Café Philos: an internet café

Kay, over at Songs Of Unforgetting, has kindly tagged me with the "Eight Random Facts About Me" meme. If and when you're tagged, you are to dutifully:

• Post eight random facts about yourself.
• Tag eight other bloggers.
  
• Post these rules.

So, here are my eight facts:

1) I paid my college room and board to study philosophy by fighting fires for the city.

2) I once owned and operated a small business with 13 employees, including my bimbo ex-secretary, who I was especially fond of, in part because she taught me -- better than anyone else -- that people with absolutely no intellectual interests could be lovely, wise and compassionate.

3) When I was 16, I hitchhiked around the Western United States, living on the streets of the cities I found myself in. At that time, I was one of four people I met who were 16 or younger. Nowadays, there are thousands of kids younger than 16 living on the streets.

4) I didn't figure out I'd married my first wife for her looks until after I was divorced -- the obvious often escapes me.

5) I was raised in a tiny Mid-Western American town of 2,500 people in which the dogs were allowed to vote in local elections on the theory they knew everyone in the community just as well as anyone.

6) My second marriage was to a brilliant, but abusive woman who herself had been abused as a child, and it created in me an intense interest in fighting against all manner of abuse.

7) At thirty-seven, I lost nearly everything I owned, including everything I'd built my self-identity on, and consequently discovered the art of dying. I haven't felt afraid of death since.

8) Apart from the seven things mentioned above, there is nothing else about me that could possibly interest anyone. That's the greatest tragedy of my life: I haven't enough personal stories to keep up my end of a good bar conversation -- a fact I feel compelled to compensate for by indulging in endless jokes about farts.

According to the rules, I should now pass this meme along, but I think I'll wait until later to do that. Thanks, Kay.