Tell me something about yourself that is Amazing, Unbelievable, Surprising or Odd. =)

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At the same nightclub, the same night, I shared a beer with Wade Boggs (Boston Redsox) and Brutis Beefcake (WWF) but not at the same time.

Bobby Orr once pat my head at a skating rink on local tv when I was 6 (1971). Everyone around me wanted to touch my head after that (and one guy wanted to get a clipping of my hair) .....talk about weird considering I had a crew cut at the time.

I had six pucks come at me or near me a one hockey game (college game), I got all six pucks.

I hit two royal flushes while holding ten, queen suited (both times in clubs) when playing texas holdem, one week apart. Have not hit one since.
 
Couple of things stand out...
First was working on an African adventure movie "Roar" when an ostrich bit me on the back hard enough that I "sprung a leak"... my "15 minutes of fame" was having Melanie Griffith and her mom, Tippi Hedren bandage me up.
The other time was in the late 90s, working at China Lake's Electronic Combat Range, and having a German Tornado crash into our radar site during a test. Sadly, the pilot and WSO perished, but all of us on the ground walked away, with the exception of a young lady that suffered a broken wrist and concussion from the aircraft wing cutting her test trailer in half.
I lost my '53 Chevy in the crash, but that's pretty trivial in light of being able to tell you about it...🙏
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I have a degree in aerospace engineering and a master's degree in systems engineering, and my four post-college jobs have been building feed mixers for dairy farms, CAD work for Enstrom Helicopter, structural analysis for old F-18 Hornets, and assembling and launching the Antares rocket.

I am not a BAR. I kept building rockets all through high school and college.

I have a wife who doesn't care how much I spend on rockets as long as the bills get paid.
 
I have a PhD in Organometallic chemistry from Duke, did an NIH Cancer Biology postdoc at UTSW Medical Center focusing on the syntheisis of novel chemotherapeutics, have worked for 13 years in drug discovery research and have NOT memorized the periodic table.
 
I'm an introvert who doesn't look the part but is a closeted adrenaline junkie.

Odd jobs and hobbies have led to some interesting experiences. I've had dinner with Alice Cooper, met Pat Benetar, Tony Stewart, members of Bone Thugs n Harmony and a whole bunch of smaller, underground bands.

Not too bad for a quiet, Midwestern nerd.
 
My wife had a very discreet relationship with one of her college teachers (not a TA, an actual instructor). They started dating while she was still in one of his classes; she was 18, he was 23 with a newly minted master's degree.


And he got her pregnant......


Though that didn't happen until seven years after we were married. ;) 42 years next August.

EDIT: The PChem prof at the college was (typical) oblivious. Early spring semester I told him I was getting married. "Is this to some gal back in Georgia?" "Uh...no...it's to a gal in your class..."
 
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Hmm. I'm pretty much a boring person compared to the stories thus far. In general, I think the main thing that makes me ME is that I constantly try to quantify things or at least reduce them so that they are more predictable. I don't even have to care about whatever it is, but I want to be able to figure out what the key variables are and how they interact with the final outcome. I am fine with spending 1000 hours figuring out how something works, even though the simple 'do this, get that' recipe would take 5 hours. . . not very cost efficient, but helpful when you need to make a new recipe. . .

My BBQ smoker has 10 thermocouples added that log every second. I've tweaked where and how I place the meat based on those thermocouples. My pork BBQ is great, ribs are great, brisket, not so much. My wife enjoys gardening and got a great crop this year. I don't like dirt that much, but enjoyed charting soil pH and want to learn more chemistry for next year. I'm currently working on formulas to predict force curves for shock absorbers based on the shim stack configuration. There might be software out there that already does this, and there are plenty of recipes based on manufacturer, but I want to understand it more and do more calculations and less with oily hands.

In college, an acquaintance (not friend, more of a friend of a friend of a friend) who was 'cool' called people who weren't that interesting 'flat scans' like an EKG machine would say when somebody's heart stopped. He was wild, did tons of drugs, partied all the time etc., while I worked and went to school and paid my bills. I was a flat scan in his world at that time and honestly, I'd say I'm a flat scan now too.

Told you I was a boring person. . .

Sandy.
 
I had the same issue with Timex watches. Only Timex. I could wear a Timex for 15 minutes, it would stop, and never run again. Any other watch brand I had no issues with.
Funny you should mention Timex, as that's the brand of the 2 watches that "broke" when I wore them to bed. They worked just fine when I wore them during the day, though. One lasted about 10 years and the other, about 5.
 
*I was (clinically) diagnosed High Functioning Autistic at the age of 30. However, a psych student at my dad's Alma Matter diagnosed me at the age of 17 in less than 15 minutes one day while we were listening to an outdoor concert... She was the first person to put the words "Jim is autistic" into a sentence, despite me seeing shrinks and councilors since I was four (the diagnosis had always been "Jim is very smart"). My dad shut her down, and quickly drummed her out of his circle of friends.

