Life at a boarding school isn’t how most people imagine it. Sure there was rigid discipline and our days were strictly structured, but we also had a lot of free time, and we made the …

In 1985, after years of fist fights, class disruptions, poor grades, visits to the principle’s office and conferences with teachers who simply refused to deal with me anymore, my parents decided it was time to …

Like most teens of my generation, I experimented with alcohol. My first experience with the “hair of the dog” was a slapstick event that led to the ruin of a perfectly good G.I. Joe thermos …

The old neighborhood had its own hierarchy, its own ebb and flow. It usually happened right under the noses of the adults, but the kids knew how it all worked. There were separate factions and …

Parents are usually very inept at talking about sex because they try to sugarcoat everything and make it sound a lot more complicated and wondrously mysterious than it really is. Because we could not get …

My mother, rest her soul, was a devout Catholic, and she clung tightly to the traditions and teachings of the church in an almost fanatical way. We were all baptized as infants and submerged literally …

When you are young there is always that kid in the neighborhood that you really don’t consider a friend, but you hang out with them anyway because they are a little older and can come …

When my brothers and I were kids we were given chores. We were expected to do little jobs around the house to keep things livable. In the summer time, one of those chores was to …

My family moved to Little Rock in 1975. We lived in a modest three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath home in the suburb of Shannon Hills.
At that time, TV was still just a few local channels and kids …

I came up a product of the ‘70s and ‘80s in a Catholic home. This meant that by the age of 10, I had already had my first experience with alcohol, tried cigarettes, and I …