The Truth As I Experience It

(No gerbils were harmed in the writing of this blog) When I was 8 years old, my family had two gerbils that lived in a cage just outside my bedroom. They were an entertaining pair and so it was quite sad when we discovered that one of them had passed away while I was at school. It wasn't long before my parents felt really sorry for the cute little gerbil that remained behind, friendless and alone. One might think the obvious solution was to buy the gerbil a new friend, but my parents had something else in mind. "We are going to set him free," they announced with excitement to the sad and confused faces of their three kids. Surely mom and dad knew what was best, so we all skipped along behind the cage as it was carried outside to the wooded surroundings of our backyard. With appropriate drum roll and circus ringmaster flair, my father announced the opening of the cage door with a dramatic flip of the latch. Although we had expected an equally dramatic gerbil, lau...

When I was 16 years old I went to Lake Powell, Arizona with my family and good friend named Derek. My parents had rented a houseboat for a few days out on the water, as well as a Jet Ski for joyriding. Being 16 means it wasn't long before Derek and I were challenging each other for who could do crazier tricks on the Jet Ski, which just so happened to catch the eye of several young women on a boat floating nearby. They asked if they could take turns riding on the back, with Derek and I also taking turns as the driver. With testosterone high and wisdom low, it was only fitting that I wound up crashing backwards into an embankment at 20 miles an hour, flinging my pretty young passenger across the sand like a gymnast in the final tumbling pass of a floor routine sure to land her Olympic gold. Funny?     No!      Terrifying?   Yes!!! In the haze of smoke, sand & humiliation,  I surveyed my surroundings to discover one destroyed Jet Ski ...