Because a friend of mine says I’m interesting…I’ll let you decide.

1. From the age of 14 through 20 I was a volunteer on crises hotlines and the National Runaway Switchboard. That’s not a typo, I was fourteen when I started talking to overdosers and runaways and drunks and suicides, and bad trippers. Yes, I think the folks in charge were crazy. No, I wouldn’t give up the experiences for anything. I quit doing it after I couldn’t talk a kid into calling an ambulance for him and his friend because they were more afraid of going home than they were of their pimp who had beat them silly. The one I was talking to had my hotline name and number in his pocket when the cops found their bodies. I know there was nothing more I could do, but I believed at the time there was something I SHOULD have been able to do…which is why I left. I was starting to think I was more powerful than I was and that’s a very bad thing.

2. From the age of 14-18 I worked at a coffee house running the soundboard on Saturday Nights. This is where I developed my loathing for the songs, “Sandman,” “You’ve Got a Friend,” “All Along the Watchtower,” and the first few notes of “Stairway to Heaven” and “Roundabout.”

3. While I was doing those things I also worked for money at a local drugstore, making deliveries and working the cash register. When I think of the weather I rode that bicycle through…I’m amazed I never got killed.

4. I also worked as a mover in high school but somehow managed to never go union.

5. Although my neighborhood had Howard Street Grease, Thorndale J*g-Offs (TJO), and Latin Kings, I managed to never join a gang or get messed up by a gang-banger. I’m rather proud of that. Jimmy Camanchero doesn’t count, that was a draw, and we walked away not friends, but no longer wanting to kill one another.