First, the physical me: I'm six feet, five inches tall, weigh about 200 lbs, with brown hair (ok, there's gray in there, but that's the fault of my wife and sons) and blue eyes. So much for the description on my driver's license.

I was born in Norwood Hospital, in the eastern Massachusetts community of the same name (Norwood, not hospital). I was the third child, the only boy, born to Nellie and John Curran. Both my parents were born and raised in Ireland: my father just North of Galway, my mother in Cloone in County Leitrim.

By the time I was ready to start school my parents had settled in Dedham, Massachusetts. I attended Ames Elementary School from grade two to six (I had a home teacher for the first grade because I was still recovering from rheumatic fever, more on that later or elsewhere). I spent two years in a junior high school building that was so old it was torn down a couple of years after I left (there was no connection between those two events). I moved onto Dedham High School where I excelled at nothing for four years, but I tried, hitting my stride in subjects such as algebra and drafting. I participated in no sports and very little social activity.

A couple of years after graduating I joined the air force and spent five weeks in Texas, about eight months in Denver at tech school, and eighteen months in Dover, Delaware. The air force then sent me to Canada at the same time a lot of guys my age were going up there to avoid the draft. At the end of my four-year tour in 1967 I returned home to begin the next phase of my life.

I met Kathie in 1968, we were married in 1970. A short time later I started a career in broadcasting when WARA radio in Attleboro, Massachusetts hired me to do the news. With fifteen months experience I moved to Portland, Maine to get into the world of television news. Our first son, Sean, was born in Norwood Hospital in 1972, before we moved to Maine where our second son, Timothy, was born in 1976. After seven years at WCSH television I took a year off. I went back to radio as bureau chief in Portland for the Maine Radio News and Information Network and then WYNZ. I stayed there until 1993 when the station was sold. After more than two decades in broadcast news I went to a small manufacturing plant where I became a supervisor. Four years later my wife suggested I return to college to get a bachelor's degree. I graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2001 with a G.P.A. of 3.70.

Now I'll take you back to the beginning of this story, with stops along the way covering my first three decades.

1. The Beginning
2. Learning to Swim?
3. Going to the Movies
4. Religion and My Bicycle
5. Working for a Living
6. The Perils of Dating
7. Prejudice is Taught, not Learned
8. What Would I Do Without A Mother?
9. Along Came Spider
10. Leaving Home for the Air Force
11. Drugs--My time in the Cellar
12. Being Second Best
13. Coming Home

I was born and raised in eastern Massachusetts without a care in the world (mostly). It was a time when a major worry was whether the local swimming pool would be closed near the end of the summer because of a polio outbreak. I never thought for a minute that I might contract the disease (polio was not unknown in our neighborhood--it struck two nearby families). I was young and indestructible. Besides, I'd already survived rheumatic fever at a time when a lot of people weren't so lucky.

One of my courses at U.S.M. required an autobiographical piece, and I chose my first three decades. The following excerpts are from my final submission for the course. I removed most, but not all of the graphics. I had to include this photo from my third grade at Ames Elementary School in Dedham, Massachusetts.

And a handsome lad was he.
I was the third child born to Nellie and John Curran, and the only boy. When I was about six years old my father took my two older sisters (Mary and Ellen) and me to a park with a swimming pool. My father spread a blanket in the shade at the edge of a stand of trees about fifty feet from the pool and set us free to swim. This was my first time at a pool and I didn't know what to expect, so I followed Mary without letting on that I was. The deep end of the pool was off to the left, the shallow end to the right. The bottom of the pool was V-shaped. Mary waded into the middle of the pool and started down the V-shaped slope. I followed her. Mary was more than a foot taller than me. Even with my head under water I could hear the frantic voices. I felt someone grab my ears and pull me up. It was Mary.
List

At the movies
There was a movie theater in downtown Dedham with one screen and a balcony I sat in only once, although I don't remember why (why only once, or why that once?). I vividly recall the placement of the bathroom in the basement of the old building, down a flight of steps made of some material that would not allow the lightest step to be muffled. The problem was that the horror films that I regularly watched put a fear in me that a monster might be hiding there in the basement waiting for a victim who was just looking for some place that offered relief.

I paid twelve cents to see two movies, a cartoon, and coming attractions. A package of candy, preferably long-chewing brands, or vanilla ice cream in a stale cone covered by a piece of waxed paper cost me five cents. My parents would give me about twenty cents for a movie and a snack. I would supplement that with money earned by picking up empty coke bottles from the side of the road during the week: two cents for a small bottle, five cents for the rare, big one.

