In no particular order, with stuff being added constantly as I think of it.
- I am type 1 autistic (formerly known as Asperger Disorder in the DSM-IV, until they decided having the condition named after Hans Asperger (a Nazi scientist and eugenicist) was probably not a good idea and reclassified it in the DSM-V). I also have been diagnosed with arrested development disorder after being bullied from the second grade through all of high school.
- I had a Disneyland annual pass from 1996 (when I moved out of the house into my first apartment) until 2000, and have had a Disney World annual pass since 2012 (plus one in 2008 while I was living off of the severance from a layoff, and except for the period right after COVID when they offered cancellations and then stopped selling passes until the following fall).
- In addition to two years of French in high school and another two in junior college, I got half way through the 2nd/3rd degree correspondence course with the Alliance Française in Paris before I had to quit because of the expense (and having to find a place that would write international money orders in French francs, before there was the euro).
- The story is that my first words were “Mickey Mouse” because one of my aunts kept calling me “Minnie Mouse” because I squealed as a baby. The true story is that my first words were “dada” (according to my baby book, which is now part of my small personal library).
- My past ministry work includes being a worship musician (guitar, keyboard, arrangements), being a spiritual director, leading a bible study in Second Life, facilitating a recovery group for men’s sexual addiction, and being multimedia director for a motorcycle ministry (while riding a scooter)—not quite in that order. There’s a photo somewhere of me in a group of Harleys and Goldwings down Florida Avenue in Lakeland while on a Yamaha Vino 125 with a large plush animal strapped on the back during that year’s Christmas toy run.
- In the motorcycle ministry days, when we chartered a new chapter in Daytona Beach, the bikers went as a group as usual. Because I was on a 125-cc scooter that couldn’t be on the Interstate, I rode up separately on my own via sideroads through Lake County. I left Lakeland at 4:30 in the morning and arrived by 8 AM. Passed another chapter when I arrived in Daytona and they did a double-take, not believing I actually rode the scooter the entire way. (They made me put it in their trailer for the ride back and ride on the back of the chaplain’s Goldwing. I also couldn’t feel anything between my legs for a day afterward.)
- For a year or two I ran my own secretarial service from my bedroom after the one I was working for went under, with the same clients that the secretarial service I was working for had.
- In the mid-90s I all but singlehandedly temporarily brought down AECOM’s email system with a “Reply to All”. (Microsoft Exchange, before there was Outlook.)
- When Needham Chapel was all but completed at Southern California College (now Vanguard University), I delivered the first sermon there as part of my “final exam” for homiletics class.
- Because I wore almost nothing but black on campus at bible college, usually with a white-collared shirt underneath, a professor called me “Father Steve.” (I forget which professor.)
- My first real sermon in front of a church was supposed to be a half hour. My notes lasted ten minutes. (This was before I took the homiletics class.)
- I intentionally flunked a semester of P.E. in high school because I got so tired of being made fun of for my then-gangly appearance that I refused to change out of my “street clothes” into my P.E. uniform for the rest of the semester. Made the semester up my senior year and got my only “A” in P.E.
- I was on the front page of the Orange County section of the Los Angeles Times on January 29, 1986—the day after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded after launch with teacher Christa McAuliffe on board. The day of the event, several of us were taken out of class to see a replay on the principal’s tiny black-and-white TV and then sat in the quad of the junior high school to be interviewed by the Times.