… I could.

My dream was: become a writer. In my mid-twenties, I realized I WAS a writer – but instead of novels or short stories, I wrote magic acts, clown acts, magic clown acts. Hey, those count, right?

Right?

I attended Clown College. I performed with “The Victims of Circus Dance Theatre Group.” I decided to pursue standup comedy.

I moved to San Francisco.

Early in my career, a headliner told me, “You’re not really a standup comic – you’re more of a storyteller.”

I thought, “I’ll show you!”

For years, I suffered for my Art. But not as much as my audiences did. I attended workshops. I hired instructors. I found Neil Leiberman, “The Comedy Coach.” Working with him, I learned to write jokes.

I performed at open mikes. I hosted my own monthly showcase. I won a comedy competition.

I was ready to take my show on the road.

I didn’t want to go.

I wanted to do more than write “set-up / punchline.” I wanted to make people laugh, sure, but also to think, feel, even weep.

Turns out: I was more of a storyteller.

I earned a Master of Arts in Writing at the University of San Francisco. I took essay writing courses with Laura Adair. I took community college memoir and essay courses.

I discovered Anne Helmstadter’s “The Sellable Book Inner Circle.” Exercises and a supportive and encouraging writing community of fellow writers.

Now, I’m working on Becoming Super Rog, a collection of essays about my experience transforming myself from a brainiac nerd into, well, what exactly is hard to say.

Maybe writing the essays will answer “who WAS Super Rog?”

Maybe not.

If you would like to know, please join my mailing list. It will include progress reports on my writing as well as essays not necessarily related to the collection.

But fun.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

.. and her entire family is coming."

I said, "OK. Who's cooking the turkey?"

"Betty."

"Who's cooking the biscuits?"

"Betty."

"Who's cooking ...?"

"Betty's cooking everything."

"If Betty's cooking turkey dinner with all the fixings for 20 people, why are we whispering.?"

"It's a surprise. She likes her family to visit without planning; she likes them to just show up."

"So she's going to believe EVERYONE showed up unexpectedly on the SAME day she HAPPENS to cook a huge turkey dinner?"

"Yes."

That makes sense. Not to me, but that makes sense.

… I’m the sort of husband who would rather be happy than be right, so when she suggests we paint the garage, I agree. “After all,” I think, “painting will make me miserable for a while, but my wife can make me miserable forever.”

The misery of painting begins with scraping. Scraping, my wife explains, is preliminary to painting. It is a chore that requires me to scrape the paint already on the garage off the garage. No, really! I mean it. Before you paint, you remove paint. Not all the paint, of course, only the loose paint which is flaking off. Which, in the case of our garage, is all the paint.

Scraping sounds tedious and unpleasant, but in reality it is much worse. The tool used is nearly identical to the very first tool ever made by humans zillions of years ago: a flat blade. Improvements have been limited to putting two blades on the scraper (so as to double your opportunities for injury), and a wooden handle. Though the latter may very well have been available with the original tool. In our industrial age, the handle is painted a pretty color, typically black (to match your mood) or red (to match your blood).

The scraping technique itself is basically scraping. I can’t put it any simpler than that. Holding the handle of the tool, you put the metal blade (which is curved so that it is perpendicular to the handle; I mention this because I rarely get to use the word “perpendicular”) against the side of the building, and simultaneously push toward the building and pull downward. Normally this part of a painting job is fairly perfunctory (another word I rarely get to use, and possibly don’t understand); and most of the old paint stays put.

But our garage is special.

First, there is no primer on the wood (all this technical jargon I learned from my wife). Primer is a paint-like substance you apply to wood before you paint. Essentially, that means everything must be painted twice, doubling my joy. I don’t know what gives primer superior stickiness than paint, but something better.  Paint then sticks to the primer (I’m guessing now, but that must be it, don’t you think?).

Anyway, since there is no primer coat, all the paint on our garage is happily flaking off. The good news is that it’s easy to scrape. The not-so-good news is I must scrape the entire building.

Painting (either primer or paint) is the process of rubbing paint onto the surface of the boards that make up the walls of our garage.

To accomplish this, I use a tool called a brush. As the name implies, it is a brush. Brushes used to be made of animal hairs, and you can still buy brushes like that, if you can afford them. But most of us purchase the synthetic type. By the way, here’s a little tip: buy really cheap brushes. They don’t last very long, and soon all the bristles are adhering to the paint and you must throw the brush away, which saves you the trouble of cleaning it.

Of course, eventually I will complete this job. A quick look at the sides of the cans of paint reveals that most of them are guaranteed for 10 to 30 years (why are we using 10-year paint when 30-year paint is available? We’re not that old!). Of course, those are paint years, which may be similar to dog years, only not so long. So I figure we’ll be due for another paint job on the garage as soon as we finish painting the house.

Hmmmm, maybe I should tell my wife she’s wrong...