The theater changed films twice a week, but I only went on Saturday afternoons, usually alone.

My sisters and I went together to the movies only once, to see King Kong (A black and white film about an escaped panther terrorizing a village was the first feature). Ellen and I sat through both movies, loving every scary moment. But during King Kong , Mary stood at the back of the theater watching through a light-blocking curtain while watching over Susan (the youngest) who huddled low beside Mary, unable to watch the horrors appearing on the screen.

The theater was about a mile from home, an easy walk or bicycle ride, along Washington Street. My first bike was a used model my parents picked up somewhere. It wasn't much, but in those days I wasn't concerned about style, just substance, and the bike took me where I wanted to go. When I went to the movies on Saturday afternoon I usually rode my bike and parked it against the brick wall in an alley running alongside the theater. I didn't lock it (nobody had a bike lock then), and I don't remember ever giving any thought to whether the bike would still be there when I returned to it after the movie.

After a few years I was old enough to go to the movies on Friday night, still by myself. There was a two-lane stretch of Washington Street that cut through a large, wet area about halfway between downtown Dedham and my house. In those days there wasn't much traffic on the road, especially at night. That was both a curse and a blessing because there was no one around to accompany me as I walked several hundred yards through the middle of this "swamp" after watching The Creature from the Black Lagoon, but it also meant there was no one to run me over as I walked on the white line in the middle of the road listening for the tell-tale sound of a creature approaching out of the stillness and the dark of the swamp. The walk across the threatening swamp kept me from thinking, at the age of ten, about Julia Adams, a white bathing suit, and the creature floating just below her as she swam across the lagoon. An understanding of the message in that scene was to come to me much later.
List

The church and I
I don't remember where my first bicycle came from, I just remember that it showed up one day and away I went. The bike didn't look like much, but I was young, so I only cared that it took me where I wanted to go.

I do remember the story behind my second bike. It was a brand new, green Columbia bike with a built-in horn, and a light attached at the center of the handlebars. It was offered to me by my father, the only time he ever used bribery or extortion to get my attention.

A part of growing up in an Irish-Catholic family was the on-going relationship with the church. There was Sunday school after Mass. There was no meat on Friday, which meant salted cod in a wooden box. It could barely be cut with a knife (either the cod or the box), and had to be chewed for a long time before swallowing. There was the saying of the Rosary each evening at seven o'clock, led by the recorded voice of Cardinal Cushing, one of the most revered persons in New England, in a broadcast offered by a Boston radio station. There also was the possibility of a priest in the family.

My father was the oldest of nine children, my mother was one of five, and no one in those two families had joined the priesthood. A family friend, Mister Foley, had a son who became a priest; our whole family went to the ceremony. Even though I was the only boy in the family to carry on the family name, the sacrifice would be accepted if I became a priest. Although I had no interest in such a life-altering experience, there was a smaller sacrifice I could make that would bring honor to the family. I could to become an alter boy.

When I was growing up, the Mass was spoken in Latin. The priest would speak, the alter boys would respond. For years, I heard the Latin phrases roll effortlessly off the tongues of my mother and father, along with the alter boys. At the beginning of the eighth grade, my father asked if I wanted to take lessons that would have me taking part in the Sunday Mass. Somehow, the promise of a bicycle was included in the suggestion, and I agreed.

The alter boy lessons were given in the afternoon by one of the priests in the basement of Saint Mary's church. We (future alter boys) were given a little pamphlet containing all the words of the Mass in Latin, so we could recognize what the priest was going to say and learn how to respond. The lessons went on for weeks, fall dragged into winter, and I couldn't get it. There was something in my brain, a blockage, that wouldn't allow me to learn how to properly pronounce the Latin words let alone memorize them. I kept trying, and the priest remained patient, but I couldn't learn the phrases. When the other boys were given the honor of becoming alter boys, I was passed over.

My failure was accepted stoically by my parents. Nothing was said, and at Christmas, beside the tree, was my brand new, green Columbia bike with a built-in horn and a light mounted on the handlebars. Without saying anything to my father I went back to the next session of alter boy training that began shortly after the new year began. I tried again, the priest tried again, but despite his best efforts that blockage was still in place. Finally, he sat me down and suggested I put my talents into some other endeavor. My father and I never spoke about it again, it was one of those things you try to do and then you move on.

However, the issue was revisited by me occasionally as the years went by.

When I was in high school anyone who planned to go on to college was advised to take at least two languages. I took Latin and French. My grades were dismal, in fact I was given a provisional passing grade for my first year of Latin only after I promised to take the second year (that made a lot of sense to some people back then). A few years later, when I joined the air force, everyone was given a test to determine their ability to learn a foreign language. Those who showed such an aptitude would be sent to a college for a year to learn a language and move into military intelligence. I took the test and set a new standard for a failing grade, reminding me of that self-diagnosed blockage back in alter boy classes and those low grades in high school foreign language classes.
List

Early careers?
My first job was shoveling snow for Mr. and Mrs. Petersen. I was not yet in my teens, but I was beginning to think about earning money. After a snowstorm I headed off on my own with a shovel. I knocked on many doors in the neighborhood before Mrs. Petersen agreed to pay me five dollars to clear the driveway and walkway to the back door. I was thrilled. This was going to mean a new life for me, a life of independence and wealth. It got even better after a few snow storms when Mr. Petersen told me to not even bother calling, but to do the driveway when I thought it was needed. This was independence, wealth, and responsibility.

My employment history had its ups and downs after that. At the start of summer vacation after the eighth grade I had a new bicycle and a paper route. It was a morning route, and I was paid one penny for each paper I delivered. At the end of the first week labor unions struck the three Boston newspapers and stayed out all summer. At the end of the summer, I started an afternoon paper route with more than one hundred papers. After one week the doctor ordered me into the hospital to have my tonsil removed, and the two weeks of convalescence cost me my paper route.

I got my first indoor job at the start of my senior year in high school. It was a classic job: a soda jerk in a drug store. It was my first attempt at interacting with strangers and I discovered that I was two people: the shy introvert named Jack that most people knew, and, for a few hours a week, the sociable guy in the apron and clip-on bow tie named Jack.

About that time I started taking driving lessons every Saturday morning so I had to work every Saturday evening for several weeks. The soda fountain counter was usually quiet after seven o'clock, so once in a while I'd be called upon to fill in at the pharmacy counter for the cashier, who was also a senior at Dedham High School, to fill very specific requests from Saturday night customers. My female colleague would call me over (dressed in my apron, black bow tie, and white Eisenhower jacket) to help a male customer. Condoms were not openly displayed as they are today, but hidden in a drawer behind the counter. I never thought to ask what signal passed between my female colleague and the customer to indicate I should be called over. The experience often appeared to be as painful for the male customer as it was for my fellow high school student.
List

Getting to know them
I grew up shy around girls. No, that's not quite right. I wasn't shy around girls, I was catatonic. Words would not pass my lips (at least not in any coherent fashion), my eyes would not focus on them when they spoke to me, and my hands would suddenly develop a need to flop around as if communicating with a tree branch in a hurricane. I set a new standard for geek (the word may even have been created to describe me). It wasn't that I didn't like girls. Dating them seemed to me to be a great idea, the problem was how to go about asking one of them for a date while not making a complete fool of myself.

High school was pretty much a total loss for me when it came to socializing with females. I didn't date successfully; I didn't go to any proms. The problem was a lack of confidence and my body shape was the cause of most of my sense of inadequacy. I was not very tall (that came later), but I was thin. No, thin doesn't describe me in high school. Think of a biology teacher who can't afford a skeleton inviting me into the classroom and asking me to take off my shirt so he can point out to the class the specific details of the human skeleton. Try not to think of what I would look like in swim trunks.

Eventually, I found the courage to ask a girl to the drive-in to see Ben-Hur. I had my father's '56 Pontiac with its huge bench seat. I didn't know exactly what to do with a girl sitting beside me at a movie that went more than three hours, but eventually I did get my right arm across the back of the seat, and the girl rested her head on it. Later, as the intermission began I lifted my arm from behind her head and discovered I had no control over it. The pressure of her head on my skinny upper arm had apparently cut off the blood supply and the biceps muscle was asleep. But the triceps muscle that straightens the arm was alive and well. That meant that any attempt I made to move the arm sent it flying at the head of the girl sitting beside me. By the time I regained control of the arm our relationship was over.
List

The ways of the world
I learned about prejudice in an unusual way. I discovered I hadn't been taught it.

