Before you were a journalist ...

My dad was my band teacher. I didn't have a choice. That's just how it went for me and my siblings. I practiced when I had a competition coming up, partly to appease him, but more because I hate losing. Given the choice, I'd have played football in the fall.

 

Guess I can still answer this in the present tense. The usual stuff (academic, band, drama) in high school, a grip-n-grin with Jerry Pournelle (Guest of Honor at our SF convention) in college, some United Fund photos and releases since then. A lot of it's probably still around here somewhere.

Oh, and a local SE wrote some kind words in a recent column regarding a story I asked him to edit. Didn't expect that. I'm a little past the scrapbook stage, but I definitely owe him a beer ...

 

Around 20 percent of the school was in my high school band, Mike. So there wasn't the stigma that gets applied at some places. The football team (many of them, anyway) would go to one competition each fall as a show of support. In fact, the year after I graduated, the starting quarterback was in the band and would play in the halftime show if the game was already pretty well in-hand.

 

High school sports, college acceptance, appointment to a service academy, college sports, college graduation ... actually, it's kind of funny. In 1997 there was a photo in one of the papers in the town where my dad was working of me playing basketball in college, with the correct spelling of my name and everything. Dad, being the parent, bought a print of the photo and framed it for his office.

Other than that, I think the only time I've been in the paper other than byline-wise was when our engagement announcement ran.

 

In fourth grade, I won the city schools chess championship. I made it into the soccer agate three times for GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOals.

 

I always made the local paper for various sporting events.

I was on the front page twice: once for all-league/all area swimming, and once for all-area track.

The track time was awesome because there was a picture of me striding over the last hurdle in front of everyone (our league sucked, and I never won any other invites). Then my parents blew it up and laminated it for my grad party. That was not so cool.

 

I had a softball pic run with the wrong name under my photo ... that sure pissed me off. But it's still in the scrapbook, minus the cutline.

 

That's awesome, dude. The ratio wasn't that high at mine; it used to be back in like 1988. It was always my dream to make it in the police beat, but I just wasn't committed enough.

 

Well, my high school days included 1988, so, there you go. It's probably different today, since block scheduling came about.

 

I don't know how much that had to do with it. Maybe, but I don't have the answer (surprise). Personally, I think it became athletics vs. music vs. free time in my school. You were either involved in the first two or passing time until graduation. I did enjoy my time in class, though. It was a good release of creative energy -- and easy As every marking period.

 

I had a sizable feature penned about me during my senior year of high school. I was in the results page a lot, a few pictures here and there. I won a trivia contest when I was about eight-years-old and got to meet World B. Free. The answer was in there.

 

The only time I appeared in a newspaper "before" I became a journalist was when my grandfather's obituary was published. I was a freshman on the community college student newspaper when my name appeared in a Tony Kornheiser column.

There were two times when my name appeared in print in several newspapers in between my tenures on said student newspaper. When I was president of the college's student government, I was quoted in several newspapers and extensively interviewed by one when the college jacked up its tuition. That paper also mentioned me prominently the next year when the college again raised tuition.