WOW HARV! Sorry to go tripping through your subconscious without permission, but what a nice thing to say! You're also very perceptive, as I am not ready for any kind of real attention and would be tickled to death to be able to do what I love, which is write, and make a few bucks, and quietly hide in a corner at the same time. I shrink under close scrutiny. It messes with me, bad. But I am gradually getting better. It seems to me that there are a lot of people that have this affliction. You know as well as I do that when you write, you give away little bits of yourself. You whack away at the walls that just living in general forces you to put up, and eventually you get to where you feel like you're walking around like the Emperor with no clothes. That's the way it is for me anyway, and I suspect you can relate to some degree.
Don, you're right, there is a story. Suffice it to say, that the first time I tried to drive it, I put it in 'go backwards' instead of 'go forwards' and ended up plowing through a row of palmettos and ultimately a barbed wire fence. Fred surprised me by laughing his rear end off (at the expression on my face I suspect) instead of yelling at me which made it worse somehow, and I didn't want to admit at the time that I had no idea where the brake was. Talk about going off half-cocked. Now I go everywhere in first gear only, which drives my son Jake, (who goes everyhwere at a hundred miles an hour), to distraction, but we all most function within our limitatons.
And by the way, has anyone seen Rich? I haven't heard from him in two weeks! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif