I have been tagged by zenhell
20 random things about me:
1) I have never once looked directly into the eyes of a direct ancestor of mine until I was graced with the presence of my son Sebastian Chet Del Ponte 5 months ago. I was adopted three days after my birth, my biological mother was in between the ages of 14-16 a product of the Las Vegas strip( Not one scrap of information about my father was passed on) the only thing I know about her was that her last name was long and started with an S. I am a man out of time in the sense that I am absolutely free to create my own history and throw off whatever shackles might have accompanied the life I might have lived. It took me a very long time to feel any sense of true love. To this day I struggle with a deep feeling of rejection even though I had one of the greatest childhoods ever.
2) I have one blue eye and one green eye-This sets people off into all sorts of tangentsto this day some people think they are fakePeople (random strangers) often ask me if I am aware that my eyes are different colors-this makes no sense to meI am a man of 31 years old-I surmise it would be obvious that I had at least once looked into a mirror at my own face.
3) My grandfather (who died when I was 4) gave both Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassidy work, on our fertilizer company, during the On the Road period. My grandfather was an Italian who delighted in connecting and understanding people from all walks of life, he felt that hard traveling men offered not only a strong independent sense of Americana but also a deep kinship in exactly what it was that made our country so great back then. He died when I was 4I have two distinct memories of him-wearing his pork pie hat and sitting on his lap. I accidentally pulled the oxygen tube out of his nose.he could not breath. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. The second memory centers on his funeral, I had never seen my father weep, the sight and the way it made me feel will never leave me.
4) My father was granted a scholarship to college at the age of 16. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in geology by the time he was 20. He has had the largest impact on my life out of everyone (outside of musicians and artists) and not always in the best ways. Upon his graduation he spent a few years in the oil business and decided to turn his back on the greed and bullshit factor of the business and joined the Air Force. He could have opted out of going to Vietnam because of his officer status, yet chose to force them to send him overseas. He did not believe that when so many people who clearly did not want to go were fighting itthat he should sit at home and collect the benefits of service without putting in his time. My father did not believe in the war-but he believed in helping people to obtain freedom of oppression. To this day I remember the many pieces of Buddhist art, scripture, and thought which graced our home. It touched something so deep inside of me-at once foreign and at the same time fundamentally humanIt was why he chose to fight.he finished his career at NORAD-choosing to retire early because of the convoluted and often misdirected nature of the military in a post cold war society. I have always been deeply proud of my father for his contribution to the freedom of thought and religion-2 things which I deem fundamental in an intellectual and balanced world and something so many people today just do not get-for they have never been oppressed.
5) I have spent hours and hours of my life reading books. It seems to be the one thing that afforded me escape and a sense of the world. I read on average about 4 books a month to this day. My parents never once tried to censor the content that I was reading and opened their book shelves to me from the earliest of days. In the summertime I was asked to write countless book reports for my father I thank both my parents for instilling a love of writing, words, and stories. Given the option, I am quite happy to read over just about anything else in this world.
6) I determined that I would marry my wife within 48 hours of meeting herand in fact, moved 1500 miles across the country in order to be with her. Because she had a daughter who was six at the time, I sold my most prized possession before embarking on this phase of my life. It was a 1938 BSA which I had salvaged parts for throughout the West Coast. I miss it very much on warm days when a ride would be nice but I would not trade my daughter for anything in the world.
7) When I was 15 half the bones in my left foot were blown out with a handgun. I had been shot while hanging about and drinking with friends two days before my birthday. Unlike the movies, the pain does not begin right away; due to the intense velocity of a bullet your entire inner workings vibrate at an incredible rate - it takes a few minutes for the gunpowder to burn in your blood, which in turn begins to speed up because of the shock of being shot. The ultimate irony of the situation is that I was raised with firearms and had noticed there was not a clip in the gun. Thinking myself safe from the situation I let the jackass play aroundit never occurred to me it was his fathers home defense gun and that a bullet had been cycled into the chamber. Had the gun not hit me it would have exploded the chest of a very nice 15 year old girl. She thanked me for saving her life for ten years after that when ever we saw one another.
8) I taught special education for almost five years after graduating from college. It was not only humbling, but also deeply disturbing and challenged every fundamental aspect of my life up to the point. My greatest triumph was helping one boy and his little brother to escape the shackles of foster care and become adopted by a stable family. I often wonder if he even remembers my name.
9) I was a professional Sous Chef for over five years. I will have a life long love affair with the sensual nature of preparing food and take great pride and enjoyment watching people eat the dishes I have created. It is a very basic thing that brings people from all walks of life together. Nothing is more delightful to me than having people over to waste away a night with good food and libations.
10) I have devoted most of my life since the age of 10 collecting vinyl with a deep interest in both jazz and classical music. When I moved 1500 miles I filled the back of a pick up with records and only brought a small duffle bag of clothes.
