted. My big brother was the knife man and he cut it as close to the center as he could possibly estimate (since he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that if one piece was markedly larger than the other I would snake it in a heartbeat). To the naked eye these two halves of a candy bar were indeed perfect halves. Many children would have simply taken a random piece and been perfectly happy with it. Not me. I stared at that split Snickers for what seemed like hours as big bro got steadily more irritated. The one on the left is a smidge bigger...no, maybe it's the one on the right that's bigger...hmmm...left, definitely left...but that's probably just what he wants me to think...is that cut at an angle...hmmm... Eventually he lost patience and yelled for Mom so I grabbed one of the halves randomly. I'm sure that if I had just a little more time I would have figured out which one was a tiny bit bigger.

The second memory is about a massive field that was near our apartment complex. I walked across this thing just about every day going to friends' houses (back then little kids could walk around their neighborhoods) and would pretend it was different things. Sometimes it was the tundra and I was a reindeer racing across. One time it was the ocean and I was a shark swimming. Other times it might be the plains of the west and I'd be the Lone Ranger riding my horse across them. Well there was one time when I was coming home and it had rained that day. The field was squishy wet but not soaked. I pretended that it was a lake and I was Jesus walking on the water (side note: we were practicing Catholics at this time). I was having a grand old time until I got half-way across and I stepped into a groundhog hole or other such depression and was instantly chilled up the leg by the water. I freaked. I just knew that it was God punishing me for my blasphemy and now he had made the field like water so I was going to sink into it. I scrambled up to my feet and ran across that field at top speed screaming my head off the entire way. I was incredibly relieved when I made it to concrete and slowed down to catch my breath. Then I realized that God could do the same thing to the concrete so I ran again until reaching the safety of the apartment. At least I wasn't screaming for that final sprint.

Current Shamming/Sharing standings:

One Correct
Helen
jim
Mike the Marine
Simon

Zero Correct
Everybody else more...

Posted by: Jim at 09:00 AM | Comments (14) | Add Comment
Post contains 743 words, total size 4 kb.

Update: Results are in the extended entry.

Want to know what it's about? See the Shamming/Sharing intro post.

This is the fifth offering overall and the first for March. To see how February ended up see the extended entry of Shamming/Sharing (#4).

Is this anecdote a sham or a share?

Memories are odd things. Sometimes you have perfect recollection of important things in your life, and other times you can't remember these critical times worth a damn. The same thing happens with seemingly innocuous items. Why do I remember that my little brother peed on my step-sister's carpet when we went up to Chicago for her wedding? Why do I remember that years before that we all lived in Chicago but I remember so little of that time?

One of the few things I remember was a chopper pedal bike. You know what a pedal car is, right? It's got those idiotic pedals that you keep pushing forward 2 inches, instead of pedals on a rotor (like on a bike). This was a metal tricycle that used pedal car style propulsion and had a chopper style front wheel - looooong front fork and little wheel. It sucked because it was a pedal car and was useless on any kind of incline (couldn't pedal uphill and going downhill you just went with the flow - putting your feet on the pedals was a recipe for a mauling) and you couldn't race against anybody else or even keep up with anybody else. A BigWheel toasted my chopper. Any kind of normal tricycle toasted it. I was the slowest thing in the apartment complex.

But it was also freaking cool. It was a chopper! What could be cooler than having a chopper when you're a little kid (especially in the mid 70's). Nobody had anything like my bike. Not even close. When I was on that thing (disdaining racing and the keeping up with others, of course) I was the King. I loved that chopper.

One day I went to ride it and it wasn't there. I don't remember the particulars of how it was stolen. I probably left it out but for the sake of my young pride we'll say that somebody else forgot to lock the storage area. Whatever the method, my chopper was gone. I was devastated. I wouldn't be special anymore. My unique bike, my ultra-cool chopper that nobody except me in my entire known world had was gone. No, not just gone, it was being abused by somebody else!

This was the first total meltdown in my memory. In fact, except for deaths it's the only one I can think of at all at the moment. My older brother took pity on me and went everywhere looking for it. He eventually found it in a dumpster. Whoever had stolen it had smashed it up pretty good. I remember him taking me outside to see it and saying that maybe we could fix it. I remember that I stopped crying and just felt nothing at all. The frame was totally mangled. It was busted. Gone. Useless. Over.

We tossed it in our dumpster and went back in the house. Mom tried to cheer me up and even older bro was uncharacteristically attentive but I stayed in a funk for days. Eventually I got out of my depression and went back to being a little kid but even to this day I can remember that chopper and the feelings of hopelessness and despair I had when i saw it all busted up.

