Gym Class Hero
The physical education program in the Hamden Public school system was a series of peaks and valleys. The popularity of each activity rested on how much the activity made you sweat while participating. The less you sweat, the less likely it was to affect your appearance for your next class. Since so much of high school was based on looks, everyone tended to enjoy 6 weeks of badminton was followed by another 6 weeks of volleyball. Both of those were indoors and did not involve an arduous amount of moving around. The most popular was ice skating. Since our town’s public rink was on school property, the high school had access to it during the day. The awfulness of walking up all the fo

Smoke if You Got 'em
or How I Got Asthma for Two YearsI was always a healthy kid growing up, so it came as a little bit of a surprise when I developed an asthma related cough in my middle school years. It appeared out of nowhere, but with two parents in the medical field, it was treated to the fullest extent.The effects came and went – occasionally in gym class or while playing flag football after school I would need to catch my breath or begin coughing. There was no time that the symptoms were tested more than on the bus rides to and from school. You see, there were two kids named Mike and Kevin sat in the back and smoked cigarettes. This was a complet

Muddy with a Buddy
In the spring of 2007, my co-worker Ernest told me about a race called Muddy Buddy. The race consisted of two partners alternating between running and biking for a six mile course which was divided into five legs. At the end of each leg there was an obstacle and at the very end of the race was a very long mud pit that you had to crawl through.It sounded fun, so we signed up as a team, complete with a terribly obscure name from Futurama – “Team Scooty Puff Jr”. It didn’t seem like a very hard task, plus with several months to prepare, it would be okay. As the days and weeks ticked by, there was very little training, unless you count riding the bike five blocks to my f

Candy Goggles
I grew up in a small town neighborhood with blocks upon blocks of houses stacked very close to one another. The blocks were long and narrow, roughly fifteen houses by five houses. This meant one thing to a kid - lots of Halloween candy to be had.As you can see, there were many houses. We lived on the left side of Whitney Avenue, on Bedford Avenue, and never crossed to the other side. Growing up, W

The Worst Motorcycle Gang Member
Each year, the Hamden Middle School drama department put on two performances. The first one was a play and the second one was a musical. None of the musicals were popular or even known. The teacher sent away to a company to receive little known scripts. He was always very passionate about them and soon it became a well known rumor that he was writing them himself.After working the light board for the play, I decided to try out for the musical. The only problem was that you had to get on the stage and sing. It didn't matter what, you just had to get up there and do it. If only I had the karaoke confidence I had today I wouldn't have gone up there and choked out a soft voic