See Me Squeegee

What I’m about to write shouldn’t matter.  Terrorist attacks are terrorist attacks and, actually, tragedies are tragedies.  Whether it’s a mall or a bus or the World Trade Center or the finish line of the Boston Marathon; whether it’s a bomb or an electrical problem or a heart attack…tragedies are tragedies.  But…Boston.  Boston sticks with me two weeks later and it will for years.

Boston was an attack on Boston, of course.  And David Ortiz and Paul Pierce and even Neil Diamond stood up.  And Boston was an attack on America, and Barack Obama attended the funerals and we sat riveted as a country as the bombers were apprehended.  Boston hit me for both reasons – I love the city, I obviously love America – but it hits another of my communities deeply.  The Boston bombings hit the Boston Marathon, my favorite race, my most prized accomplishment, and somewhat ironically the Mecca of running.  And since I’ve relived Boston dozens of times in the last two weeks, here are a few stories about what Boston means.

Boston

Boston is the oldest and most prestigious marathon in the U.S.  It’s the oldest continually-run marathon in the world (Athens took about a 2,450-year break).  And you need to either qualify or raise a bunch of money for charity.  It’s the gold standard for amateur runners – if you’re wearing a Boston Marathon jacket in the running community you’re big-time.  You wear Boston on your sleeve; if you’re trying to qualify, everyone knows because you’re going nuts trying to do it.  If you’re qualified, you’re bona fide (rhyme intentional) – every local running store or track club has a “Boston Bound” group, a sendoff meeting or team photo or t-shirt.  I’ve run a lot of big-city marathons – Chicago, New York, Cincinnati, Detroit, Los Angeles – and none compares to Boston.  Boston is…it’s Boston.

Dad

When I was a kid, my dad really got into running.  He ran the New York City Marathon, the Chicago Marathon, the Detroit Marathon… I’d ride my bike next to him while he ran on Saturdays in the summer; in the winter, my brother and I would jump around on the high jump mats at the Track & Tennis Building at U of M while he ran laps, and then we’d hold his feet down while he did situps.  And every April we watched the Boston Marathon on tape – he’d record it while he worked on Patriots Day (only a New England holiday) and we’d watch it that weekend.  That course was magic…I knew the Hopkinton start, the Wellelsey Scream Tunnel, the Newton Hills, the Boylston finish.

And so when I was a senior in high school and my dad finally qualified for Boston I understood – I thought I was a legit athlete, captain of the swim  team and such – and it was a huge accomplishment for Dad.  But I didn’t really know.

He qualified in November, and around New Year’s we took a family ski trip.  On the last day, on the last run, Dad took a spill.  We made it to the lift in time for one more but he  called it quits – a huge sign in retrospect – and we took one more run while he settled in.  He drove home with ice on his leg and got back to Boston training.  The race was in April, after all.  And so he ran into February – Tuesday night speedwork, weekend long runs into the 14-15 mile range  – for a full six weeks before he finally figured the enduring pain in his leg was something worth talking to a doctor about.

So he went to the doctor, got an x-ray and…it was broken.

Yep, broken.

That’s the power of Boston.  My father ran – and ran hard: speedwork, distance runs – for six weeks on a broken leg, all because nothing was keeping him from Boston.  That’s Boston.

Dad didn’t run Boston that year; he wrote a letter to the Boston Athletic Association and they gave him a deferral.  When he did run it I was in college and tracked him online while the race was broadcast on ESPN.  When he returned home, his friends had toilet-papered the house and planted a sign in the yard with his name and finishing time.   Grownups.  That’s Boston.

Me

I hit the 20-mile mark of the Toledo (Ohio) Glass City Marathon about ten seconds ahead of my Boston Qualifier pace.  The only problem – a mile earlier I was closer to 25 seconds ahead of pace.  It was all falling down.  This was my sixth marathon, the first time I had ever seriously thought I’d qualify for Boston.  I had been putting in epic work – the South Beach Diet had gotten me down to 140 pounds, I had been getting 11-12 mile track workouts in every Tuesday night to add to my 15-20s on weekends, I was all over crosstraining with situps and pushups and biking and whatever else.  Boston was an obsession – once I got within 9 minutes of the qualifying time that was all I thought about.