11) I suffer from social anxiety and rarely open up to people that I do not know very well. The catch-22 of the situation is that most people will actually find me to be quite pleasant and intense but are often left with a bad impression of me- thinking me to be a bit of an asshole.I am getting much better with this as time goes by, however; the older I get the less I want to have people aroundI keep my tribe tight and right.
12) I have one sister. She is five years older then me and has been my biggest champion through all phases of my life. If it were not for her I would have been dead by now ten fold. I often feel like I have never adequately expressed just how much she means to me and out of everyone in my family, I wish she lived closer to me. I want nothing more then for her to be happy and would do anything to help her accomplish that goal.
13) I have been poor enough to dumpster dive for produce and have never once felt ashamed for that fact. It builds character and illuminates the true wasteful nature of this society.
14) I would viciously and methodically kill and maim anyone who would try to harm my tribe. I do not think of myself as a violent man; however, I know the inner depths of my soul and what I am capable of. There is nothing I would not endure in this world or the next to insure a proper balance and happiness for those I love.
15) Both my parents were self employedwe ate a lot of pancakes for supper during the height of a bad economy in the 80sI never once knew that we were struggling. My parents made us feel (and always have) that everything was fine. It took having children of my own to truly understand what sacrifice is.
16) Unlike 99% of the people I know-my parents are still married and in love-from this I have learned that perfection in a relationship is a wasted concept and true love and kinship comes from the dichotomy of both the good times and the bad times. It is through these lean times that the soul is forged and human connections are really achieved.
17) From the time I was a very small child I have spent countless hours with my grandmother and father tending an acre garden on her property. I still take great delight in growing food and wish that we had more property in the city to pass this tradition on to the kids.
18) I spent an entire year in almost near seclusion ( with the exception of work) trying to live a humble monks existence and correct the over indulgent behavior that I felt was holding me back and causing me unhappiness in my life. At the end of that year I met my wife and had the greatest epiphany in the world.
19) I would be quite content to listen only to my childrens laughter for the rest of my life.
20) Having reached my 30s alive, content, and happy, I look forward more and more to what I assume will be the greatest years of my life. I take great pleasure in knowing that I will still hold my wifes hand when we are but withered kooky old peopleand only hope that she still feels the same about me in
20 random things about me:
1) I have never once looked directly into the eyes of a direct ancestor of mine until I was graced with the presence of my son Sebastian Chet Del Ponte 5 months ago. I was adopted three days after my birth, my biological mother was in between the ages of 14-16 a product of the Las Vegas strip( Not one scrap of information about my father was passed on) the only thing I know about her was that her last name was long and started with an S. I am a man out of time in the sense that I am absolutely free to create my own history and throw off whatever shackles might have accompanied the life I might have lived. It took me a very long time to feel any sense of true love. To this day I struggle with a deep feeling of rejection even though I had one of the greatest childhoods ever.
2) I have one blue eye and one green eye-This sets people off into all sorts of tangentsto this day some people think they are fakePeople (random strangers) often ask me if I am aware that my eyes are different colors-this makes no sense to meI am a man of 31 years old-I surmise it would be obvious that I had at least once looked into a mirror at my own face.
3) My grandfather (who died when I was 4) gave both Jack Kerouac and Neil Cassidy work, on our fertilizer company, during the On the Road period. My grandfather was an Italian who delighted in connecting and understanding people from all walks of life, he felt that hard traveling men offered not only a strong independent sense of Americana but also a deep kinship in exactly what it was that made our country so great back then. He died when I was 4I have two distinct memories of him-wearing his pork pie hat and sitting on his lap. I accidentally pulled the oxygen tube out of his nose.he could not breath. I have never felt so helpless in my entire life. The second memory centers on his funeral, I had never seen my father weep, the sight and the way it made me feel will never leave me.
4) My father was granted a scholarship to college at the age of 16. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in geology by the time he was 20. He has had the largest impact on my life out of everyone (outside of musicians and artists) and not always in the best ways. Upon his graduation he spent a few years in the oil business and decided to turn his back on the greed and bullshit factor of the business and joined the Air Force. He could have opted out of going to Vietnam because of his officer status, yet chose to force them to send him overseas. He did not believe that when so many people who clearly did not want to go were fighting itthat he should sit at home and collect the benefits of service without putting in his time. My father did not believe in the war-but he believed in helping people to obtain freedom of oppression. To this day I remember the many pieces of Buddhist art, scripture, and thought which graced our home. It touched something so deep inside of me-at once foreign and at the same time fundamentally humanIt was why he chose to fight.he finished his career at NORAD-choosing to retire early because of the convoluted and often misdirected nature of the military in a post cold war society. I have always been deeply proud of my father for his contribution to the freedom of thought and religion-2 things which I deem fundamental in an intellectual and balanced world and something so many people today just do not get-for they have never been oppressed.
