Thursday Thirteen

Back in 2011, I participated in Thursday 13, where people post a list of 13 things ... anythings that they could think of.  I did 100 Thursday 13s and the topics were as diverse as:

*Movie quotes
*Guilty Food Pleasures
*Things I remember about China
*Ways to cook "something with chicken in it"
*Favorite Flowers

etc., etc., etc.

Anita of Blue Country Magic has been, as of last week has written 548 lists, the most recent of which was "Things I fear."

It's kind of a fun thing to do, and stretches the brain some weeks.

Since today is 1 day before the 19th anniversary of Paul's death, I thought I would list 13 things about Paul (next month, the 22nd anniversary of David's, I'll do a list about David). Paul was a complicated person and I'm trying to add only the good things (or, in one case, the funny ones).

1.  Paul was the first birth that was induced.  The delivery was easy, but the recovery room was full, so I was left on a gurney in the hall.  I started bleeding heavily and had no way to call a nurse.  They finally found me and got the bleeding stopped, but I had lost so much blood, I fainted twice, first (and last) time I've ever fainted.  Walt knew something must be wrong because it was nearly noon before I called him because I couldn't even think about the long walk down to the pay phone!

2. Before he was born, Paul was very quiet during the day, and most active at night.  As a baby the pattern continued, which was terrible for someone with two toddlers who were active during the day and wanted to sleep at night.  I cannot think of the number of nights I had Paul in a backpack, walking around and around the dining room table, me crying, and him wide awake and so happy to have all this activity.  Was it any surprise that he became a performer, who was most active at night and slept during the day?

3. Seymour was our family dog but toward the end of her life, all the other kids had left home and she became primarily Paul's dog. They had a wonderful bond and it was Paul who had to make the decision to put her down, when she suffered from cancer.  He wanted to go to the vet alone.  I cry thinking about it.

4. Paul hated mayonnaise with a passion, so it was hilarious when he and Ned were making a movie that included a scene of Paul taking a huge spoonful of mayonnaise.

5. Paul once bought me a cheap smiley face necklace for Mother's Day or my birthday or something.  Smiley faces became a joke between us and we exchanged smiley face gifts for several years (one Christmas I gave him a smiley face tie and he gave me a smiley candle the size of a bowling ball).

After he died, the cheap necklace was added to our "necropsy ornaments" that we hang on the tree each ear--dog collars, Seymour's tennis ball, a black leather jacket for David and now the necklace.

6. In the last years of his life, he developed vision problems.  He sometimes could read, other times, the letters made no sense to him.  After he died, a professor friend of his read about symptoms of a particular kind of brain tumor and it matched his symptoms exactly.  He had such fear of any physical problems that it's probably good he never knew it.

7. His first play was in first grade.  He had a tiny part at the very end of the Christmas play, with one line.  He waited through the whole play and then his friend Kag, who was supposed to say the line that was his cue, forgot and skipped over it, and the play ended without Paul making an appearance at all.  He was heartbroken.  (He made up for it later, for sure!)

8. He was lead singer of Lawsuit for 10 years and had such a high school following that he had to park his car on a side street because if the girls, who recognized his orange Pinto (he got the car when my father died) would knock on the door to see if they could see Paul.

9.  After Lawsuit ended he did several monologue shows which were a hit with not only his peers and his family but young and old alike.  The guy knew how to tell a story!  He was planning another show at the time of his death.

10. He loved sushi and whenever Walt was out of town, he and I would meet for a sushi lunch, which is why Walt and I now have sushi on Paul's birthday and the anniversary of his death.

11. One of everyone's favorite stories about Paul was one I wrote in my diary at the time and posted here along with a bunch of other stories.

12. He managed the theater downtown when it was a live theater (now a movie house).  He made a kind of clubhouse upstairs with couch, TV, and food, where he and his friends could meet when there was nothing to do in the theater.  He was responsible for the care of the theater and was very good about safety issues, which is why his death during a rehearsal accident was so crazy.

13. We had a very good relationship and he usually called me at least once a day to chat about something funny or some movie or something else.  I think of how it would have been if we had text messaging then.  The very last conversation we had, the morning that he died, he asked if I thought it was weird that he liked talking to his mother so often.  I told him no, that it just showed we were friends.

I miss him.