I had Sam Adams and Boston Creme doughnuts in a cooler; my dad was there and so was the girl I thought was the greatest in the world at the time, all supporting me and there to share in the glory of a BQ (which every runner knows as the initials for Boston Qualifier).

And it didn’t happen.  I led the race at one point, which should have told me I was being dumb.  I needed a 3:10 – 7:15 miles – and I was on that pace for almost the whole thing, but I ran under pace too long…I left too much out there and when I lost about a minute per mile for the last six I still set my personal best time and placed in my age group.  But it was devastating.  I pouted through the awards ceremony and the next couple weeks.  In my mind you only got one shot every few months…the recovery from going all out on a marathon took a while.  But I had already planned to pace said world’s-most-wonderful-girl to her BQ a few weeks later, so when she bailed out of that race and I had one more shot at Boston I wouldn’t tell anyone and I wouldn’t admit it to myself, but by the time I toed the start line the dream of Boston consumed me.  I was ready to suffer.

My mom cried when I told her I had qualified.  My dad didn’t answer the call – when he called back ten minutes later he said something like “either things went horribly wrong or incredibly right, but this is too early for you to be calling me after this race”.  I ran 25.2 great miles and one excruciating one – not that it hurt (it didn’t) but that I knew I had it unless I cramped, pulled a muscle, fell down…  And, shoot, I’m a regular guy so the grandiosity isn’t really there, but I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier than crossing that finish line with a qualifying time.  Boston, man. Boston.

Boston

The cruel punishment of qualifying for Boston is that you, you know, have to run Boston.  It’s an epically tough course that only real runners understand. The net elevation is negative – how hard could it be?  But Boston ruins your legs.  It’s an amazing course – a slight downhill out of Hopkinton through Ashland and Natick into Wellesley.  The “Scream Tunnel” in Wellesley where the all-women’s college makes you feel like McCartney or Timberlake for a full mile and you have no choice but to lift your knees and push the pace.  But then you hit Newton, Hell’s Alley, and Heartbreak  Hill.  The downhills and the pace you tried to push just trash your legs; the crowd support is amazing but it makes you think you’re invincible when reality is you’re not…you pay for it in Newton and Brookline.  But you enjoy it too.

Before you get to that point you take the bus from Boston Common to Hopkinton – a 45-minute trek that reminds you just how long the race really is.  You bond with fellow runners, you hang out at Athlete’s Village, you hear war stories from everyone’s qualifier, you realize you’re running – to quote Big Papi – foocking Boston!!!!!.

So when you hit Boylston, that finish line that America now knows as synonymous with Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma City, World Trade – you’ve run 26 miles hoping to get to that point and you’re running .2 miles that you hope will never end.  That turn from Hereford Street to Boylston Street is a dream come true – you see the finish line, the Boston badging, the crowds…it’s everything you worked for.  After Boston I listen to that NCAA Tournament closing song “One Shining Moment” and, yeah, I tear up a little…”and all those years, no one knows, just how hard you worked, but now it shoooows….”.

The finish line at Boston isn’t the finish line of a marathon.  It’s the finish line of several marathons.  You have to have an epic marathon to even get to the start line of Boston.  The finish line of Boston is the finish line of your dreams if you’re a runner. And that’s why the Boston attacks hurt even more, that’s why the running community just keeps running to cope.  The Boston Marathon finish line , yes, is a mass collection of people and I guess a good target for terrorists.  But it’s more than that – it’s the culmination of dreams, a place you suffer over and over to get to.  And that’s why it’s that-much-more devastating to me that it’s a nightmare for so many, a place of real suffering and not self-inflicted “suffering”.

I don’t know how to close this.  I’m still shell-shocked from Boston.  The last time I was in Boston, a business trip last December, I had about four hours to kill before I had to get to Logan to catch my flight.  I walked a little Freedom Trail, got some chowdah at Fanieul Hall, strolled around Fenway, and made sure I walked the finish line.  That’s Boston to me.  That attack hit America, it hit Boston, and it hit athletes everywhere.  For runners, that’s not just one finish line, it’s the finish line.  It crushes me that it’s the not just the greatest finish line of my life, it’s the actual finish line of three people’s lives.

