Five pieces of personal trivia

One Who Listens tagged me for the "Five Things You Don't Know About Me" meme, claiming that I don't post anything personal. Honestly, I thought I had put up so much personal stuff my readers would be heartily sick of me by now, but maybe I'm wrong.

1. I've taught five different languages in my time, including a two-month stint as a high-school substitute French teacher when I was 20. I actually went to school to teach Spanish and German, and I've also taught ESL. But the one I loved most was teaching weekend classes in Welsh for Bryn Seion Welsh Church in Beavercreek, Oregon. Most of my students were elderly, and wanted to learn what had been their parents' native language. That was 20 years ago, and almost all of them have gone on to the last great Gymanfa Ganu by now.

2. Most everybody knows I'm a convert to Catholicism, raised Baptist, but most of the time in between the two I was (believe it or not) a Quaker. When I was a teenager, I began to get serious about Christianity, and about the same time, I wandered by accident into a Friends meeting. (I was supposed to be at a different church, but I had the address wrong.) Since it was the Evangelical Friends, it wasn't all that different from the American Baptist church I attended with my folks, but it was just enough that my youthful need to be separate from them was satisfied. I continued to be part of several Friends churches in my adulthood, right up until I moved to Moses Lake, which didn't have one. I wound up going to a Baptist church here instead, which was good while it lasted. By the time I poped, I wasn't attending anywhere, but that's a whole 'nother story.

3. I was privileged to see Papa John Creach play in Portland not long before he died. He was bent almost double with age, could barely move around the stage, but gentlemen hush, that man could fiddle! I've heard (apocryphally) that he was the basis for the Charlie Daniels song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia." I have to doubt it some, because Papa John was from Pennsylvania, but I don't care either way. That man could have out-fiddled the devil any day.

4. Since my early 20s, I have been hopelessly infatuated with Lauren Bacall. My Lovely and Brilliant Wife has been very understanding about this.

5. I've never owned a cell phone, a Palm Pilot, or a GPS. I have no intention of ever doing so. Despite the insistence of my kids, all of whom are more tech-comfortable than I am.

Now I'm going to tag My Reverend Auntie, Dani, Pilgrim, and Pastor Paul. Tell us what we don't already know!