5) I have spent hours and hours of my life reading books. It seems to be the one thing that afforded me escape and a sense of the world. I read on average about 4 books a month to this day. My parents never once tried to censor the content that I was reading and opened their book shelves to me from the earliest of days. In the summertime I was asked to write countless book reports for my father I thank both my parents for instilling a love of writing, words, and stories. Given the option, I am quite happy to read over just about anything else in this world.
6) I determined that I would marry my wife within 48 hours of meeting herand in fact, moved 1500 miles across the country in order to be with her. Because she had a daughter who was six at the time, I sold my most prized possession before embarking on this phase of my life. It was a 1938 BSA which I had salvaged parts for throughout the West Coast. I miss it very much on warm days when a ride would be nice but I would not trade my daughter for anything in the world.
7) When I was 15 half the bones in my left foot were blown out with a handgun. I had been shot while hanging about and drinking with friends two days before my birthday. Unlike the movies, the pain does not begin right away; due to the intense velocity of a bullet your entire inner workings vibrate at an incredible rate - it takes a few minutes for the gunpowder to burn in your blood, which in turn begins to speed up because of the shock of being shot. The ultimate irony of the situation is that I was raised with firearms and had noticed there was not a clip in the gun. Thinking myself safe from the situation I let the jackass play aroundit never occurred to me it was his fathers home defense gun and that a bullet had been cycled into the chamber. Had the gun not hit me it would have exploded the chest of a very nice 15 year old girl. She thanked me for saving her life for ten years after that when ever we saw one another.
8) I taught special education for almost five years after graduating from college. It was not only humbling, but also deeply disturbing and challenged every fundamental aspect of my life up to the point. My greatest triumph was helping one boy and his little brother to escape the shackles of foster care and become adopted by a stable family. I often wonder if he even remembers my name.
9) I was a professional Sous Chef for over five years. I will have a life long love affair with the sensual nature of preparing food and take great pride and enjoyment watching people eat the dishes I have created. It is a very basic thing that brings people from all walks of life together. Nothing is more delightful to me than having people over to waste away a night with good food and libations.
10) I have devoted most of my life since the age of 10 collecting vinyl with a deep interest in both jazz and classical music. When I moved 1500 miles I filled the back of a pick up with records and only brought a small duffle bag of clothes.
11) I suffer from social anxiety and rarely open up to people that I do not know very well. The catch-22 of the situation is that most people will actually find me to be quite pleasant and intense but are often left with a bad impression of me- thinking me to be a bit of an asshole.I am getting much better with this as time goes by, however; the older I get the less I want to have people aroundI keep my tribe tight and right.
12) I have one sister. She is five years older then me and has been my biggest champion through all phases of my life. If it were not for her I would have been dead by now ten fold. I often feel like I have never adequately expressed just how much she means to me and out of everyone in my family, I wish she lived closer to me. I want nothing more then for her to be happy and would do anything to help her accomplish that goal.
13) I have been poor enough to dumpster dive for produce and have never once felt ashamed for that fact. It builds character and illuminates the true wasteful nature of this society.
14) I would viciously and methodically kill and maim anyone who would try to harm my tribe. I do not think of myself as a violent man; however, I know the inner depths of my soul and what I am capable of. There is nothing I would not endure in this world or the next to insure a proper balance and happiness for those I love.
15) Both my parents were self employedwe ate a lot of pancakes for supper during the height of a bad economy in the 80sI never once knew that we were struggling. My parents made us feel (and always have) that everything was fine. It took having children of my own to truly understand what sacrifice is.
16) Unlike 99% of the people I know-my parents are still married and in love-from this I have learned that perfection in a relationship is a wasted concept and true love and kinship comes from the dichotomy of both the good times and the bad times. It is through these lean times that the soul is forged and human connections are really achieved.
17) From the time I was a very small child I have spent countless hours with my grandmother and father tending an acre garden on her property. I still take great delight in growing food and wish that we had more property in the city to pass this tradition on to the kids.
18) I spent an entire year in almost near seclusion ( with the exception of work) trying to live a humble monks existence and correct the over indulgent behavior that I felt was holding me back and causing me unhappiness in my life. At the end of that year I met my wife and had the greatest epiphany in the world.
19) I would be quite content to listen only to my childrens laughter for the rest of my life.
20) Having reached my 30s alive, content, and happy, I look forward more and more to what I assume will be the greatest years of my life. I take great pleasure in knowing that I will still hold my wifes hand when we are but withered kooky old peopleand only hope that she still feels the same about me in
VIEW 7 of 7 COMMENTS
makes me feel that i owe it to you to follow through with my own. i must still shake my fist at you a bit for tagging me, though.
gimme a little time, and i'll have something.