A few months ago I was at a bar in Manhattan Beach in an interesting situation.  I was there with my buddy Tyler, with whom I was facing off in fantasy football that week; our friend Dave, who played wide receiver in the NFL for six seasons; Dave’s girlfriend Annaliese, whose brother also plays in the NFL; and their friend Steve, a SportsCenter anchor on ESPN.  Tyler and I were talking all kinds of fantasy football trash, which was funny because we were sitting with people who are around the actual NFL all the time and we had to explain to them what we meant.  So then the NFLers turned it on us, asking “why do you care about sports?”.  They had the easy answer – it made them and people around them rich (which wasn’t their only answer, but a nice trump card they had).  For Tyler, Steve, and me?  They weren’t going to be easily impressed.  So I’ve been thinking about it and I’m more convinced than ever that sports do matter.  Here’s why:

Sports Unites

We’re a nation divided, a people divided.  Politics, religion, money, aspiration – in many ways, the more people around you the more you’re alone, as in New York and LA it’s not at all uncommon to not know your neighbors or say hello when you pass them on the street.  We’re segmented in entertainment with hundreds of channels designed to segment us into small slices of marketing goodness, and we walk around as (i)Pods the way Steve Jobs intended, earbuds in so that we walk to the beat of our own personal soundtrack out of tune with others’.

But sports?  Sports makes us all wear the same color shirts and fight traffic to be together.  Sports gets us up at the crack of dawn to park our cars on a grassy field and share beers and barbecues.  Sports packs us into a bar and forces us to high five and hug strangers.  Sports lets us say “Roll Tide” or “Go Blue” to people we see on the street and really mean it, genuinely smiling and taking pride in our collective happiness.  Sports unites.

When I was six, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series.  I was old enough to watch games on TV, follow along when I got to go to a game or two a year with my dad, read the box score in the paper.  I knew it was special, but when we won?  Neighbors came to the door hooting and hollering and spraying beer.  We hopped in someone’s car and drove the mile or so to downtown Plymouth and the town square, and the whole town was out, hugging, chanting, smiling…  That’s when I started to see the power of sports – the whole town was out, everyone was happy, sports had united.

This past couple weeks, Michigan’s basketball team made a deep run in the NCAA Tournament, and I was reminded again of that unifying power of sports.  As we got deeper and deeper into the tournament, I got more and more calls, texts, emails from friends from long ago – people I hadn’t talked to in months and people I hadn’t talked to in years.  And maybe it’s a sad commentary that we *needed* sports to bring us back together, but then again that’s the world.  We become divided whether by geography or new priorities or schedules.  Sports unites us.

And what’s most fascinating to me is that sports unites people regardless of their rooting interest.  So many of the calls and texts I got this week were from fans of other teams – they didn’t necessarily care that Michigan was in the finals, but they knew that I did and they understood.  My friend Hallie is a huge Alabama fan; we don’t work together anymore, we have totally different schedules and live in different parts of LA, but when Alabama has big games she always invites me over because she knows I understand – I’m not really rooting for Alabama (who roots for the house in blackjack or the killer in horror movies?) but I’m rooting for her to be happy because I know what it’s like to have a team on the verge like that.  Sports fans get sports fans.

Sports is the ultimate conversation starter – if you see someone in their team gear it’s a natural opener, either “congratulations” or “bummer about that game” or “good luck tonight”.  It’s something we all have in common – if LeBron James scores 50 points over the weekend, it’s noteworthy enough that we can all talk about it on Monday; if the Lakers sneak into the playoffs, it’s a conversation whether you love them or hate them.  A guy who works for us in Boston wrote to me the other day – as part of our half-business, half-basketball email chain – that “I can’t count how many people I know that I wouldn’t know if we didn’t have sports in common”, and I agree.  Sports isn’t just a conversation starter, it’s a natural reason to invite people over or out to the bar for a game.  In a way it’s lowest common denominator – it’s tough to get people excited about an activity you researched or dreamed up, but if you invite people to watch a game at the bar?  You’ll get enough turnout and probably know some other people there, anyway, that you’re bound to have a good time.

Living in Los Angeles, I’ve noticed that certain cities have that extra level of civic pride and brotherhood, and sports is invariably the reason – Boston people are thrilled to see other Boston people; I wear my Detroit Tigers hat walking down the beach and call it “the friendmaker” since someone from back home is bound to say say something and strike up a conversation.  Sports unites us.  Sports matter.