My father and mother were born and raised in Ireland. My father, in particular, had issues with the British, but he never expressed those as something I should think of as my issues. Being Irish and Catholic meant that during the 30s, while my father and the rest of the nation were trying to get through the depression, my father had the added burden of passing factory gates carrying signs ("No Irish Need Apply") saying he was not welcome because of where he was born . Eventually (after World War Two), he found a good job in a factory that printed books and stayed there until he retired. My father never lectured me about prejudice, or much else, as though he expected me to figure out right from wrong based on what I saw and heard. The message I received was that wrongs occur in this world, but there is no point in living a life using those wrongs as a crutch.

I'd seen black people (before the term African-American was preferred) on television and on the street when I went to Boston with my parents, but my first contact with a young black man was in high school. He was a senior and my oldest sister knew him and liked him. So to my young mind it seemed there was no problem.

When I got a job as a soda jerk in a drug store, I had my first direct contact with a black man. John was the short order cook (today that's like the guy flipping burgers at McDonald's, but with a lot more to do and a lot more to say about quality). John served in World War Two as a cook aboard merchant marine ships on convoys between the U.S. and Europe. He said he had two ships torpedoed out from under him in the North Atlantic, and the scars on his arms made the stories easy to believe. John taught me how to cook burgers and fries and to appreciate a hot pastrami-on-rye sandwich with mustard. He also introduced me to a green salad (not a staple in an Irish-Catholic household). John taught me about friendship.
List

My mother and me
My mother was a wonderful person with one shortcoming, she never put much effort into learning how to cook. She came to America from County Leitrim in Ireland in 1926 when she was twenty years old and single (it would be a few years before she met her future husband). She never had a driver's license; there were stories about an attempt and a crash. After she married she didn't work until I was in junior high school. My father had an ulcer operation in the late 50s during which most of his stomach was removed and he was out of work for nearly a year, so my mother went to work and kept working until her retirement.

As for her cooking, she would bake fresh bread every Saturday evening and serve it to us fresh from the oven with a cup of tea while we watched our new television. Other than that, the best that can be said for her cooking was the food was hot and there was a lot of it.

The morning I was going away to the air force I had to get up early (4am) so my father could get me to the Army Base in Boston on time. I had gone out with some buddies the night before for a couple of cold beers and was not feeling completely refreshed after an early morning shower. When I got downstairs my mother was putting my breakfast plate on the dining room table. She hovered over me, grieving about my last meal at home, insisting that I finish it all as if it was my last meal. Before me lay a fried egg that had spent too little time on the stove. Not only was the yolk flowing freely across the plate, the white of the egg was keeping up with it. Later, while other guys in the chow hall grumbled about the air force food, I could always say it reminded me of home.

Besides her shortcomings in the kitchen, my mother had one other problem area: medical emergencies. Then again, she didn't have much practice with them until I came along. My first one occurred on a hot summer day when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I was alone in the backyard looking for a shady place to relax. I sat down in tall grass and laid back hoping to enjoy the fresh coolness of the ground. Under me was a broken bottle. I felt the sting in the small of my back and sat up. I thought the pain would go away more quickly if I pulled up my shirt and rubbed the spot. My finger went into a hole and hit bone. My finger came away bloody and even I had enough sense to get home, fast. I ran in screaming, my mother panicked, my oldest sister went to the neighbor's house to use their phone to call an ambulance (we didn't get a telephone until later). When the ambulance arrived I was lying in the middle of the living room rug. The young intern started to pull things out of his bag and told my mother he was going to put in some stitches. She insisted that would not happen in the middle of the living room floor, but in a hospital. The intern tried to help, but then left because my mother persisted. One of my sisters went to another neighbor who had a car. He drove around, picked me up, and put me in the back seat. Our family doctor was at the hospital when we arrived and put three stitches in the hole to close it.

A couple of years later, during the summer between fifth and sixth grades, I went out the second story window of a house under construction in our neighborhood (there's a long story leading up to this, but it's not needed for this narrative). A neighbor saw me slide down the side of the building and ran over, picked me up, and carried me home. There were no broken bones or bruises, but somehow I got a small cut on the lid of my right eye. It bled well, so by the time I reached home the side of my face was covered with blood. The thing that stays clearly in my mind is my mother screaming "he lost his eye!" and then panicking. Luckily, again, my sisters were handy and arranged a doctor's visit. Okay, so she couldn't cook and couldn't remain calm in a crisis, but overall she earned high marks for effort.

