Writing Blog Number 2 (continued)

20251230 Six

Six

Blame Winter's spud❄️ for this one. She tagged me. So, I've been challenged to "blog" 6 things about me that not many know. While it is not the purpose of my blog, I have gone personal at times, so this will be brief.
         Things I find acutely embarrassing or not something I want to expose are not here. So...

1. I was named Steven for the saint whose day falls on the day after my birthday, and then Anglicised. My initials were chosen to mimic the initials of a famous Australian sporting ground.

2. My father died when I was ten. My sisters don't remember him at all; my memories are of conflict between us.

3. Most know I was a professional wrestler   and an acrobat  , but I also did stand-up comedy, appeared in TV commercials, drummed for a 50s/60s cover band, and appeared in the TV show Ultraman as a glorified extra,

4. My mum taught me to read and write before I started school so I'd stop dictating my stories to her.

5. In 2004 I suffered a catastrophic knee injury while training for a trampoline routine for an acrobatics show. The bed broke and I came down with all my weight on my right leg. This shortened my leg by almost two inches as the tibia and fibula ended up on either side of my femur and my patella suffered a 95degree dislocation. All four ligaments were ruptured. The operation took 10 hours; they sewed up the lateral and medial collateral ligaments, pinned the posterior cruciate ligament in place with a bunch of screws, and could do nothing about the anterior cruciate ligament as it had exploded. To this day, I don't have one; a leg brace acts as my ACL. My doctor told me I would struggle to walk and that sport was now out of the question. I am trained in rehabilitation, so I designed a programme. 13 months after the injury, I performed in front of a crowd; 6 months after that I was back in a wrestling ring. The doctor and I subsequently wrote a paper on my rehabilitation.

6. I am vaguely academic. I got a full academic scholarship to one of the elite private high schools in the state, then went on to tertiary study to get:
         Bachelor of Applied Science (human movement, combined with a B.Sc., as I majored in biomechanics, and got my rehabilitation training here)
         Diploma of Journalism
         Bachelor of Education
         Diploma of Professional Writing
         Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing - I topped the course)
and I am about to embark on a Master of Arts (MA) in Creative Writing.
So, if I come across as a smart-arse, there's my excuse.

And that's 6 boring things about me.