Although I’ve never had to eat my own legs (or anyone else's legs) in order to survive, the story might be marginally interesting.

I (along with my brother a few years before) were born because our parents loved each...and wanted children...and so they made some kids. 

Growing up, I along with my brother who I will call him “Rob” because that’s his name kept busy with all sorts of things: sports, riding bikes, climbing up and subsequently falling out of trees, pretending our dads  classic “Model A” was a garbage truck and playing with mercury just to name a few. 

With a strict diet of chicken nuggets, Twizzlers and yellow number five, I had plenty of energy for hobbies and activities. Like many young boys, life for me was dominated by BMX bikes, sports, and scaling my father's shoe rack like a rock wall to get to the Playboy's. I also mastered the art of playing the trumpet really poorly, tying my shoes unnecessarily tight and having a touch of OCD...played some soccer, a whole bunch of pick-up football and was quite possibly the worst third baseman my high school team has ever seen.

Education, you don’t ask. This is an interesting one.

My young manure-like brain was molded early by lessons learned from TJ Hooker, Bo and Luke Duke and the A-Team. In elementary school, when I wasn’t trying to hump the jungle gym, I was combining my love of getting extra math help with the battle to not feel like a complete moron. Middle school saw some more of the same: trying hard, some more sports and getting some more extra help, this time in reading. I am now able to add perfectly the number of times I am not able to read something correctly. That’s two of the fundamentals. By reading this, you pretty much know how I fared with the third.

With high school, the grades started out okay but changed drastically during my sophomore year with the discovery of alcohol, more girls and  a whole lot less paying attention. It also seemed I enjoyed the members of the junior class so much I almost stayed to go through their senior year. Fortunately, I enjoyed my own class slightly more and with the help of a shockingly burnt-out and crushingly monotone English teacher, I graduated. With SAT’s like my current credit score and grades about half way down the alphabet I graduated valedictorian of the lower half of my class.

Four different colleges and universities later, I have an Associates Degree in something I was able to use a little and a Bachelors Degree no one could ever use. I am however, able to use my education to not have $132.57 in my bank account every month.

As for love, sex and relationships, it ran the gamut. Out of respect for all of them (and whomever they happen to be sleeping with now), I will pretty much leave it at that.

I have lived in four different states, traveled to a bunch more and driven across all 424 miles of Kansas. I've slept on beaches in New England, under stars in UTAH, the belly of a tall ship, the head of a trail and the foot of mountains: on a best friend’s couch for three months, a newspaper tube in Nashville and in one unlucky shrub in Worcester Massachusetts.

As for jobs,  I have done all sorts of things.

Subway sandwich maker on a college campus
Gas pumper 
Dishwasher 
Security guy
Camp counselor on the Mystic River
Firefighter/EMT
Dispatched 911 for an entire county in Connecticut
Dispatched for an air medical helicopter
Communications Center Manager and Program photographer for the same program
Waited tables and tended bar - Believe some customers still waiting for bread

For three years I could have been found behind the bar ducking conversations, giving solicited advice to deaf ears and forgetting how to make good drinks. Now I live in Boston a cater events I would probably never be invited at location I might never be able to afford.

So for what adds up to 19 years and sometimes feels like a hundred, I have been in a sorts of roles, with all sorts of responsibilities and in sorts of organizational structures. I have forgotten most of what I was supposed to have learned, have started more projects than I have ever finished and hopefully gave at least the same in to as I got out of each of them (remember, I am not good at math so that I wouldn’t even know how to calculate that).

Here we are at 37 years with more creative ideas than ever. Now if I can just find the time, money and the part of my brain that controls doing this stuff...I might actually be able to do this stuff.