Sports Matter Because They Don’t Matter

You know why sports are such a good conversation starter?  In large part because they’re more or less trivial – they’re something we care about while all the while we know it’s not real life.  You can’t casually ask someone “how’s your marriage?” or “how’s your retirement portfolio?” the same way you can ask “how about those Lions?”.  Sports matter because we care about them even though they don’t matter – they’re perfect for conversation, perfect for feeling those artificial highs and lows to help balance out the real nerves, fears, and pains of whatever may ail you.  Sports are just trivial enough to matter.

Think of it like this – we’re animals.  We thrive on adrenaline, we’ve evolved to be active, raise our heart rates, let emotion take over and feel highs, lows, and everything in between. But we’ve created a world where that doesn’t happen regularly – most of us aren’t worried at all about our next meal the way our ancestors were.  The day to day of your job or relationship doesn’t really change – there are milestones but they’re far apart.  So look at humanity – we look to drugs, alcohol, manufactured drama, anything to feel highs and lows the way nature intended.  And then there are sports – sports allow us to feel that adrenaline, gearing up for a big game as though we’re narrowing in on a survival hunt; narrowly escaping defeat and being able to feel the stress pour off of us. All exhaling “oohhh” in unison when a big shot just misses the net.  Sports is just trivial enough to let us do all of that – to really feel – without much consequence.  As we’ve created a world in which we sit at desks and answer phones and type on keyboards, sports lets us get that moment to moment surge of anxiety and adrenaline.

Sports Inspires

The caveat to “sports doesn’t matter” is “well, neither do the Kardashians or  anything on HBO”.  But the difference is that sports *is* real – it’s people pushing past their limits, it’s the human body achieving new heights.  The adrenaline we get from sports can be channeled – into a better workout, into going after a goal, into putting everything you have into whatever confronts you.  After Trey Burke’s jumper against Kansas two weeks ago, I ended up on the Venice Beach basketball courts shooting threes – our crew was inspired by the game and wanted to play.  Lance Armstrong inspired me to buy a road bike, which led to Ironman triathlons.  And athletes everywhere inspire kids to dream big and patients to fight hard.  Sports has the capacity to not just unite us, but involve us – it’s people like us (but then again not that much like us) doing amazing things, a reminder that we all have something amazing inside us.  Sports does that in a way that scripted entertainment just can’t.

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So sports does matter (and sidenote – I’m using “sports” as singular here…not entirely sure why but it felt right when I started writing.  Sorry, grammar nerds!).  When I was a kid I was known among the family for writing great thank-you notes after Christmas and birthdays, but my formula was pretty easy – know where my relatives lived and then find something that mattered to them to comment on or ask about.  And it was usually sports.  When my aunt and uncle lived in Dallas, it was the Cowboys. My grandparents were in Chicago – I’d ask about the Bulls.  Sports was an easy way to relate to the world; even now, it’s hard to truly know someone, as we all have the public “me” we show to the world and the internal dialogue of what really matters to us but that we may not want everyone (or anyone) to know.  Sports is that direct route to show someone you care about something that’s important to them – when a friend says “Go Blue”, shoot, it’s not that far off from “I love you” or at least “I care about you and want you to experience happiness today”.  And, readers, same to you.  Go Blue.

April 4, 2013.  The day of the return.

On this day, 1993, I watched from a hospital bed, gauze coating my ears and nose.  Fabs vs. Tar Heels, and it wasn’t Chris’s TO that did us in.  It was Donald Williams going straight up insane from three, it was Carolina grabbing rebounds, it was us rimming out jumpers…but it was C-Webb’s TO when my dad patted me on the shoulder and said “I have to work tomorrow”.  And then it was SportsCenter for the next 10 hours.  My nurses thought they were doing me – a huge sports fan at age 13 – a favor by leaving it on.  But my breathing tube crimped when I rolled, so I didn’t sleep more than a few minutes at a time that night.  So while I saw Webber’s timeout 100+ times that night, I also saw Williams dropping threes, Montross grabbing boards, George Lynch with putbacks all night.

And my saving grace?  The Fab Five were sophomores.  I was a kid.  We’d be back.  But we haven’t been…until tonight.

Now?  I’m a grown-ass-man.  The team I loved…it took some hard times.  I got to college and we had some talent, but it didn’t click.  We won the NIT, but… I mean.  We won the inaugural Big Ten Tournament, but then dropped out in the second round to Baron Davis and UCLA.  And that was it…  It was almost ten years before we got back in the tournament.  And a goddamn lifetime until tonight, back in the finals.   And we were soclose.