My mother never knew anyone who wasn't a friend. She would greet everyone with a smile as if she'd known them for years. If the person was a stranger, he or she didn't stay that way for long. She wasn't a big woman, or strong, but she would make a positive impression on anyone she met. She loved to meet people, no matter the circumstances. She was always ready to carry on a conversation with anyone, anytime, anywhere. She went to work outside the home in the late 1950s. After she retired she volunteered at the local hospital. It was as though her goal in life was to meet as many people as possible.
List

Along Came Spider
Maybe I was being punished for being Catholic and working on a Sunday.

I was getting overtime pay to work on a Sunday morning in the warehouse of the Rustcraft Greeting Card Company in Dedham. This was between the time I graduated from high school and enlisted in the Air Force. I'd finally started my growth spurt and was now over six feet tall, but still skinny.

I was moving pallets around the aisles of the warehouse using a large, battery-operated forklift. The operator didn't ride this type of forklift, but walked along the aisles, guiding the forklift with a long handle topped with controls, including a stop button. In addition, the whole system had a dead-man switch, so if I let the handle go, it would fold back toward the huge battery and the machine would stop. I stopped in an aisle as a buddy of mine approached and I let go of the handle. The machine did not stop. But it was behind me, so I wasn't aware of the impending contact. The heavy machine rolled against the back of my right leg, caught it just above the ankle and pushed me over onto my knee. I reached back, pulled down the handle, pushed the reverse button, and the machine backed off my foot. I cursed mildly, but all seemed well so my buddy and I went to lunch.

A short time later my ankle started to throb. I began to feel light-headed, then dizzy, then I needed to lie down. I climbed into the back seat of my buddy's car and he drove me home. My father drove me to Norwood hospital where a doctor gave my foot a quick examination and ordered X-rays. That's when I met Spider.

I was put in a wheelchair, wheeled into the X-ray department, and introduced to a young, attractive X-ray technician. She rolled me over to an imposing machine hovering over a long flat surface. I was getting out of the wheelchair to sit under the machine when the technician told me to take off my pants. Now, my sneaker and sock were already off because of the doctor's examination and I had figured on rolling up my pant leg, but I hadn't planned on getting half naked in front of anyone to have my foot and ankle X-rayed. I looked at her quizzically, and she assured me it was necessary for me to remove my pants.

Here I was, eighteen years old and painfully shy, in a closed room with an attractive woman probably only a couple of years older than me who was insisting I take off my pants. I waited for as long as I could without moving, but she seemed prepared to wait longer so I unzipped my pants, let them drop, and stepped out of them. I was now in the position of having to maintain some control while standing in my jockey shorts in front of an attractive (did I mention attractive before?) woman. Not realizing, or possibly very appreciative of, my dilemma she looked up and down and said, "you have really long legs."

I didn't need this.

"I have long legs, too," she said, inviting me with her remark to scan her body, including the smooth, shapely legs visible below her pleated skirt. "In fact, my friends call me Spider."

Oh God! That remark evoked an image involving legs and arms, and intertwining, and I was getting into dangerous mental material here.

I tried to think of some way to hide my uh, growing embarrassment. Climbing onto the cold surface of the X-ray table and laying flat on my back was not a solution. Spider insisted and eventually I lay back. She took hold of my right leg and guided it into position for the X-ray. Although she was holding my leg below the knee, her touch was having an effect on another part of me that was quickly becoming a pronounced problem. If she noticed my reaction to her touch she made no mention of it or showed any reaction. Spider carried on in a very friendly and professional manner, explaining what she was doing and why as she moved my leg and foot into different positions. I kept staring at a patch of ceiling above the machine trying to think about algebra problems or the role of the federal government in my everyday life. It wasn't working.

When Spider was done I got down off the table and turned my back (as if it wasn't too late for modesty) to put my pants back on. She wheeled me back to the emergency room, smiled very sweetly, and left me to a nurse who bandaged my slightly damaged, but unbroken ankle. I spent two days on crutches before they drove me crazy and I put them away in favor of a slight limp. The ankle healed in time, although sometime later I noticed a bad case of what is called "spider" veins on the inside of my right ankle.
List

Leaving home
The U.S. Air Force gave me a break. It was 1963; I was two years out of high school, with a steady job, but no prospects. It was mid-April and I was raking leaves in the backyard of my parent's house. I decided that was not the way I wanted to go, and more importantly, I feared if I didn't get away soon I would probably spend the rest of my adult life living with my mother.

