What Dan Learned Over the Past 25 Years

Yesterday, I celebrated the 25th anniversary of my birthday (if you want to get technical about it). It's a milestone, but only because my age ends in either a 0 or a 5. It's not like when you turn 18 or 21 and your birthday becomes a rite of passage. Let's put it this way...I don't expect blow-out celebrations for my 28th or 31st birthdays.

So with 25 years and one day under my belt, I thought I would do a life-retrospective edition of What Dan Learned.

Why?

Because it's a slow day at work...

What Dan Learned Over the Past 25 Years

• Strained carrots are SO much better than strained string beans...
• My lifelong dream of playing Plinko on The Price is Right has yet to come to fruition...
• Hong Kong Phooey could kick Spongebob's ass any day of the week...
• Some of the truly great inventions/innovations of my time: Castle Grayskull, snap bracelets, the Game Genie (from Galoob), TiVo, the Hulkamania Workout Set...
• Some of the truly horrible inventions/innovations of my time: the Over the Top arm wrestling ring, Trapper Keepers, kelly green school uniforms...
• My defining moment in life: the first time I ever dropped an f-bomb. It's been all downhill in the 13 years since that moment (do the math)...
• My most embarassing moment: saying hi to a girl I liked in the mall with a Kit-Kat vertically bridged in my mouth. Unfortunately, that story has become legend in my small inner circle...
• Catholic schools - The antidote to practicing Catholicism...
• There is advantage to being short; I get my own politically correct classification ("I'm not short; I'm vertically challenged.")...
• I have yet to fulfill my other lifelong dream of having a Million Short Person's March with the tagline, "A Million of Us Are Taller Than One of You..."
• The next generation will never know the "joy" of having a dot-matrix printer...
• Take out the zeroes, and you'll see why I'm fearful of the biblical ramifications of my birthday next year (06/06/06)...
• Most people are fearful of the leaking of home videos of them in compromising positions. I'm fearful of the leaking of the home video where I got a Super Nintendo for Christmas...
• To finally clear up the confusion: no, I did not audition for Child's Play...I was asked to audition for Child's Play, but never did. To clear up further confusion: no, I would not have auditioned for Chucky. Chucky is made of wood; last I checked, I got this fleshy stuff on me called skin...
• With the proper marketing vehicle behind it, the game of Foil Ball (tm) could have become America's new favorite pastime...
• How the hell am I going to explain Vanilla Ice to my kids?
• Greatest movie quote of all time: "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father...prepare to die."
• You know you're a bad artist when your former 8th grade teacher continues to show her students your "artwork" as an example of what not to do. Last I heard, my piece was shown as recently as two years ago. I was a straight A student, never had a disciplinary problem, and was involved in all kinds of extracurricular activities. Yet my grade school legacy is defined by one poorly-drawn scarecrow...
  
• That goddamn picture of me in a toga still haunts me to this day...
• I've grown rather fond of ellipses...

That is all.

Until the next 25 years...
Dan