This isn’t a game recap.  This isn’t sour grapes.  This isn’t a plea for some tiny place in history.  This is just my story as a Michigan basketball fan who loved the hell out of the last season and wants to put it in perspective for posterity.  This is for Jalen, Juwan, Chris, Jimmy and Ray.  The same it’s for Glen, Loy, Terry, Mike, and Rumeal.  And it’s for Trey, Nik, Spike, Glenn, Tim, Mitch, Jordan, Caris, Jon and the gang.  And it’s for Jason McMann, Ryan Stayton, Adam Lilling, Heather Discher, Joe Johnson, Jeff Yuille, Jeff Williams…the people who never gave up on this team and who hurt tonight in the aftermath of being right there.

My story as a Michigan fan:

I remember losing to Villanova in 1985.  Not that vividly, but I knew Michigan was a one seed, and that was the state I lived in in a sport I cared about.  I was six.  We lost, it was a huge deal, I got over it.

I remember Gary Grant, Antoine Joubert, Roy Tarpley…   On certain Saturdays my dad would take me and my brother to Ann Arbor and he’d get a haircut and let us play on the high jump mats at the Track & Tennis Building while he ran laps – he’s my marathon/triathlon inspiration – and we’d get a sip of Gatorade at the end.  And on those Saturdays when Michigan was playing a tomato can opponent his barber – Bill from State Street Barbershop at State & Packard – would have free upper level tickets to those games.  I loved those games.

I remember picking Michigan in my first bracket and keeping up that tradition.  I loved that team  – the giant M to start the word “Michigan” on their jerseys, the big games with Indiana and Michigan State, the fact that the name on the jersey was the same as the state I lived in… So I picked them against seeding, against reason, against logic.

But then the coach quit.  Days before the 1989 tournament.  Bill Frieder got more money somewhere else, and the football coach who was now the Athletic Director said those famous words that spoke like crazy to a ten year old: “A Michigan Man will coach Michigan”.  And Michigan went on a run, but not before a standoff at the Galvin household.  My father had grown up in Jersey and gotten a masters degree at Seton Hall – he’s now going balance 30 years later with a masters at Michigan – and so he and I butted heads over the ’89 final, but Michigan won its only title to date, 80-79 on some Rumeal Robinson free throws.  As it turns out…the foul was questionable and Rumeal’s character was more than that (he’s in prison for stealing from his own grandmother).  But I was hooked.

And then…

After a couple tough years getting knocked out by JR Reid’s Carolina teams and the team-of-destiny from Loyola Marymount after Hank Gathers’ death, the Fab Five arrived.

Jalen, Juwan, Jimmy, Chris Ray.

The team that I thought only defined my small generation of kids from Michigan but who defined so much more.  The baggy shorts, the black shoes and socks, the bald heads.  MIA might get credit for “no one on the corner got swagger like us” but she’s ripping off the Fab Five.  No one in history had swagger like them.  And I lived a half-hour away as a middle-schooler.  My dad had season tickets – I went to a couple games a year…he split them with a neighbor and the two of them went to all the big games together – and every kid I knew had the gear.  That team was transcendent.  I watched the coming out party against Duke over a TV dinner and a babysitter.  I watched the “Shock the World” Final Four game as a babysitter down the street, and if those kids had set the house on fire I wouldn’t have known or cared.  I was hooked.

A few years later I lived out my dream of going to Michigan and immediately bought season basketball tickets.  I had tickets with several friends – at least 7-10 of us – and we had to sit up in the upper bowl.  During the fall of our freshman year, Robert  Traylor broke a backboard with a dunk. The next day I flew to Florida to meet my family for Thanksgiving at Disney World.  They knew all about the dunk…it had been national news.  That team underachieved and went to the NIT…but then won it.  We were still relevant and building.  But then…

Trouble was brewing.  A car accident the year before had brought out some legal eyes: the car was too expensive for the driver, Maurice Taylor (my least favorite human being of my lifetime…good player, awful human) and the recruit inside, Mateen Cleaves, would come to haunt us.  The coach was fired, the team went to the NCAA tournament the next year…but that was the last time for a decade.

