The following stories represent the culmination of thousands of research hours and multitudinous in-depth interviews woven together with the memories of an unremarkable boy named Tommy whose single claim to fame is his rather remarkable ability to make friends and maintain friendships. To provide complete transparency, the reader should know that Tommy’s mother often referred to her son as an “exaggerator.”
Although Tommy could run fast and jump high a faint heart murmur, detected during a routine physical exam, prevented him from playing football at Eliot Junior High School in 1962. Sitting in the bleachers with the girls, geeks and smart guys, Tommy experienced a life-altering revelation… While most of the male members of the senior class were getting their asses kicked on the football field, Tommy never broke a sweat and was free to work on his rather complicated hair style, his biceps and his smooth talk. “This might be a good thing,” he thought to himself.
With his athletic career in near-permanent abeyance, Tommy was now free to concentrate on his dream of becoming a Rocket Scientist. To his utter dismay, Tommy’s future plans were derailed when he was informed by his one-legged, bald & deaf school counselor, Mr. Malcolm Clement, that becoming a Rocket Scientist required proficiency in mathematics.
His career options rapidly dwindling, Tommy reevaluated his life’s trajectory and decided to become a Modern-Day Renaissance Man. His path was now clear, he would totally devote himself to poetry, art, music, girls and beer.
Sixty years and many wives later, Tommy would come to realize that his life had been a seemingly endless series of “starts and stops” but, although he had not achieved fame as a Rocket Scientist or Modern-Day Renaissance Man, he could boast that he had made friends with a boatload of interesting folks along the way.
Please “strap-on & strap in”, and enjoy your journey into a world inhabited by HEROES, VILLAINS, a mildly demented CHOIRBOY and a carefully selected assemblage of “PASADENA PEOPLE…”