I put down the rake, jumped on the bus, and visited the air force recruiter. A week later I was on a plane to Lackland Air Force Base outside San Antonio, Texas. Despite my many misgivings I survived basic training by reminding myself that I was not the first person to go through the process. I spent five weeks in Texas learning to march in formation and developing muscles for the first time (I recognized the body parts taught to me in physiology class). Someone in the air force decided I had some intelligence hidden away somewhere and sent me to Nuclear Weapons Technician School. That gave me eight wonderful months in Denver, Colorado.

Motto: Death with Dignity in the Sky
From Denver, I was sent to the 95th Fighter Interceptor Squadron at Dover A.F.B. in Delaware. Before my twentieth birthday I was taking apart nuclear weapons and the rockets that would propel them, and putting them back together. Within a few months I was crew chief of the head maintenance team. A year later I was shipped to Canada to train their forces on maintaining the weapon, eighteen months later my tour of duty was over.

Since those days I've had a soft spot in my heart for Denver and Canada (even Delaware where there was too much snow in the winter and too many huge mosquitoes in the summer) and all the people I met in those places where I worked or visited.
List

A brief walk on the wild side
I left the air force when my four-year tour was over and decided to stay with friends in Montreal for a while. That's where I was introduced to drugs, although it was only a passing acquaintance. Before I was twenty-one I didn't drink much because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of being caught. The same held true for drugs, so I avoided them. However, I didn't shun friends who used them. In fact, I sometimes had to help them. To smoke marijuana at the time Joel's technique involved rolling a standard, Canadian-brand filtered cigarette between his fingers until all the tobacco fell out. He would then repack the paper roll with pot. Joel would often get too messed up to make his cigarettes, so I'd have to put down my beer and make them for him.

There was one time when I felt the effects of pot. A couple of friends and I were in a basement apartment on a main street in Montreal; they were smoking pot and I was drinking beer. The windows faced directly onto the sidewalk, so we couldn't open them for ventilation. After a couple of hours of drinking beer and inhaling second-hand pot smoke I was sitting on the couch giggling like a schoolgirl. That was the end of my affair with drugs.
List

Happily Being Second Best
Thank You, Clint Eastwood

I first noticed Clint Eastwood, as did much of America, while he was playing the part of Rowdy Yates on a television western, "Rawhide", in the late 50s. It wasn't until years later that I noticed his earlier, brief appearances in such classic horror films as "Tarantula" and "The Revenge of the Creature". While I was away in the air force in the mid-60s Clint went to Europe and became an international star by appearing in "spaghetti westerns" as a tall, lanky, good-looking hero. I'd enjoyed the Rowdy Yates character on "Rawhide", but now it was the late 60s and I hadn't given much thought to Clint, or his career, for years. My attitude was about to change.

The Man With No Name
Shortly after I got out of the air force, I met a young woman. Sally was tall, lean, and pretty; I was attracted immediately. Eventually I asked her for a date and she suggested a movie. For a few months we saw each other regularly, often at the South Shore Plaza Twin Drive-In theater on Route 128 in Braintree, MA, viewing whatever movie was the drive-in favorite at the time. I slowly realized Sally had a special relationship with Clint Eastwood up there on the big screen. She would insist on seeing his movies, and would often suggest we go back to see an Eastwood movie again after just a few weeks.

I might not have been one of the brightest dome lights in the drive-in theater parking lots of the day, but I quickly understood that Sally had a "thing" for this guy. It was as though she was in love with him, or lusted for him. Clint was, of course, far away and out of her reach, but Sally was willing to settle for second best as long as second-best was within reach while she watched Clint on the big screen. There was a question I had to ask myself: could I accept being second best if it meant Sally bestowing her passion and her ample sexual skills and desires upon my body instead of Clint's?

All I can say is: Thank You, Clint Eastwood!
List

The return home
Before and after the air force I found work in various retail settings, in both sales and management. I think there should be a year of mandatory service in a retail setting for every American teenager. The exposure to shoppers of every variety would (as it did for me) make people much more capable of getting along in the world in which we live or that may be my cynicism coming out again.

I then entered the world of manufacturing using a security clearance (secret) from the air force to get a job in the research and development section of a large electronics firm. I later moved into broadcast journalism where I remained in various forms for more than two decades before moving back into manufacturing and a supervisory position. A couple of years ago, at my wife's urging, I returned to college to get a degree.
List

Home