In the middle of Swanson tv dinners, frozen pizzas and grape Koolaid our mother took us to church on Sunday mornings after reruns of Rawhide and our father saved up for trips to Disney World. We went to baseball games and walked the mall twice a week after dinner in his tiny trailer and watched the Love Boat and Fantasy Island when we were home. I read Nancy Drew and Little Women, my brother consumed X-men comics and Isaac Asimov. He had a job bagging groceries at Albertson’s and I slept my way through junior high. Our mother was taking college courses one at a time and looked at us far too often over the top of her adolescent psychology textbook.

She thought we didn’t notice; but we did.

I was talking to my Mom earlier tonight about what growing up was like for me in FL. I really had the classic 1970s middle class childhood - albeit the "broken-home" and "latchkey kid" version, but still, pretty typical. Growing up has been on my mind while writing this memoir. Most of it is about AK, but first I have to get to AK and I have to give readers some idea of who I - as the narrator- really am. But I'm not the August Burroughs type and I have no interest in detailing every twisted aspect of my life for posterity. I don't know, I was a kid who watched tv, read books and caught waves. And then I was in AK scheduling airplanes and throwing boxes at the cargo guys as they loaded.

How the hell do I know - does anyone know - how they got there from here?

What I do remember is the food I ate and the tv I watched and the beach and the library and 1972 Dodge Dart Swinger that my mother drove with impressive dedication until it just flat blew up. Vinyl interior, no air conditioning and lord - was that car hot! Oh - and it was green. I guess no one could forget something like that.

But as to what motivates us at 22 or 15 or 7, well that is much more of a mystery. And like anyone else I keep having to fight the tendency to fix things - to make me better than I was. Mostly I think I went to AK because I was bored and confused and didn't know what else to do. I wish I had know better who I was back then - it's almost like I was smart at 12, got stupid for twelve or thirteen years and then started figuring stuff out again when I was with the Company. It would have been nice to not have lost it all for those years in between but then again I wouldn't be where I am right now if I hadn't lost my way for awhile.

But still - who wants to remember those moments again?

At the end of four years in college I am framed in two sets of pictures, my brother and I smiling with our father first, and then, safely across the parking lot, with my mother and stepfather. Everyone holds a corner of my oversized diploma, giving it a reverence it did not deserve.

They were all so proud of me; how could I tell them I had learned nothing at all?