Now…we may well have deserved some punishment, but to date I’ve seen a lot of NCAA probation for less.  Ohio State football, USC football, Auburn and Cam Newton – it’s been wild.  But Michigan…I was naive but it was over for ten years as it turns out.  The coach was fired, the program went on a “fact finding” self-imposed probation, and the uncertainty and lack of coaching decimated the program.  My junior year was awful but my senior year we got a taste of glory.  With now LA-Clipper Jamal Crawford leading a new freshman class we went 13-1 and took #1 Duke to the limit…before Jamal was suspended for “suspicion of benefits” (which turned out to be a pretty common violation) for the rest of the season, right before the Michigan State game.  State blew us out and went on to win the championship.

During that time, I saw the temporarily-declining program and the ascending program up the road in Lansing and decided to do something.  I started writing a newsletter at basketball games, called “The Full Court Press” (a step up from the Half Court Press , the newsletter from the Izzone at Michigan State).  I kept it up two seasons and people caught on – I was the “voice” of the newly-founded student section, nomenclatured by the t-shirts distributed among us that said “Maize Rage”.  By that point, my crew of several friends in the student section had eroded to a few people in my graduating class – many times it was me and a handful of new friends, among them Jason McMann, Ryan Stayton, Heather Dichter, and maybe 2-3 others – representing the senior class.  It was certainly less than a dozen of us.

But we persevered.  The Athletic Department was reading my newsletter and I got hired along with the new coach, Tommy Amaker.  I was in charge of generating student spirit; for that, a few years later with the advent of the movie “Old School”, students started referring to me as “The Godfather”.  Someday here I’ll post my alternate lyrics to the Jay Z track “H to the Izzo” – “L (loss” to the Izzo (MSU’s coach)”.  We created a legit student organization, one that exists year-round outside of basketball tickets and games.  I’ve gotten teary-eyed when I’ve seen folks like Denard Robinson throw on a  Maize Rage shirt.  But for several years…that organization chased some terrible teams.

It’s late, it’s postgame (our national championship loss to Louisville) and I’m rambling, but what it comes down to is this: that was more than ten years ago.  Since then I’ve made good friends in grad school and started a local business with a guy, Joe, who around the same time I was an alum helping out the Maize Rage created a petition to get Rick Pitino, the coach who beat us tonight, to coach Michigan (Rick accepted, then reneged, but Joey got to talk to him on his cell phone which is pretty sweet).  I’ve sen Michigan finally beat Michigan State again, and do it a few times in a row…all  coming long after that day that Jason McMann and I painted our faces to watch us lose by 51 points at MSU.  I’ve lived a lifetime with this team.

I lived a full lifetime with this team this past week, from Trey Burke’s jumper to tie Kansas after we were down 10 with under 2 to go, to the dominance of Florida, to the win over Syracuse, to the first half dominance of Louisville to tonight’s loss.  I’ve lived multiple lifetimes with this team, many in the past couple weeks and many more over the last 25 years.

What does it all mean?  I’m trying to sort it out, but Michigan basketball has been a fixture in my life and it’s taught me that things may seem easy but they’re never easy; it’s taught me that the true believers – all the real MFers – are few and far between but worth holding onto and staying in touch with. And it’s given me a hell of a ride the last three weeks.

When the Fab Five went down by 19 to UCLA in 1993, my brother, sister, and I tried to rally the team by doing somersaults off the couch in my parents’ basement. Michigan came back to win that game and get to the national final, the aforementioned Webber TO game.  All tournament long, 20 years later, my siblings and I responded to dire situations by texting each other the word “somersaults”. And tonight I did somersaults on the corner of Wilshire and 11th in Santa Monica, CA, trying to rally the team.  Didn’t work this time, but it proves that Michigan basketball runs deep, and I appreciate the ride.

Thank you to Trey, Mitch, Tim, Spike, Nick, Glenn, Jordan, Caris and the  gang for giving us hope.  Thank you to those who have believed the last 20 years when believing was rough.  And thank you to sports fans everywhere for giving this stuff meaning.

We On.  We weren’t for a long time but we so on right now and one setback won’t change that.  Last time we got thisclose  I suffered the rest of the night in a hospital bed.  This time I suffer as an adult, blogging to avoid the nightmares that will come from closing my eyes and reliving.  But it’s been a heck of a ride.  Go Blue.  We On.