Some may remember when they aired the show, Scared Straight, on prime-time national television in the late 1970’s. I remember my parents having my brother and I watch it in our living room. At first Dave and I were horrified because of the build up to it and the fact our parents were so insistent that we watch it. Eventually, though, the horror turned to macabre fascination. My parents were good people, they talked to us about what we were seeing, and I am certain they had the most sincere intentions, but the social experiment that was being conducted didn’t accomplish what it had intended. I feel there was a whole generation of us who had been forced to watch Scared Straight and saw through the farce of hype that the media and that society was throwing at us. Many of us were, a few years later, equally fascinated as we watched the 1984 movie Suburbia. But this time it was our story, it was our message that was being told. That movie scared the adults and parents who watched i
My childhood was not normal. I had many unusual opportunities and life experiences; I grew up on a pseudo-ranch with a cow named hamburger and we lived in a caboose for part of the year. I was fortunate to have a loving family and I was given opportunities for which I am forever grateful. I was curious and sensitive to my own feelings and the feelings of others, a trait that is not common in all young boys. I may not have been the most well-behaved kid but I was careful to try and not hurt anyone, and when I did I felt awful about it and I made amends as best as I could. I was never afraid to tell the truth. This book is a testament to that. I can’t say it was easy - telling the truth never is - but I grew more confident each time I told a story that hurt me in the first telling. Each subsequent story, no matter how painful, became more and more important for me to tell. I didn’t write under an alias, a pen name, to hide my identity. I originally decided to do it because I d