I think that’s pretty typical, even today.

“There’s nothing wrong with my child.” is the sentiment I’ve seen/heard. And that’s true, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being autistic. In many ways it’s a gift. But owning and understanding is very helpful in existing with others. Mothers seem to be more willing to accept it than fathers.

I’ve never been tested, but pretty sure I’m there.
My daughter has Asperger's and as a father it was VERY difficult because I cared. As a toddler, guests could not look her in the eyes at the dining table otherwise she'd be inconsolable. Some didn't believe us and that ended our meals for an hour plus. Many more difficult stories.

In some respects I can understand the parents trying to live in denial... ignore the situation since it's too much to deal with.

I worked hard with her. All of her teachers and most of her counselors agreeing that I what I was doing was correct helped a lot. I love her to death, but worry about her to death.

She surprised me when she later made it into Cornell and decided to dorm there. I never dreamed of the point where she would actually be able to be on her own and...I can't believe it...have friends. Sometimes all the hard work combined with luck works out.
 
I think that’s pretty typical, even today.

“There’s nothing wrong with my child.” is the sentiment I’ve seen/heard. And that’s true, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being autistic. In many ways it’s a gift. But owning and understanding is very helpful in existing with others. Mothers seem to be more willing to accept it than fathers.

I’ve never been tested, but pretty sure I’m there.
I’m autistic myself and I work with autistic people professionally (as I’ve mentioned elsewhere at least a few times).

One thing I’ve observed is that there are probably more people who are or may be neurodivergent than meets the eye. One of the biggest predictors of a late diagnosis is an existing diagnosis of another family member (autism, ADHD, and a few other select psychological/cognitive/behavioral traits that the world isn’t built to handle, tend to be highly hereditary and highly comorbid). Another is having close social contacts with people who are diagnosed with related conditions, as we tend to subconsciously identify one another. In other words, it’s highly unlikely that any given neurodivergent person is truly alone in their slice of the world.
 
I once had a face down in High School with the Nephew of a Triad leader who had his own gang.

My HS was 99.9% friendly, but one day after school in a train station this asshat decides to sucker punch me in the face as the train doors were closing and I was on the other side.

The punch was nothing to me... I had beaten myself as part of my trainings and punched myself in the face harder than that, but I was furious that he did that and ran away (probably better for both of us he did).

As noted in my first post, I knew how to fight and my father had the rule "don't lose otherwise don't come home!"

Everyone was friends with everyone else, so word spread and I sent a message through our mutual friends that everyone makes mistakes and I'll let that one go, but he better not try it again otherwise he will "regret it" (edited).

Some if his friends/gang were in my HS weight training class and they knew I was very strong (more on that later), so they passed my message on and I'd guess talked some sense into him.

He never bothered me again and to the contrary was very nice to me after.

Even "odder" yet is that the guy worked as a DJ and a few years later he DJ'd my best friend's wedding. Let me tell you it was WEIRD seeing a gang leader wearing a balloon hat after what we went through - I kid you not.

He now works at Cornell as an admin and we're friends on Facebook.

Be nice to others people!
 
She surprised me when she later made it into Cornell and decided to dorm there. I never dreamed of the point where she would actually be able to be on her own and...I can't believe it...have friends.

Well done, my friend, well done! To our disbelief, our son started college this semester, didn't drop his Set Theory class despite the initial difficulties, and actually spoke up in class voluntarily last week. It's a long road, but what must be done.

Another is having close social contacts with people who are diagnosed with related conditions, as we tend to subconsciously seek each other out.

Independent study in the high school physics lab was a very comfortable place, with a few friends that could talk about things that came to us naturally.

Oddly, and this is the only "about me" I have to offer in this thread, I was very popular in high school despite having strong nerd cred. And this is what my house looked like most weekends through high school. No one was ever hurt, and only 2 ever got caught:
Jake-Ryans-House-Sixteen-Candles-3-3386088825.jpg


In other words, it’s highly unlikely that any given neurodivergent person is truly alone in their slice of the world.

No, but they may not realize they have company for quite some time.
 
Independent study in the high school physics lab was a very comfortable place, with a few friends that could talk about things that came to us naturally.

Oddly, and this is the only "about me" I have to offer in this thread, I was very popular in high school despite having strong nerd cred. And this is what my house looked like most weekends through high school. No one was ever hurt, and only 2 ever got caught:
View attachment 549255

Well-done!

No, but they may not realize they have company for quite some time.
Sad and true. I knew my uncle Kevin is autistic from early childhood but it wasn’t until this year that I realized my grandpa (his father) and my mother (his sister) probably are. I can’t help but wonder if I could have had closer relations with them both if I had been granted this realization earlier.
 
This video here pretty much sums it up.

Not an amazing story. I just picked it because of how funny it would be if this were someone's most exciting life event. I guess it isn't, but let's say it is.
 
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