Maybe it’s my Midwestern/ Southern roots, but I like to think I am guy who doesn’t like to brag. Sure, a part of that is that I don’t have too much to brag about outside of a great family, good hair for my age and that I live in a great area. But you don’t brag about that. OK, I brag about Ann Caroline, but that is different.

Having said that, I am man who – or is it whom? - has been blessed with many, many gifts besides my obvious mastery of grammer and speling. Here are just a few of them.

Lex’s gifts

Without fail, I can pick a line and a cashier that is by far and away the slowest one in the store.

Whenever I purchase any item I will pick something that will require ten cents more change than I have at the time. Which is surprising because I’m not really that great at math.

Whenever I come up on a driver, something in my brain will telepathically signal them to drift over into my lane. Or better yet, change lanes without signaling.

Children are magically drawn to me. Not in a “Oh, we love you, tell us a story way” but in a “I am running full speed without looking where I am going” way.

At a cocktail party or a bar, in fact, in any situation where I am talking to someone I don’t know very well, it will suddenly occur to me to make a snide-ass remark about something that I haven’t thought of in over a year, like Rhinocerebral mucormycosis. Without fail, that person will have a beloved relative who is dying or just died of that very thing.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I have the amazing telepathic ability to get someone to call me the absolute split second that I, on rare occasions, nod off for a nap.

If I go to a bar, I have the unconscious ability to instinctively know to order something that they are out of or just stopped carrying.

Before I became a windsurfer, I had this mythological god-like ability to create wind in any sport I chose to participate in that was totally and completely screwed up if it was windy like golf, Frisbee tossing, tennis, touch football, pole vaulting. As soon as I became a good windsurfer who required winds of 15 knots or better to really jam, I suddenly developed the mythological god-like ability to kill any and all wind. No lie, it got to the point where I was considering renting myself to hurricane threatened coastal towns simply to show up with all of my windsurfing gear just to kill the threat of high winds.

When flipping through the channels when, and only when, Ann Caroline is in earshot, no matter how fast I skip by a channel, I will hit on a long and loud F word.

When I am owed a check from a client, as soon as they say they’ve sent it, I have the ability to suddenly and completely shut down the entire U.S. Postal Service to a snail’s crawl.

When I go to a concert, my sheer presence and personality will somehow reach out and deeply touch the artist and suddenly embolden and inspire him/her to play all of his/her new songs as well as the songs he/she has hidden away and he/she wouldn’t even play in front of his/her best friends.

Even though I am a master Checkers player, when I play face-to-face with even the most inferior of Checkers players, I will suddenly inspire Checker genius from them.

Re: poker. See above.

What? I didn’t say these were good gifts. I just said they were gifts.