This meme is appearing under a number of different rubrics: Ten Things I've Done That I Bet You Haven't, 10 Things I've Done You Probably Haven't, and (somewhat farther afield) Ten things that go into making me the unique human being I am. At any rate, here's my list:

1. Temped for an industrial engineering survey of traffic patterns in a metropolitan hospital. I sat out on the loading dock with a clipboard all day and made a checkmark every time someone went in or out the door.
2. Looked at Gerhard Richter's sublime painting Lesende in three different cities.
3. Walked down the stairs of the Washington Monument, with my mother. I used the handrail all the way down, and when we got to the bottom, my hand was filthy black with grime.
4. Applied for admission to the Sloan School of Management's MBA program, and was rejected by same.
5. Dressed up as Santa Claus for a Christmas dance in high school. The girls in my French class, the organizers, asked me when it was obvious I wasn't bringing a date.
6. After putting my college girlfriend on the train back to Connecticut, spent the night in LGA sleeping in a chair, waiting for the first plane of the morning back to Chicago. Who needs a hotel room?
7. Watched Pete Rose play baseball in Crosley Field in his rookie season. The ballpark organist was starting to work songs by the Beatles into his repertory, and that's when I began to think they weren't so bad after all.
8. Was detained by immigration authorities in Saudi Arabia when I overstayed my consultant's visa, due to some fumbled paperwork on my customer's part.
9. Listened to John Cage at a lecture/performance at the music school in Evanston. He prepared his own piano, and then played a short piece. But it was an early morning lecture, and after he started to play, I fell asleep.
10. Wrote my first computer programs on a Teletype 33, which my high school used for dialup access to a city-wide timesharing service.

posted: 7:58:02 PM