Posted by: Jim at 06:10 AM | Comments (15) | Add Comment
Post contains 721 words, total size 4 kb.

Update: Results in the extended entry

Want to know what it's about? See the Shamming/Sharing intro post.

Our fourth offering. Is this anecdote the truth or am I pulling your leg (or other body part of your choice)?

What could be more fun than a circus? To me in my youth, just about anything. I didn't see my first circus until I was two weeks shy of 12. The only reason I remember that so precisely is because during most of the circus that's what I was thinking about to prevent yawning, plus right after the circus we went to Toys "backwards R" Us to look for presents for me (of course that's not what Mom said but you aren't fooling a 12 year old 2 weeks before his birthday - if we're in Toys "backwards R" Us it's 'cause you want to know what to buy for me) and this was the year that I got a guitar and a machete* so it sticks out in my young memory.

Anyway, the circus wasn't a bad one by any stretch. I don't think it was Ringling Bros but it was another of the bigger ones. Huge midtop, lots of concessions, games, carnies all over the place, clowns, pony rides and such. We pretty much breezed past all of the outside attractions and into the big tent. The only specific memory I have from the rush into the show was a midget riding a gigantic red dog and my little brother (he would have been 4 then) yelling out "Clifford! Clifford!" No, I'm not saying the dog was the size of Clifford. He was a mastiff or great dane or something - just really, really big. And dyed red.

So we rushed into the big tent and got seats and we were all tense with excitement. You see, Mom had been building this up for us for months. Telling us about the lion tamers and the acrobats and the clowns in tiny cars and the Lipinzaner stallions (no idea if I spelled that anything close to correctly) and singing this circus/parade song every five minutes. How did that song go? Something like "seventy six trombones in the big parade / a hundredy five coronets came behind". And when the performance actually started we were on the very edge of our seats, just breathless with anticipation.

And it sucked. Big time. I couldn't understand a single thing that the ringmaster was saying. The gymnasts were just doing stuff I'd seen all the time on TV (and was bored of watching there). There was a highwire but the guy just casually walked across the wire. With a net underneath him. The clowns were okay but that just looked like so much chaos since we couldn't understand a thing the MC was saying. The lion tamer beat the hell out of some lions and made them do tricks. He pissed me off. I wanted the lions to just gang up on him and take him down. The stallions looked filthy and sad to me. Where were the bright white regal beasts I was expecting?

One disappointment after another was piled on my youthful shoulders until I gave up trying to be entertained and just started thinking about my upcoming birthday. Just two weeks, two weeks, two weeks to muh birfday! I sang that song in my head for what seemed like hours but was probably more like 30 minutes. But at least it helped me to remember the date that I first saw a circus.

I like circuses now. I guess my disappointing first experience was due partially to the hysterical hype level my mom gave it, partially because I really didnt' have a concept of just how freaking difficult a lot of the things I was seeing actually were and partially because I was functioning with half a brain as the other half was totally preoccupied with my upcoming birthday.

* No, my parents wouldn't give a real machete to a 12 year old. Well, okay, it was a real machete but it was a steel blank blade (no edge). The cool thing about the machete was the scabbard. Hand tooled leather. My dad had picked it up in Panama earlier in the year. It was hanging up on my various bedroom walls until I was in my late 20's.

Current Shamming/Sharing roster:

2 Correct
jim
Mike the Marine
Sue
Tiffani

1 Correct
MojoMark
Rob
Simon

0 Correct
Everybody else more...

Posted by: Jim at 06:22 AM | Comments (12) | Add Comment
Post contains 879 words, total size 6 kb.

UPDATE: Results in extended entry

Want to know what it's about? See the Shamming/Sharing intro post.

Our third offering. Is this anecdote the truth or am I pulling your leg?

My dad and I have a lot in common. I got my work ethic from him. I got my anal retentive personality from him. Even my job shadows what he did for a career.

Until a few years ago my dad did quality assurance for the Air Force. When he started it was called Quality Control then it was Quality Assurance and for the last upteen years it was called Non Destructive Investigation. Whatever they called it, it's what we civilians now call QA.

He did stress tests and other analysis on live birds. That's aircraft in service, y'all, not actual feathered beasties. He had much cooler toys than I do. I have a PC and some nifty software. He had irradiation machines, X-Rays big enough to scan the wings of a C-130 Hercules transport and more tools than you can shake a fist at. He was forcibly retired (high year tenure) a few years ago.

He's not sitting idle though. He kept his side job for the FBI. He isn't a spy or anything. He does the upkeep and maintenance on the surveillance aircraft used by the Buffalo FBI. And I used to help him.

