the list seemed
I never knew what I was sent for . give me information 1 to sign my name on the dotted line but I never knew what I was signing 2 and I never knew what I was missing 3 I never knew what I was dealing with… It just goes to show, you never know. 4 and for that matter I never knew what I was until much later 5 all kinds of old parts and tools, I never knew what I was looking at but I knew 6 Until I tried it, I never knew what I was 7 I never knew what I was going to be questioned about 8 I never knew what I was aiming at and why 9 I never knew what I was singing and I didn’t have a clue what was going on 10 (and she replied, “I never knew what I was getting myself into.”) 11 I never knew what I was supposed to do during a quiet time. Read one verse? Is a chapter enough? Maybe I should memorize the whole book. The list seemed both empty and endless. 12 I never knew what I was missing I was missing 13 I never knew what I was going to find 14 I never knew what I was going to hear, 15 I never knew what I was going to say 16 I never knew what I was going to say until I said it — the words just came out 17 I never knew what I was looking for. 18 I never knew what I was looking for but always found something, 19 I never knew what I was going to do. Fortunately something usually developed 20 I never knew what I was doing until ten minutes after I had done it, 21 I never knew what I was doin’. It used to worry me 22 all day long. I never knew what I was 23 I never knew what I was supposed to be perfect at and what didn’t matter. 24 I never knew what I was supposed to say, so I said nothing and 25 I always dreaded removing bandages for fear of hemorrhage. I never knew what I was going to find. 26 I never knew what I was missing when 27
sources
1 ex Minutes of Evidence Taken before the Lancaster Bribery Commission, 28 August 1866, in Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the Existence of Corrupt Practices at the last Election for Members to serve in Parliament for the Borough of Lancaster; together with the minutes of evidence: Vol 13 (of 24) (1867) : 38 OCR cross-column misread 2 ex Tony’s story, in Valerie Polakow, Lives on the Edge : Single Mothers and Their Children in the Other America (1993; pb edn, 1993) : 65 3 ex Ronald J. Lavin, Way to Grow! : Dynamic Church Growth Through Small Groups (1996) : 76 4 ex James Wilcox (1949- *), Miss Undine’s Living Room: A Novel (2001) : 152 5 ex Bernie Matthews, Intractable (2007) : here 6 ex Mark Roehrig, The Amphigeo Story, The first and only “how to book” enabling you to build your own amphibious car (Trafford, 2002) : 20 7 ex Tommy Watson, A Face of Courage: The Tommy Watson Story — How Did He Survive? (2008) : 95 8 ex Denise George, Chapter 8, “Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with anxiety,” in What Pastors Wish Church Members Knew : Understanding the needs, fears, and challenges of church leaders today (2009) : 101 9 ex Thomas R. Hauff, When God Says, “No” : Reshaping Prayer and Learning to Listen (2010) : 41 10 “It had all been in Latin...” ex Carol Ann Rusch, This Lady Here : I'll Drink to That (2010) : 172 11 ex David Kamara, Overcoming Gossips (2007) : 2 12 ex Emily P. Freeman, Chapter 12, “Remain, on quiet and time” in Grace for the Good Girl : Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life (2011) : 141 13 ex Rahab Kimani, Deeply in Love : Poetic Love Stories (2012) : 60 14 ex Connie Martin and Barry Dundas, Love Never Ends (2012) : 137 15 ex Jane Gillooly on her On Suitcase of Love and Shame, in Scott MacDonald his Avant-doc : Intersections of Documentary and Avant-garde Cinema (2015) : 338 16 ex Curt Lindner, Fighting the Good Fight : Faith Through the Adversity of Terminal Cancer (2012) : 30 17 ex Herbert D. Blake, The Last Place I Looked : A Story of Hope, Inspiration, Transformation, and Restorative Justice (2013) : 37 18 ex Bruce Kelley, Ernetta Fox, Justin Smith, Preparing Your Campus for Veterans’ Success : An Integrated Approach to Facilitating The Transition and Persistence of Our Military Students (2013) : 25 19 ex Miljenko Jergovic, Mama Leone, translated from the Croatian by David Williams (2012) : 11 20 ex John Franceschina, Hermes Pan : The Man Who Danced with Fred Astaire (2012) : 133 Hermes Pan[aglotopoulos] (1909-1990) — wikipedia 21 C. Everette Hagler, Breathless : An Inward Journey (2013) : 370 22 ex Gerald Olson, “Seven Come Eleven, Baby Needs a New Pair of Shoes,” in Random Runes : New Poems & Old Elegies (2013) : 111 23 ex Lisa Unger, In the Blood : Chilling grip-lit with a breathtaking twist you won’t see coming (2014) : here 24 ex Ann W. Smith, Overcoming Perfectionism : Finding the Key to Balance and Self-Acceptance (2013) : here 25 ex Edward Bryant, “The Cutter,” in Ellen Datlow, ed., The Cutting Room : Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen (2014) : 1-14 (2) 26 from a passage in Nurse Elizabeth Weaver’s description of an operating room at a base, quoted in Kathy Warnes, “Remembering and Forgetting Meuse-Argonne: The Shifting Sands and Partitioned Perspectives of Memory,” in Edward G. Lengel, ed., A Companion to the Meuse-Argonne Campaign (2014) : 472-495 (476) 27 ex Gail Nall, Breaking the Ice (2015) : 115
notes —
The construct “I never knew what I was” appears only once in a pre-1923 Google Books search, surfacing again only in 1994, with frequent appearances thereafter..
Strict chronology didn’t work, music and sense-wise, but — less strict — remains a limit.
The initial idea was that sources would be given only for extended extracts, and/or where the source — on its own trajectory, in its own context — drew me further down its path. In the end, I cited all 27. Some — numbers 19, 26 — were more interesting than others, but I depended equally on each one. Several of these sources are self-published.
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