Never Have I Ever…

The magnitude of things not done, yet contemplated…

Credit: Robert W. Tanguy (Dad) 1999

Okay, Jk Mansi, my turn to play. And you gave me the first two!

The Never-Have-I-Ever Game

Never have I ever…

• Been in a hot-air balloon. Deb has, but it was before I started dating her. She and her mom got to enjoy a quiet ride over Lancaster County one summer morning. Had I been part of the family, I’d have been down on the ground with Dad trying to keep up with the chase team.

Deb and Mom, about to embark. Credit: Robert W. Tanguy (Dad) 1999

• Died. Came close (that I know of) four times, all in my (relative) youth. Two of those times, I thought I was going to die, and then I was sure I was going to die… and then I didn’t.¹ The other two times, it turns out the point I realized I hadn’t died was the point I woke up (somewhat or severely banged up) and found out something had happened (and I didn’t die).²
• Felt attraction to another woman while I was married. Can’t claim any special virtue, however, I’m just hard-wired that way. On my current (and final) marriage, it’s not hard at all (everybody knows Deb, right?), but in my first marriage, even after I knew my first wife had realized she was a lesbian and our marriage was essentially over, I still wasn’t attracted to other women. Not even the smart, cute, fellow Navy lieutenant that I worked with. Intellectually, I understood that I should have found her fascinating, but libido-wise, nothing. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Picked up a woman in a bar. Never even been in a bar to pick up women, so there’s that. Only had one offer to help me try, and I turned that down.
• Shot at someone, or been shot at by someone. Not with small arms, anyway.
• Been to Alaska, or the Grand Canyon, or Las Vegas. All on our list for retirement travel, however.
• Been to Australia or New Zealand. Not on our retirement travel list. Yes, I know wonderful people live there. It’s the long plane flights and the cost that discourage us. For Alaska, we’ve been saving for the last ten years; a trip to Oz and Middle Earth will take a bit longer, and at our age…
• Had sex with a woman I was not in love with. I originally wrote that as “never slept with,” but I had this waterbed back in my 20s, and there was this friend of a friend who had never slept in a waterbed, so when she said she wanted to “sleep in a waterbed,” what she really meant was… sleep in a waterbed. 😐 I made us breakfast anyway.
• Been arrested. I had an NIS agent read me my rights once, but that was a silly misunderstanding and we got that all cleared up fairly quickly.
• Been in hostile territory. Note that in my Navy years, the US government recognized a three-miles-from-shore territorial limit, while some other countries (okay, everybody else, basically) recognized a twelve-mile limit. This left a nine mile stretch where interesting things could happen.
• Gotten a tattoo or a body piercing. Needles scare me. Roy’s recent story gave me the newbie-jeebies. I thought about a tattoo at one point, but never went through with it.

Okay, eleven items — good enough, Juhi? 😁

¹Both times while I in the Navy on my sub. The unclassified versions: We were some place doing something and something happened and I thought I was going to die and then something else happened and I didn’t. (Like a Tom Clancy story… if Clancy had written like the insurance salesman he really was.)

²A boat crash (going through fog several miles from shore, only to find out several yards from shore that this was not the case) [no, I was not driving!]; and a plane crash (my memory has me drifting off to sleep mid-flight, then waking up in a hospital with someone wrapping up my wrist in a cast).