PATRICK MCVAY

After I'm dead and gone, how will my reign on earth be described by historians? I'd like to be known as "The Great" but that typically denotes "large" or "tall," which I'm not.

I wouldn't mind if the Wikipedia of the 22^nd century referred to me as "Patrick the Brilliant," but, yeah…unlikely.

Another option: Patrick the Scruffy. I think this is apt. I shave a couple times a week, which means twice a week I look good. Otherwise, scruffy. On the other hand, not exactly the moniker I'm looking for.

Of course, it makes no difference what I want. "History will be the judge." Since the future will be inundated by mountains of data about me and my shortcomings, no doubt some rookie at Era-Naming headquarters will find my worst traits and forever tag me with them to describe the current era we're in, which I dominate (admittedly from behind the scenes).

How about "Patrick the Emotionally Exhausted"?

Naw. 

I wonder if there is a particular letter that gets pressed harder on a standard computer keyboard, on average, than all the others. Or a punctuation mark. There must be!

For example, does an exclamation point get whacked harder than a period? Or a comma?

What gets more forceful pressure: a semi colon or a colon? Surely, a colon. In a perfect world, a semi-colon would get pressed roughly half as hard as a colon.

And yet I have no data! This is my problem. Data is king, and I lack it in large quantities.

So, it's on to educated guessing: The I is probably hit the hardest of all letters, because we all like to toot our own horns. For punctuation, it's probably the exclamation point, especially when it follows the question mark. Otherwise, if my 35-plus years of watching people use a computer is any indication, the "enter" key is the one that's smacked hardest of all.

Planning to apply for an NEA grant will call this research "my art." 

Thirty years ago today, I became an uncounted casualty of the last hurricane to disturb the Massachusetts coast. It was a blood and guts event, as an airborne pane of glass found the middle of my right calf in mid-flight and nearly did me in.

I was given Last Rites, now called Annointing of the Sick (better messaging, according to a team of Vatican communications professionals), and was nearly pronounced dead. The Pope came to my bedside, declaring me a saint. There is now a hospital wing named after me because during my recovery I entertained sick children by popping wheelies on my wheelchair while juggling stethoscopes.

Some of the aforementioned isn't true, but what is true is that my favored right calf was sliced pretty much in half, and if it weren't for the efforts of drunk street people on Harvard Ave in Allston, I might not have survived. (In truth, the drunks just watched; other passersby helped).

Tourniquet in place, I followed that godforsaken hurricane (named Bob, not Leg) right up into Canada and gave it a piece of my mind, cussing it out while I bled all over the north country.

Hurricane Bob is now dead and gone, but I'm still limping along. How ya like me now?! 

Back in the day in Upstate New York, I could occasionally be found hanging out with some of the great upstate bowlers of that era. We'd hurl giant balls at pins set up at the end of waxed alleys, hoping to earn a strike and leverage our keggling prowess to catch the attention of one of the young lasses watching us. I was always the favorite of gals back then, what with my scintillating keggling traits: short of stature; flatfooted; significant bulk in the midsection. No doubt my opponents found my substantial hindquarters unnerving.

Plus I drank a little beer then. Bowling and beer go together like peanut butter and jelly.

This is one of the several things that connect me to a certain musical god named Bob Dylan. Bob bowled upstate just like I did. Not in New York, but in Minnesota. His team – the gutter boys – dominated the Minnesota teenage rec league. I recently learned this from visiting Hibbing, MN, which is Bob's (If I may) hometown. This is where Bob lived from just after kindergarten until he was through high school, with his dad Abe, his mom Eva, and his brother Thaddeus. And where he keggled.

Full disclosure, I don't actually know his mother's or brother's names. But I just "published" my guesses on the internet, and now some people are going to assert to others or in peer-reviewed journals that Bob's brother was named Thaddeus. "And his mom Eva used the same toaster as the famous blogger Patrick McVay!"

With 7 billion people in the world (wait – is it 9 billion yet?), odds are that eventually someone will utter those words.