Why am I the way I am? Who’s to say. Maybe it has to do with my dad (retired). He was a high school English teacher. I didn’t get away with sloppy words. No gots or i before e’s or aints in my house. Or, perhaps it’s because the only two states i’ve called home are, also, the only two states where you don’t have to wear a helmet to legally ride a motorcycle?

And it manifests in strange ways. There was a point in my life. when I seriously considered calling the FBI and asking them if they needed someone to decipher hostage letters. Or my unquestioned talent for conjugating other words with the F word…slammed right there in the middle. For example, abso-f’in-lutely or in-f’in-credible.

I’ve always felt like I’m never totally there (wherever that is), but waffling between the real, concrete world around me and the one with the well-worn path of imagination.