There’s an internet game where one reveals five (silly) “facts” about oneself. OK, here goes (with rich elaboration, of course):
Dowsing. I can locate metal water pipes underground by using divining rods (two pieces of wire cut from a coat hanger and bent into an L-shape). This ability appears to run for generations in the Archuleta family (not my real surname), though I can’t do the version where one uses a wishbone-shaped hickory stick to determine where to dig a well. That takes real talent.
Paper snowflakes. I can cut proper, six-sided paper snowflakes (a useful skill at Christmastime, despite a lack of Southern snow). Mine are rather artistic, if I say so myself. I get quite cross when someone manages to cut a few clumsy diamond shapes along folds and thinks his/her snowflake is equal to one of mine. That would take authentic talent.
Additive resemblance. I can often express a celebrity as (looking like) the sum of two others. Sarah Palin = Tina Fey + Marge Simpson. Mike Huckabee = Dick York (Darrin No. 1, Bewitched) + Richard Nixon. Juan Diego Florez = Richard Tucker + Sylvester Stallone. John McCain = George Peppard (A Team) + Dr. Evil (Austin Powers). Lauren Holly (Mark Harmon’s boss, NCIS) = Liza Minnelli + Reba McEntire. Blimey, it just pops in me head. It’s an annoying talent.
Shaving Brushes. While I’m old-fashioned enough to use a safety razor loaded with a double-edged blade, I dislike shaving brushes and all that build-lather-from-paste-that-comes-in-tubs-from-England stuff that Corey Greenberg says you’re supposed to do on the Today Show. I use *gasp* canned foam. (Yes, I wear a beard, but I regularly shave my neck, thankyouverymuch. A pirate mustn’t look like the Geico Caveman.) It’s ironic that the klutz in me can actually wield a safety razor with alacrity whilst managing the eventual fumble of any shaving brush into the toilet. That takes uncommon talent.
Viola. I can play “Ode to Joy” on the viola without sounding like I’m strangling a cat. This stupendous ability comes from having taken class strings in music school (as an elective, *gasp*) from a favorite professor with a dry sense of humor who foisted the bigger, lower-pitched cousin of the violin on me since he thought I could handle reading alto clef. Let me tell ‘ya . . . that takes talent. (Favorite viola joke: the viola isn’t bigger than the violin, it just looks that way because violists have small heads.)
Now, one is supposed to “tag” five other people to list five facts about themselves on their own blogs linking back to the initiator. While I can think of a few, it’s a little rude to do that–sort of like sending a chain letter. Of course, a surfer might have bad luck were he/she to read this and not . . .
David, these are great! I never knew any of this about you.
(BTW I have wanted to switch to a safety razor for a long, long time. It just seems like the right thing to do. But there is nowhere I can get one locally and the ones I find online tend to be too pricey. I’m sure Smith’s Variety has the blades for them: they have everything else.
I’ll try to work on my own list.
Dowsing. Wow.
When I was little, my father wanted confirmation of a water pipe he was trying to find in my grandmother’s yard. Without any prior knowledge of having “The Gift” (as the “Archuletas” jokingly refer to dowsing ability) or where he thought the pipe was, I had success in finding the same location. And yes, the pipe was there. I felt a little like Michael J. Fox discovering the family affliction in “Teen Wolf.”
I had kept the safety razor that I used in callow youth (until Gillette quite supplying the blades in the US and I had to switch to the tolerably good/bad Atra “system”). I refuse to use more than twin blades. Five blades, geeesh, that’s a bulk cheese grater. There’s a guy in Florida that supplies less expensive razors. http://www.razorandbrush.com/barberiaraz.html