Moncks Corner's Revenge - Part 7a

... now then, where was I?

Ahh, yes. Moncks Corner. Again.

First, let me describe myself in general, for those of you not "in the know". I'm of about average height... whatever THAT means - it seems 6' is average for the USA, but the world average is only 5'8" - I'm guessing 1.2 billion Chinese bring that number down quite a bit all on their own. I am also somewhat stockily built, with broad shoulders. This is good, cause it helps keep me from looking like a barrel. I have a somewhat permanent olive/tan to my skin - inherited from both the ruddy Italian side AND the olive of my Japanese mother. Considering it was late Spring, I had actually gotten some sun, so at the time of this tale, I had a decent tan.

On a side note, I have been blessed (or cursed) with skin that tans readily... and it usually annoys the women I date, who often spend weeks trying to build up a tan that I usually get in the course of an afternoon. A few years ago I went to Bonnaroo with my then fiancee', A**, and one of her best friends, a cool cat named M**, his fiancee', K**, and a couple of M**'s friends. Hey, here's a question: why is the spelling different for male-fiance' or female-fiancee' ?? The damnable French - just have to complicate things, don't they, with their Fronch Fries and Fronch Bread and Fronch Dressing and that Peru mineral water?

Anyway, that Friday was sunny - a practically weather-perfect day, by most accounts. (Which says NOTHING about the weather we had the rest of the weekend... can you say, "Mudslides, Uncle Wop" ?) I took my shirt off so I could catch some rays - having been cooped up for most of winter and Spring in the office had done me no favors, skintone-wise. Well, A** and K** both offered me sunscreen cause they were already getting toasty from the 30 minutes they'd been up and about.... it was a pretty brutal sun, I will admit, but I declined. M*** threw some on and M**'s friends? Well, they definitely needed it, as fair-skinned as they were. They kept offering that sunscreen, warning me I'd burn... for the next several hours. And I went sans shirt and sans sunscreen... and got darker and darker.... They got more and more annoyed the darker I got... and nary a burn. A** got some burn on her shoulders even WITH the sunscreen. She said, and I quote, "You're very annoying." Oh well, sorry, ladies - I don't do it on purpose... I gotta love that set of genes.

Now then, rewinding back to the time of the Moncks Corner torture, I had what I would call a medium-large build. No, really. I hadn't yet had the time to experiment with the thing called GIRTH. Unfortunately, it seems I was a bit TOO successful in THAT experiment in the years since then, for my own personal tastes, at the very least. Suffice it to say that I am now experimenting with this thing called EXERCISE. It's a novel thing. Perhaps I will try to market it out and see if there is a business model that can succeed through this foreign EXERCISE thing... Has anyone out there had any success with this foreign creature?

so black it's blue hair

Anyway, I also had long dark hair at the time, not quite so long as it is now, but still far longer than the average mullet. At this point, it was an ex-mullet that was growing out. And it was unfortunately NOT black-blue - I often wish it were. Not for me, though - I just have really dark brown hair - looks black when it's wet, but it's just brown. Dammit. Yep, only my eldest brother got THAT color...

of course, he also got the curly from the Italian side - it would get so thick that if he let it go too long, his head would be mushroom-shaped.... we sometimes called it the "Atomic Bomb hairdo" or the "Nuclear Explosion Look" - hey, we're children of the Cold War, go figure. I'll take the brown straight hair over the Nuke Look. Lastly, I also have eyes that hint at a foreign parentage, obviously from the mom.

This will all be important at some point, to be sure.

Now, where was I again? Ahh, that's right, I had just opened the doors and stepped in...
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