HG has a tendency to be both impulsive and stubborn. This has led to some bad decisions and some very good ones. HG met BSK some 52 years ago. Went out on a dinner date. Never spent a night apart from then on. Married three months later. Impulsive? Yes. But, it was the best impulse HG ever succumbed to. Some impulses (all about rather minor matters) didn’t turn out so well. When HG was 15, the adolescent fellow visited a barber and asked for a short crew cut. The barber didn’t approve. “Are you sure about that, young man ?”, he questioned. Stubborn HG insisted. His head was shaved and much to the scorn of friends and family, the young man was a premature skinhead. Years later, fashionable HG had a pretentious hair “stylist”. The artiste had one name: “Vicente”. While snipping HG’s snow white locks, Vicente suggested adding a look of ‘steel” to HG’s hair. Impulsively, HG agreed to the hair treatment. Came home to BSK. A loud shriek from BSK. “What have you done? You’ve got a blue head!!” A few bad clothing decisions by usually dapper HG: A pair of 1960s vivid plaid bell bottoms. Clownish. A pair of high heeled shoes (these had a brief 60’s moment). HG tottered for a few days, threw them away, and returned to being vertically challenged. HG has made two bad food decisions because of stubbornness. Both involved Chinese food. HG was warned by a waiter in a Szechuan restaurant that a vaunted shrimp dish was “too hot for Americans, only for Chinese.” HG insisted. Waiter warned. HG insisted. Waiter surrendered. The food numbed HG’s mouth. HG’s body was drenched in sweat. His color was crimson. Tears flowed from HG’s eyes. Water. Cold beer. Nothing helped. Only time HG could not put out the flames. At another Chinese restaurant, HG saw two Chinese men happily sharing what appeared to be a very good vegetable dish. HG told the waiter to bring him that dish. “You won’t like it. This has special taste.” Once more, after much tussling, stubborn HG got his way. HG dug in. The food was unidentifiable. It tasted like shredded rubber tires that had been stewed in fermented tooth paste. The smell? Bad barnyard. Malfunctioning toilet. With a sardonic smile, the waiter watched HG struggle. To maintain his dignity, HG ate a quarter of the dish before giving in. Never discovered what was in the horror dish.
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