"Well, they were right about one thing..."

My big "To do" list had three things on it. Married with family, own the house, write the book. For about two years I had all that until the divorce fractured the family and cost me my house.

In the end? Highly overrated.

People walk up to me all the time, even last night, and ask, "Seriously, what's it like to write a book?" Or, "You must be SO PROUD!" or something like that, immediately followed by, "So when are you going to do the next one?" My automatic response is usually along the lines of "Why bother writing another when you haven't read the first one yet?" Which usually succeeds in getting them away from me enough to enjoy the rest of my break.

All the REALLY important times, and I mean REALLY important, like the world stops spinning moments in my life, I cannot hope to explain or share with anyone else. Holding each of my children for the first time. The day the book came in the mail. Standing on Little Round Top. Sitting under a shady tree watching the river Avon flow towards the small hamlet of Stratford under a perfect April sky. Being inches away from the Magna Carta. I could write a personal obit 900 pages long and not capture what those meant.

BUT...

The greatest compliment to date I have received came from old man Allan Duits, who walked up to me one night wondering which break I had. After I told him he shook his head. "I was looking for you last break, had a question about football that needed answering." The man was a walking encyclopedia about everything football, baseball and Nascar, and for him to need little old ME to answer a question about the Purple People Eaters was THE honor.

Carve on my tombstone, "People gave up the early out break to have the same break as me," and that's all the obit I need. Does anything else REALLY have to be said?