I was a slight overachiever when I was younger. Wait. Is there such a thing as a slight overachiever? Anyway, I did very well in school. I liked being the teacher’s pet. I was active in school-related things. I believe that I was an overachiever mostly because I was a pudgy kid. I think I was made to feel that I should do well in school because if I didn’t lose my “baby fat” that I’d probably never land a dude, so I should at least be smart. [My Mom once took me to Sears to the BOYS department and told the saleswoman that I need a pair of jeans in "Husky" size. I think I was six years old and that feeling of humiliation was present for years.]

Most of the time, I was a good kid. I’d like to go out on a limb right now and even say I was a pretty ingenious kid. For example, one Summer day when I was 7 years old,  I took $3.00 from my bank, had my Mom drive me to the “corner store” where I purchased Jolly Ranchers, which were only 5 cents each because that was when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. When we got home, I took several pieces of paper and have my Mom write on each one of them that I was having a “carnival” at my house the upcoming Saturday and stuck them in every mailbox up and down my street. [I don't believe I was ever questioned about what this "carnival" would entail. If it meant getting me outside instead of glued to a Nancy Drew book, they were probably all for it.] News spread throughout my neighborhood about my “carnival” and word on the street was that a lot of kids were coming. I was stoked!

That Saturday morning, I had my Dad set up a table in our driveway. I filled a bowl with my Jolly Ranchers and placed it on the table. I then took a Dixie Cup and placed it a million feet away on the curb. When kids started arriving, they were told they could do one of three things:

1. Pay me a quarter and I would sing one of two songs- either “The Rainbow Connection” or “The Flying Purple People Eater,” both of which I had recently learned in music class at school.

2. Pay me a quarter to push them around while they sat down on my skateboard.

3. They could toss a quarter into the Dixie Cup. If they made it in, they could pick ONE Jolly Rancher. [you know, the ones that only cost me 5 cents a piece?] If they missed, they got nothing and I kept the quarter.

So, that was my “carnival” and guess what? I made some big bucks AND kept all of my Jolly Ranchers because the kids in my neighborhood were obviously borderline retarded.

Anyway, despite the chub-related overachieverness, the good-kid-ness and overt ingenuity, I made atrociously stupid choices from time-to-time. In fact, I made some choices that most kids don’t make until they are in their teens. Case in point, I smoked a shitload of cigarette butts when I was five years old. I mean, what five year old does that?

And then there was my very first experience with alcohol. In the third grade. My Aunt, who lived across the street from us, was babysitting me at her house on a Friday night. This was a common thing: my cousins were always at my house, or I was at their house. Anyway, my Aunt had plans that night with a friend of hers so technically, my Uncle was to babysit me and my cousin D., who was two years younger than me.

My Aunt’s friend came to her house and the two of them had a glass of wine before going wherever it was they were going. They left the house. My Uncle was a weird guy. He rarely spoke, unless it was to complain. He could always be found in the living room, watching TV or sleeping with the TV on. And that’s what happened that night. He fell asleep, leaving ME [in the 3rd grade] and my cousin [in 1st grade] to babysit ourselves.

I’m not 100% how I decided it would be awesome to drink my Aunt’s wine, but I did decide that. What proceeded next was just totally a mess.

The two of us began drinking wine directly from the bottle. The next thing I remember, we were “hiding” under the kitchen table, playing cards and holding unlit cigarettes in our mouths while guzzling the wine. [I'm only mildly surprised I didn't hire some gigolos to come hang out.]  My Aunt came home and well, everything EXPLODED. I was held responsible since I was older. I mean, the fact that a grown man [my Uncle], was asleep with his hand in a bag of potato chips instead of watching us, didn’t matter. I was the one who got in trouble. BIG trouble.

My actual punishment didn’t come until the next day because I spent the next several hours after being caught, vomiting violently. Apparently, most of the bad choices I made back then culminated with me projectile puking. [I won't go into detail but I once ate 5 jars of homemade pickles from my best friend's basement. We thought it would be "fun". Do you know how badly pickle puke smells?]

Interestingly enough, these bad, bad, BAD choices I made so early in life are probably what kept me on the right track as I became a teen. Had I waited until I was 12 or 13 to experiment with cigarettes or booze, I might have liked them. So really, my poor choices early on are what kept me [mostly] out of trouble later in life.

The only regret I have is that I didn’t take any bong hits when I was 8 years old. If I had, maybe college would have been a smoother ride.