Seven things about me

My gawd, my life has been rather unremarkable. I come to this conclusion after being tagged by Kitty for this "Seven things about me" thingy, and trying to come up with a list. I've never shot a man just to watch him die; I've never climbed Mount Everest; and my name is not on the Stanley Cup. I'm slightly bashful about the list that I've come up with, but here goes:

1. I was on Reach for the Top in high school -- in Grade 11 and again in Grade 13. I was captain that last year, and we made it all the way to the national final representing Northern Ontario, before losing 340-315 to Manitoba. We were closing the gap during the final snapper questions, but ran out of time.

2. While in Grade 9, I was in our high school's production of Bye Bye Birdie. I had the most minor of the starring roles. I was Randolph McAfee, the 12-year-old brother of Kim McAfee of Sweetapple, Wisconsin, who was chosen to get one last kiss from Conrad Birdie, before he was inducted into the army. I could still sing then, because my voice hadn't completely changed.

3. The summer I was in college (1984), I had a total of eight jobs. The only full-time one was as maintenance man/painter/grass cutter at the sewage treatment plant in my home town of Iroquois Falls. Hey, it paid $6.04 an hour and all I could eat! (Ba-doom-boom!)

4.I hate canned peas. It's because when I was about three, I gagged on them and puked all over the supper table. My parents never made me eat them after that. I do, however, love fresh, uncooked peas right out of the pod.

5. I don't own any teddy bears at the moment. But when I was news director at CKGB/CFTI Radio in Timmins in the late 1980's, I spearheaded the project to put two teddy bears in every OPP cruiser between Timmins and Hearst, Chapleau and Matheson, and the radio station paid for them. Coincidentally, the first two kids to receive the bears were kids of friends of mine, when they were in a fairly serious car accident.

6. When I was 20, I sold real estate in Timmins and Iroquois Falls for about five months. Long story short, there was a definite credibility problem involved in a 20-year-old trying to sell homes to people in their 30s and 40s. From there, I went on to become a management trainer at two S.S. Kresge stores: first in Sudbury for about eight weeks, then Toronto for another six. After that, I got my first media job.

7. I am named after my maternal Uncle Bob and my paternal great-great-Uncle Tom. My full name is Robert Thomas McIntyre.

That's it. Try not to be too underwhelmed.