Here at Just a Smidge, we like to start the new year off with a little meet and greet, since we continue to gain new readership each and every year. The Just a Smidge family of readers grew by leaps and bounds in 2024. Thanks to both of you for joining us! Let’s get to know each other, shall we?
Hi. I’m Marc Schmatjen, aka Smidge, and I’m the lone staff writer and chief Traeger operator here at Just a Smidge. Based on how much money I make writing this column, it would be highly inaccurate to call this one of my jobs, so let’s just go with “hobby.”
I am a fifty-two-year-old husband of one, father of three, and legal custodian of one Labrador retriever. We affectionately refer to our boys as Son Number One, Two, and Three. Number Three is still here at the house, being loud and eating everything in sight. We have successfully relocated the other two to college, where they are no doubt loud and eat everything in sight, but we don’t have to be involved. The state says we have to keep Number Three here until he’s allowed to go to college, so we continue to wear ear plugs and make near daily trips to the grocery store.
My wife is an amazing woman who teaches math to teenage high school kids, and, since we have teenagers ourselves whom I have spent a considerable amount of time with, I am constantly amazed that she is able to maintain her sanity. (I am using “sanity” on a relative scale here. She’s human, after all.)
Anyway, enough about my wife and kids. Let’s talk more about me. Here are twenty other things that you should probably know about me, in no particular order:
1) I would be at my ideal weight if I were seven to nine inches taller.
2) My grandfather killed General Patton's dog. That is the single most historically significant thing anyone in my family has done.
3) Walking out into bright sunlight makes me sneeze. I am one of only an estimated seven people in the world with this disorder. We have a club. I inherited this trait from my grandmother, whose husband once killed General George Patton’s dog.
4) I am distantly related to U.S. president Grover Cleveland on my maternal grandmother’s side, whose husband (my grandmother’s, not Grover Cleveland’s) - I believe I may have mentioned this - killed General George S. Patton’s beloved English bull terrier, Willie.
5) Dave Barry is my humor column hero, and I hope to be as cool as him someday, although his grandfather wasn’t connected in any way to General Patton’s dog, as far as I know, so I’ve got that going for me.
6) Toilet paper should come off the top of the roll. I’m not stating that as a personal preference, but simply as a fact.
7) We have three teenage boys with driver’s licenses. Eighty-five percent of our take-home income goes to insurance companies.
8) I got a Traeger grill for Christmas this year, so the other fifteen percent of our income is now going toward artisanal hardwood pellets and the butcher. I regret nothing.
9) My three favorite flavors are burnt pepperoni, slightly burnt bacon, and well-toasted sesame seeds. Basically, if it has caught on fire, I want to eat it. Except for my s’more marshmallows. Those should only be browned.
10) I was in shape once. I swam 100,000 yards in one week when I was in high school. (That’s 57 miles, for you English majors). I could not swim more than 57 yards today without needing a floatation device, an oxygen tank, and a defibrillator. See number 11.
11) I love chocolate and bacon. See number 1.
12) I constantly get my left and right mixed up. This makes driving directions with my wife fun.
13) I am a recovering engineer, so I know there are only 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
14) My favorite joke of all time is: A guy walks into the psychiatrist’s office wearing nothing but underwear made out of Saran wrap. The doctor takes one look at him and says, "Well, I can clearly see you’re nuts."
15) After a twenty-one-year hiatus, I began snowboarding again four years ago with our boys. So far [sound of me knocking on every wooden surface I can find] I have not hurt myself. This could be my most impressive athletic feat to date, and I once swam 57 miles in a week.
16) I like most foods (see number 10), but I have a deep, abiding hatred for cantaloupe. If bacon is a 10, cantaloupe is a negative 3000.
17) I once pointed out that Van Gogh’s “girlfriend” was actually a prostitute during a fifth-grade art docent lesson. It was not helpful to anyone involved.
18) My absolute favorite thing that has ever happened on this earth – and that includes my marriage and the birth of my children – was when the Oregon State Highway Division tried to disintegrate a dead whale with a half-ton of dynamite in 1970. I wasn’t around yet, but thankfully they had video cameras back then. (Just Google “Oregon Exploding Whale.”)
19) I hope to one day be in charge of detonating something as large as a dead whale, but so far, my wife has not let me.
20) I only type with three of my ten fingers, so this is all very impressive, if you stop and think about it.
So, there you have it, folks. You now know everything you need to know about me. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming next week.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2025 Marc Schmatjen
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