Sunday, January 21, 2007

Tag, I'm It

Steve Danko has "tagged" me in his blog, meaning that I need to come up with 5 things that most people don't know about me (and secondly, I'll have to come up with 5 other bloggers to tag, which is going to be the real tough part). So at least in this posting, I'll list my 5 things:

  1. Back in the early 1990s, I collaborated with my (now) ex-sister-in-law, Rande Yates (her maiden name, I can't recall her new married name) on writing a number of songs. Rande is a very talented pianist, and after hearing some of her tunes, I volunteered to write lyrics to some of them. When she wrote a tune inspired by her young son (Benji), I wrote lyrics for it. Rande submitted "Benjamin's Song"(also called "Kindergarten Kid") to an annual contest held by the South Carolina Songwriters Association, and our song won first place in the children's/novelty category.
  2. Growing up, I always watched GE College Bowl with host Allen Ludden on Sunday nights. So around 1980, when I was on the computer center staff at Clemson University, I volunteered to play in an exhibition game between Clemson faculty and Clemson students. I ended up on the faculty team with 3 Clemson history professors, but I was the only one on the team who could answer the history questions. I went on to coach the Clemson team for 8 years, and when I left Clemson for the University of South Florida, I coached the USF team, too. I was a regular College Bowl moderator for the regional games in the southeast U.S.
  3. I learned to play bridge in college, and joined a duplicate bridge club in the late 70s/early 80s. I eventually earned enough master points at local tournaments to be a "Junior Master". (Fortunately, it didn't take many.)
  4. I ended up as a co-star of my high school's senior play ("The Phantom Strikes Again", a mystery/comedy), primarily because the original male lead was also busy playing in the high school band, he was so busy with the band (when they played in Mardi Gras festivities in New Orleans) that he didn't learn his lines, and I was chosen to replace him. If that hadn't happened, I would have played the butler with only about 3 speaking lines.
  5. In 1970, I came in 2nd in the Newberry County (South Carolina) spelling bee. I believe that one of the words I misspelled was "cemetery".
Now I just have to figure out who to tag...

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