Nothing teaches you to be a good loser better than losing frequently.

The print only version of this episode was originally posted on 17 September 2022. What follows is a new edited version.I’m a convicted criminal. And I’m not talking about the usual scofflaw behaviors involving a unpaid parking ticket or not crossing the street at the corner. I’m talking about being charged with more crimes than you can say in a single breath—needing to hire a lawyer level of criminality.

Another two-fer from the back catalog. It’s the mid-1970’s and and I’m testing my limits in baseball, and rebelling in reaction to my changing world at school.

We had more than one person in the battery that knew how to skin and field dress a snake.

Today, it’s a two-for from the early 1970’s, where I’m playing baseball on grassless hardpan, and slaying fourth grade.

Today, we’re in late summer 1985, and I’m demonstrably proving that love is not only blind, but profoundly deaf.

Today, it’s early 1973 and our time on Baker Street has come to an end.

I started to make a series of bad decisions that would pile up until they eventually crushed me fifteen years later.

Not even getting beat down on the playground by some kid I called a son-of-a-bitch dampened my mood.

Located in the high desert halfway between Reno and Las Vegas, it was the middle of nowhere adjacent.