“We're not going to need the fire extinguisher,” I said, many years before anyone heard of Captain Obvious and Hotels.com.

If there were ever a warped version of the Olympics where, instead of steroids, all of the athletes were forced to drink beer, no doubt Chris would have been a gold medal winner in diving.

I am eternally grateful to my friend Chris for sharing his youthful spirit with me, at a time when I would have otherwise wallowed and drowned in my youthful insecurities.

At Oswego, leaving chicken on a wing bone was a sin, almost as bad as leaving beer in a bottle.

My creative writing as a Freshman was the first thing to make me feel confident in years, probably since the last BMX race that I had won as a 14 or 15 year old.

Time stood still. It felt like 1,000 eyes were on me. I was a bug under a magnifying glass. I was a guilty criminal in a line-up. I quickly prayed for a Soviet nuclear missile to rip through the cafeteria.

That night at the motel, waiting for Move-In Day, I holed up on the cement patio of our motel room, scratching out in my journal a 17 year olds' anger at the world, counting down the seconds until I could get away from my parents.

For the first time in 3 years I tried to look him right in the eyes. Eye contact, damn you! All I'm asking for is a little eye contact, a little show of high school humanity. But he completely ignored me.

That was the first time I had ever heard a child, a teenager, have an actual conversation with a parent.

I stepped off the bus each summer into that sleep-away camp air, and I was returned, mostly, to the fun-loving, light-hearted kid I should have been all twelve months of the year.