She once gave me a hundred-dollar bill after one of my Bad News Bears skits, and my mom and grandma put the kibosh on it, much to her dismay. They thought she didn’t know what she was doing and that she was “tipping” me too much. I thought I had just crushed my role as Tanner Boyle, playing shortstop and spitting in the ground before making a diving catch. Later, she would slip me some candy when no one was looking.

Some mornings you wake up expecting to absolutely crush the day. Then your kid is sick, your dog barfs on your shoe, your cat gets out, and your boss reminds you that you said you would be in early today, and early is in forty minutes, so you throw an Eggo into the toaster, and it shorts out. But your partner comes in, handles all the home psychosis, and lets you rush out the door so you don’t get fired. You get to the corner and realize you forgot your wallet, so you try a risky U-turn to hurry up. You hit the curb, pop your tire, and have to call a tow truck. Also, your phone didn’t charge and is now out of battery.

We used to hide our money in our dressers, behind our clothes, at camp. We did this because our counselor, the greatest man to ever live, told us that the Lewis Savings Bank was a scam. It was a fake bank at the camp where they kept your money. It was totally legit and safe. Our money would disappear because, as Burke told us, bandits found it from time to time. Some nights, in the middle of the night, he would bring us home fribbles from Friendly’s and introduce us to a random girl. None of us will ever face the truth, and we don’t care because the guy was a legend.

I once took a full-semester class in college called Women and Crack Cocaine. There was a book by the same name that we read. It was incredible because it was so nuanced. The semester before I took a class called Deviance. I loved my second college and my advisor, Al, who taught both of these classes. I went from failing business college to straight A grades because of the freedom of choice. You’d be surprised what students can accomplish when you open up the bandwidth on their educational opportunities.

In elementary school, we used to have to walk from school to Cadman Plaza Park to have gym outside. Sometimes, we had lunch or recess out there. There were always two hot dog vendors with their carts. They were in direct competition for all business, but especially for our tweenage duckets we had tucked into our corduroys. One day, they got in a fight. An actual fist fight. One was a man and the other a lady. The man stabbed the lady with his hot dog tongs. We were all shook. We left hungry.

I grew up watching wrestling and reading wrestling magazines. I thought it was real. I learned Santa Claus was a myth before wrestling. Even when I knew it was staged, it was still real to me until I sat in the front row at the L.A. Sports Arena. I could hear them talking to each other. We were that close. It punched me from the inside. We ended up getting kicked out because my friend, Keebs, spat on Billy Jack Haynes back when he was out of the ring. I didn’t care. The curtain was raised, and I was standing there looking at a blank screen.

Sometimes, it’s the subtle things that make us see the writing on the wall. Sometimes, we wear blinders so thick that the first line of the eye chart seems blurry to us. Sorry, Doc, I can’t make that out because it’s not something I want to see right now. I never liked wearing glasses.

My teenage years were a constant hustle. Hiding pimples, eating junk food, writing letters to girls, sports, warm beer, and spoonfuls of angst. I don’t know how I ended up with a flat top, but I did. My barber in Hightstown had shaky hands and smoked heaters the whole haircut. I don’t know how I survived. I think it was the freedom. I walked there from boarding school when I was off class. Then, maybe I walked and got pizza. I was drifting with the wind.

For Halloween in 5th grade, I went as myself. When we rang the doorbells in our apartment building, the adults shunned me for not “dressing up.” I tried to explain how meta what I was doing was, but they didn’t get it. My friends probably got full-size Mounds while I got an old Jolly Rancher. I was tired of wearing the store-bought costumes. Even the adults didn’t want me to be different.