Wednesday, November 01, 2006

I've Been Tagged

Some children played tag, red-rover, and hide-n-seek. Perhaps my cousins and I did too, but the most memorable game I remember was called "Machine Gun." There were seven of us, plus a few neighborhood kids thrown in to make a fun group. One person was the gunner and the others lined up across the yard. The gunner would assume the machine gun position with arm outstretched and finger pointed and say, GO. As the gunner made the ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah sound the rest of us ran across the yard only to be slain by the gunner. Then the gunner would walk through the fallen and choose the silliest, wildest, creepiest death position. That person would be resurrected by the gunner to become the next gunner. The game would begin again with a new gunner, while the former gunner would join the soon-to-be corpses. There was no trying to make it to the other side or to bring down the gunner. The object was to be chosen for having the creepiest death position. It's a wonder that none of us became assassins.

While it's not exactly a game of tag, this memory was prompted by two things. Yesterday was Halloween, the creepiest day of the year, and my friend EJ Knapp tagged me in an online game of blog tag. To fulfill my destiny I must write five things about myself that are not commonly known. Then I must tag five others to keep the game alive. So here goes:

  1. I was born in Los Angeles to a San Francisco bohemian father of Italian descent and a Midwest fundamentalist mother whose roots trace back to Benjamin Franklin. They were unhappily married for ten years, divorcing when I was seven. My stepfather, a latent beatnik who introduced me to Joan Baez, Isaac Asimov, and kite flying, stepped in as the father my birth father couldn’t be.
  2. I was an in-betweener in high school. I wasn’t part of any single clique, but had friends in all the crowds from the existentialist intellectuals, to the pot-smoking loadies who hung out in the bathrooms. I was senior class president, wrote for the HS newspaper, and was editor of the yearbook my senior year.
  3. I follow the Christian faith, not because of blind adherence, obligation, or the need for a crutch. There was an emptiness in my life that pursuit of knowledge, pleasure, romance, or creativity couldn’t fill. I explored intellectual atheism, mysticism, new age thought, and Eastern religions, but in the end, I chose the grace that my study of the peace-loving Jesus revealed.
  4. I went to Orange Coast College in SoCal, but never got to the university level. If there are any regrets in my life, this is the biggie. I took an internship with Contemporary Christian Music magazine and loved the job so much I accepted a fulltime position with the expectation of taking night courses to finish my degree. I was promoted to assistant editor of the magazine and then life took off on a zipline adventure that was exactly what I needed at the time.
  5. I can’t imagine anything more satisfying than being a mother. Creative endeavors like writing, music, and art nurture me, but I realize that I am a nurturer at heart. I have loved every age in the life of my children and now as they stand on the cusp of adulthood, I am in awe of who they’ve become.

It’s time to tag five more people: Lori Weinrott, Susan Henderson, Karen Dionne, Brian Howe, Danielle Schaaf, and one honorary family tag to my daughter, Bella Voce.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lol, What a fun (although possibly scary) game!!

lori said...

Ha! Running off to catch others. If you're not out of breath and have time to go a'blogging, visit me and see what I revealed. btw, what a gorgeous daughter you have.

Alongtimesleeping.blogspot.com

Deleted Blog said...

Wow, what a revealing post. Also, I absolutely loved your narrative explaining the childhood machine gun game... I had not heard of it before and felt myself feeling a bit envious... makes me wish I could play it now...

A.S. King said...

This 'tag' bug is going around.
Carolyn - your pictures are great - you are totally GORGEOUS.

Stella

Ewoh Nairb said...

Hah... stepped up and posted my five for you... and tagged some others.

Thanks for the tag and for the great post here on your blog.

Carolyn Burns Bass said...

Cat and Swanny, go ahead and play Machine Gun, who says you have to be a kid to be silly? I taught the game to my kids, but it just didn't take as well with them, I suppose. Maybe if I'd given them imaginary laser guns, rather than old-fashioned machine guns, they would have played it more. But heck, half the fun was making that ah-ah-ah sound. What kind of sound does a laser make? Come Thanksgiving, when everyone's here at my house, I think I'll reintroduce it.

Lori, thanks for posting your list so quickly. And thank you also for challenging me to NanoWriMo. I’ve put up 3422 words so far.

Number 3 in A.S. King’s list is this: I can explain to you the bizarre and complicated genetic instructions for breeding Blue Orpington chickens.

A.S. King, or Stella as we know her in our writer’s group, is a snappy and savvy lady who is rumored to look like Rickie Lee Jones. (How cool is that?) Of all the interesting things she wrote, her expertise in breeding chickens impressed the feathers off me. Here’s another uncommon fact about me. I raise chickens in our SoCal backyard. I love my chickens, but have a special fondness for Chiqua, a black hen who my neighbor gave me last spring after her dog attacked it. A sucker for animals, especially those in pain, I brought it into the house much to my husby’s chagrin and nursed the lady back to health. Here’s the thing: Chiqua had a compound fracture of her wing, the bone literally sticking out. No one thought she would live. Not only did she live, but she’s my best egg-layer.

Brian, I left a note in your blog that I want one of your Italian lutes.

~Carolyn

A.S. King said...

It IS true! I HAVE found another crazy chicken lady!!

I admit, though, Carolyn, that I have a less veterinary side to me. I'm afraid Stella would be more likely to chop & eat a broken bird rather than fix it.
I know. Shocking, right? (Lori is still queasy from the pheasant hanging stories, I bet...)

However, to balance my ice-queen cave-woman tendencies, there is Mr. Stella, who once nursed a crippled duckling in our sitting room for months ...applying physical therapy to its gammy leg and walking it up and down the lawn to fix it. Honest - he named it Virgil.

I miss fresh eggs...

What breed is Chiqua, Carolyn?

EJ said...

This tag thing is really getting around. Loved the machine gun game. Reminded me of some games I played as a young lad.

Carolyn Burns Bass said...

Stella, I have no idea of Chiqua's breed. She's black, but not heavy-feathered like your beautiful orpingtons. I think she's a mongrel. My prettiest hen is a huge Plymouth Rock. She's the meanest too. Another thing I've learned about raising chickens is where the term "pecking order" came from.

EJ, Karen's going to do her 5 things in a Backspace thread, since her blog is business oriented. Watch for that. Susan posted hers today at LitPark. Danielle promised to post hers when life after book release slows down a bit.

Happy weekend, everyone.

~Carolyn

Carolyn Burns Bass said...

Susan, that's the nicest thing anyone could say. Thanks for the blessing.

Helen Wang said...

It's wonderful to get to know you more!

EJ said...

It's November 15th dear, and late in the evening at that. Time for another post. ........... :-)