Today, I'm the It Boy.

Every once in a while, I get 'tagged'.
For my non-blogging readers, a tag is the blog equivalent of chain mail. One person comes up with a neat idea for a blog entry...and 'tags' everybody s/he knows, thereby perpetuating the post all over the blogosphere. In short, it's a game, and usually a silly one.
So the tag I got this morning asked me to go back to my 23rd post and examine the fifth sentence of it for any subtexts or hidden meanings.
Well, I was curious. Curious enough to see just when my 23rd blog entry was (Father's Day last year) and whether or not the fifth sentence thereof had any subtext to it. Frankly, I doubted it. As a writer, I don't do subtext. I've always operated on the principle that if I have something to say, the best way to say it is...to say it, not to hide it behind a bush of allegory.

"My first sight of John McCallum, the man who became The Man in my life, was in August, 1980."

Nope, nothing hidden there.

If there's anything interesting to be said about this exercise, it's that my straightforwardness as a writer and speaker is largely due to John himself. If there was ever anything hidden about the man, he kept it so well hidden that its existence could never be suspected: a more open and honest person would be difficult to find.

Now I'm supposed to tag five more people so they can do the same thing I just did. Sorry--ain't gonna do it. There aren't five people whose blogs I read, for one thing; for another, they've got plenty of good ideas of their own...or they wouldn't be bloggers in the first place.

So the chain breaks...if that means I'll die soon, so be it.

That reminds me. Last week, electricians came into our store and replaced all of our lights for the second time in two years. I guess now they're even more energy efficient. Now if they can do something with my bunkers, which use five times more energy than every light in the store put together...
Anyway, to get at the lights, they needed ladders: big ones, of the sort my mother would probably call extensibles. (My mom, bless her heart, has her own words for common objects, like thermomistats and knives with serengated edges...after years of hearing words like that, you get to thinking if they're not English, they should be.)
Anyway...boy, I do seem to be quadrigressing all over the place, don't I?
Yours truly walked under a ladder several times last week...on purpose. People around me, cashiers and customers both, were heard to gasp. "Did he just go under that ladder?!", I heard one older woman almost moan.
Puh-leeze.
I'm a pretty imaginative guy, and I'm very emotional, but superstitions just bore the shit out of me. I've owned a black cat, so I've had one cross my path on any number of occasions, to no ill effect. Friday the 13th is like any other day. I'm pretty sure I've broken at least one mirror in my life...so what?
My wife, being herself a rational being, has very few supersitions of her own, but I ran afoul of one early in our relationship, and now have the lesson engraved deep in my brain:

You don't mention anything whatever to do with car accidents whilst in a car.

Them's the rules. I'm free to think whatever I want about 'em...if I want to walk.