That's right, I worked on airplanes for the FBI. Well, to be precise I worked on FBI airplanes for their contractor and that contractor just happened to be my dad. For many years I would go up to the Niagara Falls Air Force Base with him on the weekends and do odd jobs while he did the important stuff. I washed square acres worth of plane wings over the years (seemed like it anyway). Towards the end of my time in Buffalo I was doing some cool stuff too. Engine checks, firing magnetos, instrument checks, testing the smoke screen generator...lots of cool stuff. Once I even got to fly one of the planes.

It was after the completion of a 100 hours maintenance cycle and the agent (not sure if I'm supposed to say his name so I'll just call him Agent Bob) was there to go over a couple of things that he thought were quirky. We all ended up taking a short flight so he could show Dad what the quirks were. When we were up to altitude Agent Bob gave me the controls. That was very cool. And scary. I don't have a whole lot of specifics in my memory because the majority of my one and only piloting experience was spent staring at the attitude indicator and repeating a mantra of "Holyshitholyshitholyshit" to myself. It might have been better if I'd spent some time with Flight Simulator before then but it was still pretty cool.

Current Shamming/Sharing roster:

1 Correct
jim
Mike the Marine
MojoMark
Sue
Tiffani

0 Correct
Everybody else more...

Posted by: Jim at 07:45 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 559 words, total size 3 kb.

Update: Results in the extended entry.

See the intro for particulars.

Our second entry. Is this anecdote a lie or is it the truth?

One time...at band camp... (Heh. Just kidding.)

I was the class comic in school. Not the class clown - I didn't go for making a fool of myself back then. But I was always there with a quip or cutting remark, a joke or anecdote, a one liner or tidbit appropriate to the situation, etc. I was a cut up.

Anyway, I was not quite smart enough to restrict my cuts and comments to just other students and I would frequently be a class distraction as I tossed bon mots around (usually when I was bored with the subject and/or didn't like the class). One time in 11th grade History class (Mr.Balsavage was the teacher) I was being particularly irritating crafty and Mr.B (who was a teacher I liked so I don't know why I was being such a jerk) walked over to me, bent down so we were face to face and said "You are the type of person who shoots from the hip and then leaves." I knew immediately that I had stepped pole vaulted over the line. That marked the end of my cutting apart teachers and put quite a damper on my mouth overall. Even to this day I'm far more selective of my targets and will generally put my self up for a joke before I take somebody else down with one.

Current Shamming/Sharing roster:

Sue: 1 correct
Everybody else: nada

Just a note about how I'm writing these. I am thinking up some element of Jimstory and then running a random generator (Excel is my favorite multi-purpose number playground) that tells me if I should write it up as a sham or a share. That way I won't get trapped into that humanistic need to balance out the number of true ones with the number of false ones or have to do a true one after a couple false ones & vice versa. more...

Posted by: Jim at 04:06 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 449 words, total size 3 kb.

Big Update / Rules Change: 20 April '04 - Instead of accumulating a scorecard throughout the month (which was nifty but ended up being work) a point will be given to each correct participant when the individual sham/share is closed. They'll also be coming out whenever I think of something apropriate instead of the semi-schedule of one or two a week. It was getting tedius for me and hopefully this will be enough to make it fun again. Other than these changes the rules noted below are still valid.

Update: Results to Shamming/Sharing #1 are in the extended entry.

I had this idea for something that might be cool - I got it from the Sex, Lies and Cheddar X post. Once or twice a week I'm going to post something about me. It might be true or it might be a lie. You guess if I'm shamming or sharing. When the next one is posted I'll give the answer to the previous one (so there will always be at least a couple of days for people to jump in on it). At the end of the month I'll tally up who's got the most correct responses and the best one(s) will get some points. I'm thinking maybe 5 for the top dog, 4 for the second, etc down to 1 point for the fifth finisher. It'll depend on how many people play along. Oh, and Lovely Wife, Dopple-G, others who know me in real life: If you know for a fact that the anecdote is true or false please don't guess. If you don't know, feel free to play along.

Sound interesting? Here's your first one to judge:

I have a scar above my left eye that goes through my eyebrow. I got this in a snowball fight in Buffalo, NY when I was but a lad. My opponent in the snowball fight used a chunk of ice and put a bit of snow around it and this missed blinding me by about a half of an inch. Because my face was frozen I didn't realize I was bleeding profusely at first and I chased him down and beat him thoroughly. I stopped when I saw all of the blood and thought I'd really hurt him. I went home and my Mom went into hysterics when she saw me literally covered in blood. He was bigger than me too, by the way.

Am I shamming or sharing? Lemme know. more...

Posted by: Jim at 09:36 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 527 words, total size 3 kb.