As I stand before you today, I am a bit less than 24 hours away from completing my third decade here on this goodly frame, the Earth. Friends and Toastmasters, I arrived a bit before noon that snowy February 27th, becoming the newest citizen of the Garden State. My adventures since have been fraught with thrills and surprises of all sorts, but I'm told that I can be quite a surprise myself. I so often play the quiet guy - save for the occasional wisecrack - that few expect what they find when the facts emerge. I've been known to surprise those around me, and even myself at times. And, then, there are those occasions when I surprise everyone.
It's not uncommon for me to surprise people. When my wife and I were but new characters in each other's tale, we found, on some occasion, reason to discuss our diverse ethnic heritage. My dear bride is, even to the casual observer, clearly African-American. My own roots are less obvious, but as it turns out, the melting pot has given me ancestors of Irish, English and Italian extraction. When I mentioned this, there was some eye-rolling and harumphing. "You crazy white folks," she said, "always on about how you're one-half THIS and a twentieth THAT and often with the obligatory teeny-tiny-bit Cherokee or something. Tell me, does any of that ancestry actually have any bearing on your life today?" She had a point, as she so often does. Whatever my Irish forebearers had passed down is lost, but for the reddish hue of my father's beard. My family's knowledge of our Limey roots isn't much more than that they were Tories during the American Revolution, and fled to southern Jersey. My Italian relations,(FLIP CHART) though, have given me such recognizable benefits as talking with my hands, this very fine nose, skin which my wife tells me is not in need of moisturization, and, much to her surprise, a wealth of culinary traditions. In answer to her dubiousness, I prepared her the first of many homemade spaghetti dinners, featuring my Great Grandmother's Calabrase tomato sauce recipe. She was quite Surprised!
It's a bit more rare for me to surprise myself. I spent most of my childhood in an early 70's vintage house in a tiny city not far south of Austin. It hadn't been cared for properly, and so by the early 80's it was in need of serious work. Things had been chewed by pet ferrets, and walls had been patched with the funny pages. Between 1983 and the time my parents sold it in 1998, every room was refinished somehow; new flooring, trim, paint, fixtures, a few new walls, and a massive deck. My role in all this was minimal; although I was the eldest, I was as I am today, a great big nerd, more interested in turning pages than turning screws. However, the time came last spring, that I, too, became a homeowner. While it wasn't the wreck my parents bought on Redbud Trail, it wasn't perfect. I taught my wife how to paint. She took to it with gusto, and we haven't messed up the walls yet. I added a chair rail without much drama. The porch light got replaced without any fireworks. A few weeks ago, we got fed up with the ceiling fan in the bedroom. The single bulb put out far too little light, and it kinda wobbled. In order to get enough light to avoid leaving the house in clown makeup, she asked me to replace it. We bought a fan with many bulbs, and I took down the old one. Not too hard. (FLIP CHART) Upon closer inspection, the wobble had been due to a poorly mounted electrical box, attached to a beam with a flimsy offset bracket, clearly meant for a light, not a heavy, moving fan. Faced with the prospect of a lightless bedroom, I cut a two-by-four to run from one joist to the next, right over the box. I secured the box directly to this new header, and then just followed the directions. Only later did it occur to me that I had subtly altered the very structure of my house, based on skills I didn't know I had acquired. The Surprise was all mine!
Only rarely do I surprise everyone. In late 2006, I was feeling weird. Weirder than usual, that is. Spacey, even, while toiling away in my cube. I knew that lightheadedness can sometimes be a result of blood sugar issues, and that my family has a history of diabetic issues, but usually not until later in life. Then again, I don't always take such good care dietarily, and wondered if it had caught up with me. To the applause of the women in my life, I scheduled a visit with my physician. He had me go in for a battery of tests: urine, blood, and just in case, an EEG and an MRI. If you've ever had one, you know that MRI tube is seriously loud. In late January, just over a year ago, on the day following the ice storm that kept us all home, I was waiting for the light over here at MoPac and Duval, when the nurse called to schedule a followup, and let it slip that the doctor had found something. (FLIP CHART) This, he informed me, is a Meningioma, a tumor on the surface of my brain. No one was expecting that. Surprise. It turns out that it was causing seizures; not interesting, spectacular, shake-and-fall-out ones, but boring, daydreamy, "what-was-I-doing-now?" type ones. Not that I'm complaining. In short order, I got a prescription to control them. The tumor itself, after some careful observation, doesn't seem to be growing. It may eventually have to come out, but probably not anytime soon. This fellow-traveler has demonstrated to me that the strangest things can dealt with, and one should always appreciate life's little surprises.
Mr Toastmaster
