Interesting facts about me:

1) I have terrible balance. I can’t roller skate, use a skateboard, roller blade or anything like that. Also I fall or nearly fall up and down stairs a lot. No medical condition indicated. Have been this way all my life.

2) I (and many other people) set a world record in 1997 for the longest-distance non-stop parachute operation in the world. Two mid-air refuelings, 19 hours flying. Then the jump. This record likely still stands though I haven’t looked into it.

3) Dogs freak me out in some metaphysical way. So needy. Cannot deal.

4) I tried lucid dreaming in the 5th grade. Got hooked on it. Thanks, Omni magazine.

5) By the time I was 10 or 11, I’d subscribed (thanks to my grandparents) to Scientific American, Omni, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Popular Science and some other magazines. Also read National Geographic cover to cover starting when I was six. Nerdiest kid alive? Hell yeah.

6) I once asked for a strange girl’s number in a Waffle House in the middle of the night. This is something I almost never do, but I got it, and it was I think real. I never called her as my life was just too busy at that time.

7) If I had a superpower, I’d want it to be the ability to speak, read, write and fully understand any language fluently without training.

8) I used to be able to hold my breath for more than two minutes while swimming underwater. What living on a clean river in Florida will do for you. Used to freak people right the hell out.

9) I used to read 9-12 books concurrently.

10) I don’t naturally have much empathy. Think I was just born this way. I try to rein it in and not become a complete sociopath but it’s a lifelong battle.