Nowadays, teenage boys have it made. Most have access to man caves and media rooms that serve as perfect hangouts. When I was thirteen, you had to leave home to find anything remotely similar. In my case, a hundred yards down the alley behind our house, nestled against the local college’s northern boundary, lay a hamburger joint called Gus’s. It sold cheap, greasy food that nobody actually liked.

In the late 1980s, Lynn, a friend of the family, approached my wife, Louise, with an urgent request. She explained that she had signed a contract to run the Santa Claus photo concessions at ten different Los Angeles-area malls. After weeks of searching, she had found nine managers but was desperate to have Louise take charge of the photo booth located a few miles north of our home in Irvine.

Thanksgiving is an interesting phenomenon. It always comes in at number two in the holiday popularity polls, just behind Christmas. That’s a pretty high ranking when you consider how humble the holiday is. It doesn’t come with the ghoulish decorating or the fun-filled house-egging that we enjoy every Halloween.

When my Daughter Becca prepared to teach kindergarteners for the first time, she came to me for advice. Given that the students I had been teaching for the past thirty years were in grad (not grade) school, I told her I had nothing of any use to her (no news there). "Imagine," Becca said, "that I’ve taken a sacred oath to ‘first do no harm.’ Now what advice would you give me?"

Throughout my teenage years, I worked for my mom and dad painting an eighty-year-old boarding house they had purchased. It was a sprawling, artless, clapboard building that hadn’t been given much attention for decades, so it took me several summers to finish the job. It was like painting a giant sponge.

In the fall of 1952, I faced the prospect of attending school for the first time. The whole idea of going to school made me weak in the knees. My older brother had filled my head with bullying stories that gave me second thoughts about ever leaving home, let alone sharing the playground with a bunch of three-and-a-half foot thugs.

The doorbell rang and I jumped to my feet as a flash of pink tennis shoes sped by me in a race to the front door. Becca, my seven-year-old daughter, skidded up to the door, opened it, and found her best friend Crystal standing there.

If you’ve ever watched Pawn Stars, then you’ll appreciate where this story is going. With each new episode, Rick Harrison (co-owner of the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop) along with a few family members and colleagues, haggle with customers over how much a Civil War wooden leg is worth—or it might be a Picasso print.

On September 8, 1958 (the first day I attended junior high school) I met Frank Mustappa. I didn’t know it at the time, but Frank would change my life. Despite the fact that he was a twelve-year-old boy, Frank was surprisingly mature. While the rest of us boys competed to see who could make the most explosive armpit noise, Frank practiced a more sophisticated and subtle brand of humor.

When I entered the eighth grade in 1959, I was given the option to study either Latin or French. I chose French because from what I understood, the French weren’t dead yet. Miss Limply, the school’s French teacher, launched the first day of class by showing a cartoon of the Three Little Pigs. From the confusing muddle of sounds blaring from the projector, I learned only one word—loup—or wolf. It made me laugh because it was pronounced loo, and in England that’s a toilet. Perhaps French was going to be fun.