Shooting Water Through My Teeth
I wanted a bike for my birthday. I was six years old and had long left the three wheel world of biking. But my only experience on two wheels was limited and I had not…
Casting a Movie
What does Michele Phillips, Tim Conway and I all have in common? The answer: one night in Lansing, Illinois. You may remember that I worked at an Italian restaurant as a dishwasher in the story:…
Dangerous Road Tricks & Bad Decisions
Growing up in Indiana was fun. But the hardest thing to do before we were old enough, was how to secure beer for the upcoming Friday night. Fortunately, we were quite clever and adaptive. There…
Competitive Blood Donors
I bet you didn’t know this about me. I once was a competitive blood donor. Let’s unpack this one together… O-Negative. That’s my blood type. In the blood business that kind of makes me a…
Getting Expelled in College
I’ll spare you the suspense, I didn’t get expelled in college, but I did get very close to it. It’s 1984 and I’m in the junior year of my Bachelor’s Computer Science program at Purdue…
Unreliable on Liable Road
I could write a book about this time in my life. Who knows, maybe I will. But let’s just center our focus on one spring so many years ago. As the calendar rewinds back to…
No Kiss, but I did Get Naked
Early adolescence is hard, let’s all admit it. I was very non-social in my early teenage years. I had a fair excuse. My family moved to another town when I left sixth grade and entered…
Who Taught Me How To Tell A Story?
There once was a boy who was lost. Fighting to be heard at any cost. He found a voice where none was before. And because of you he found more. This story goes out to…
Rolling Down & Dropping Popcorn
Forget the title. It will make more sense in a moment. Let’s start with the nostalgic and iconic pastime (circa 1950-1970’s) of family outdoor entertainment, the Outdoor Drive-in Movie Theater. In it’s heyday there were…
Christmas in Mexico
It was a bull. We were on the highway in our Mexican town and in front of us on a flatbed truck standing proud was a Mexican bull. My wife was driving and called it…