Meme for friends

I have been meme’d by my friend Swen. Meme is a new term for me and I am not really familiar with it.

So doing as all good bloggers do I googled the definition of the word meme. The following excerpts are what I thought were of interest: ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme ~

“Richard Dawkins coined the term meme, which first came into popular use with the publication of his book The Selfish Gene in 1976. Dawkins based the word on a shortening of the Greek "mimeme" (something imitated), making it sound similar to "gene". ~ Memes do not always get copied perfectly, and might indeed become refined, combined or otherwise modified with other ideas, resulting in new memes. These memes may themselves prove more (or less) efficient replicators than their predecessors, thus providing a framework for an hypothesis of cultural evolution, analogous to the theory of biological evolution based on genes."

"A short story written in 1876 by Mark Twain, Literary Nightmare, describes his encounter with a jingle so "catchy" that it plays over and over in his mind until he finally sings it out loud and infects others (also known as an earworm).”

I took my first hint from the ‘Meme’ posted by Swen, in it he said, ”I will endeavour to mirror his 7 randoms, find something as close as possible to his.” Meaning the person who had meme'd Swen.

Therefore I took the implied meaning of meme to mean, ~ imitate or mimic. ~ Talk about information overload, but it can sometimes prove at best, a little interesting. So here then after much dallying around is my attempt at a meme.

1. I was born in an age when most all kids were named after a parent or some relative, distant or otherwise. You only got one first name, for in England middle names were not given at that time. My distinction is, I am the first Eric so named anywhere in the family tree that I am aware of, as a child I hated it for I wanted it to be spelled as Erik.

2. On the subject of white/gray and we are talking of hair. White/gray hair doesn’t seem to run in my family as it does with some. Therefore if I live long enough to break that distinction, I possibly could live to be a 100, hopefully before it all falls out.

3. In the course of my lifetime thus far, I believe I have driven just about every type of vehicle imaginable and in many different parts of the world. I have driven on both sides of the road depending on the country ~ I’ve also been known to drive across country up hill & down dale. ~ My most memorable drive was to drive a ‘Tank’, (23 MPH) surely not the fleetest of foot, down the ‘Autobahn’ when I was in Germany many years ago.

4. Fortunately I have not had a benign incident in my life, however I too am on corticosteroid medication for the rest of my life due to my COPD.

5. I was in the army at age 17. It was during one of my training periods at a Tank firing range camp well out into the wilderness of the moors, I celebrated my 18th birthday. To that end then a few buddies & myself went into the nearest town by local bus that afternoon, the idea was to look around have a beer or two and try not to get into any mischief. Well wouldn’t you know it, unknown to us at the time, the last bus back to camp left at 9pm, without us of course. It was only by a fluke that we discovered that and then realized we didn’t have a heck of a lot of time to get back to camp, curfew was at midnight! ~ Cutting a long story short we ended up walking almost half the 18 miles and getting a ride on the back of an old flatbed style coal lorry (truck) the rest of the way. Well you can imagine the look on the sergeants face when we rolled in, wearing the Queens uniform and totally covered in coal dust! The rest of that episode is too, too sad.

6. I have to say that most all birds are my favorite, we are fortunate where we live to have built up a bird haven that is visited year round with such a wide variety of our fine feathered flock. I have to relate though that at this point, the Raven has to be a favorite of mine. Raven happens to be the handle that my wife uses when online at the few places she visits. It was while we were online together that we met and of course, many stories later here we are. That Raven was the greatest catch of my life. Nowadays the wife & I spend many a romantic moment watching our feathered friends.

7. You would think that after serving in the army for 8 years and having family in the military over the years, that I would have a tale to tell, sadly I have no stories to relate really. ~ My great & grandfather were in the army & uncles were in the navy, all served through the first & second world wars. Luckily all but one survived and came home, but vastly changed men from when they left, but who in those days wasn’t. The one lost soul was an Uncle Harold who disappeared at sea in the merchant marine.


Here are the rules which you must abide by if you are tagged/meme‘d.

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself: some random, some weird.
3. Tag 3 people at the end of your post and list their names (linking to them).
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs.

I am tagging: Augs Casa Shades of Twilight Elli