I've had so many different kinds of experiences, it's been difficult to decide what to write about and
what to leave out. I'm going to try to talk about the things that have made me the person I am today,
but that still leaves an awful lot of ground to cover. This is going to be a kind of stream of consciousness
type of rant, and it will probably be pretty long. I'm not going to cover the sex and drugs in college.
That should cut the length down some.

College was a real eye-opener in a lot of ways. Even though I went to college only about 45 miles
from where I grew up (Cheyenne) it was a whole different world. All of a sudden I was around people
who were not just from Wyoming, not just from around the country, but all over the world.

I went to school in the same town (Laramie, Wyoming) where Matt Shepard was killed for the stupid
reason that he wanted to love and make a life with someone that two dickheads didn't approve of.
When I lived there, and when I go back to visit, that kind of intolerance was and is not put up with. I
firmly believe that those 2 jerks were the aberration there, not Matt Shepard. They do not represent
the people I grew up around. When I was there, I came and went wherever the hell I wanted. I could
walk into the cowboy bars (there is even actually a bar there called the Cowboy Bar) and the worst
treatment I ever got was the times I had to pay for my own beers. I tended bar for a while in the place
where those two fruit flies took Matt from.

Someone told me that I would be wasting my time at school if I didn't take advantage of the
opportunities to have a social life and get to know people. So I did-no one had more fun on a day to
day basis than I did. I was enormously popular, largely on the strength of having the biggest, loudest,
rowdiest, longest lasting parties around. Being able to drink for long periods is the big equalizer in
Wyoming. Most days I partied like Jenna Bush on her birthday.

I was a psychology major but got fed up and switched to communication. Actually, my bachelor's
degree is organizational communication, the study of the communication behavior in business
organizations. (I don't know what that means, either, but it sounds cool).

In my sophomore year, I took an intro level interpersonal communication course because I had some
real mind-bending courses that semester, and comm had a reputation for being an easy credit.

The first day of class, the grad student teaching assistant who would be teaching the class walked in
late. He was a flannel shirt wearing, John Denver, granola eating, hippie looking kind of guy who
walked to the front of the silent class, put down his back-pack and announced "You're all fucking
sheep". Then he shut up to see what the reaction was going to be. I was the only one who spoke up. I
don't remember what I said, but I challenged him, and I found out later that that was what he wanted.
He didn't believe that people can be taught communication from books. His preference was to teach
communication by communicating, not to read theories in books. We were friends for the rest of the
time I was in school there. Mike Kelley, if you happen to read this, I miss you every day. Thanks for
helping me learn how to think for myself.

I never realized for one minute in my life before I went to college that I was actually poor. When you're
on your own for the first time in your life and can't afford toilet paper, that is the only possible
conclusion you can come to. When I first lived off campus, I and some of my friends figured out how
to eat cheaply for a couple of semesters. We all lived a few blocks apart, and there were about 7 of us
that were hanging out a lot. So one night of the week, one of us would buy food and feed the other six.
We were guaranteed a meal every day that way, and only had to come up with one meal a week. My
night was Saturday, and when it was my turn. we all found out how versatile and just how far you can
stretch rice dishes.

I was up to a lot of mischief in those days. I was told I was fun to be around, and I never lacked
company. I was always expected to be the one to come up with ideas about what we were going to
do though. The easiest thing was to have a party. I learned a great way to have a huge party while
spending next to nothing. You buy a 12 pack of cheap beer then you call everybody you know or who
has ever heard of you. The first people to come over would suck down the 12 pack, but by then
enough other people were showing up that all you had to do was pass the hat, and before you know it,
you have enough for 2 or 3 kegs.

While I was still in school, one summer I went out and hitchhiked around the country. It was 1976 and
I was 20. Jobs were (and still are) hard to come by in Wyoming, so I opted for seeing the country. I
had friends from all over, and I wanted to see some of the places they were from.

I cannot emphasize enough how ignorant and trusting I was in those days. The first direction I headed
was east, but not northeast. I ended up more southeast. I was so out of it, I was out on my own and
broke, hitchhiking around Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, Arkansas, that whole area. God takes care
of children and fools though. The only negative thing that happened was that in Nashville, people were
throwing things at me-rocks and bottles from their cars (I still have no idea what people were doing
driving around with rocks in their cars). None hit me though.

While I was out, I was picked up by every kind of person you can imagine. I got a ride from a stripper in
Tennessee. I was picked up in Kentucky by a minister who told me that he had just gotten over a crisis of faith.
He said he had decided that if I was going to rob or kill him, that was up to God. I think he was relieved though,
that I wasn't in much of a killing mood that day. I was picked up by a guy who didn't want me to say a word.
He was out driving around doing some thinking about his guilt over an affair he was having. He just wanted
someone to listen to him talk it out, someone that he would never see again.

I made it as far north as Michigan. I got a ride from a woman named Brenda who lived in Lansing. It
was getting late at night, and she offered to let me stay at her place. We were sitting chatting and she
started to ask me about myself in detail. She asked if I drank, smoked pot, slept with women, etc. Yes
to all of the above. She told me to sit tight, she was calling a girlfriend to come over. I sat there and
silently thanked every god I could think of. I was as happy as an Eskimo boy can be. When her (very
attractive) friend showed up a few minutes later, each of them took one of my hands and led me to the
bedroom. They sat me down on the bed and knelt at my feet and proceeded to pray for my everlasting
soul and that I would see the error of my ways.

Now, remember, I said I was going to leave the sex stuff out.
How many guys do you know who would talk about a time they didn't score?

That adventure was during the summer of the Bicentennial.

I'll only say one more thing about my college days, then it's on to when I had to grow up. During my
senior year, there was a girl named Gidget (I am not making this up) who really honked me off one
time. I arranged for my buddies Ernie and Rance to hit her in the face with a cream pie and take
photos. It was a great success, and the next thing I knew I was running my own business called Pie In
The Eye. I was too high profile to fling any pies myself, but there was no shortage of people
volunteering to be the hitman. I ran ads in the student newspaper and people paid me $25.00 to waste
other people with pies. I did bang-up business for a while, and my crowning achievement was a
successful hit on the president of the university. I forget what the occasion was, but there were cameras
there, and photos showed up in the school newspaper the next day. It got a mention on the evening
news, but I got a letter saying that any more pie assassinations would result in me being expelled from
school 6 months before graduation.

After college, I hitchhiked some more, this time up and down the west coast.

I had no idea what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go, and my best friend (from Minnesota)
suggested that I move there with him, and I did.

And I promptly found out that the rest of the world didn't care who I was or what I had done.

I was going to keep going, but I think here would be a good place to end for now. I think the next part
should stand by itself, because it was definitely a different phase. It's also the part that directly sets up
why I'm here doing this. It should be in this space by the end of the week.