I was 7 years old playing wiffle ball in the back yard. It was sunny, warm, a bit muggy as it tends to be on the east coast. I stood in my short pants throwing the wiffle ball in the air, swinging the bat, and hitting the ball into the side of the house. Mom leans out the upstairs window and yells "Stop that, you are going to break a window!". I yell back "But Mom, a wiffle ball CAN'T break a window" and resume hitting the ball. We all know what happened next... Pretty much says it all. I'm anti-authoritarian, prefer to learn from experience, and am disarmingly mischievous.

With chronological advancement, I've changed to hitting golf balls and tennis balls instead of wiffle balls. I've also improved my analytic skills greatly, so that now I would say "Mom, there's only 1.34% chance that I'm going to break a window". Most of the post-age-7 analytical ability is spent on the chessboard. Oh, there's work too, and copious reading materials, but the battle on the board reigns supreme.

When reading, I have an affinity for character studies. "A Confederacy of Dunces" and "The Tin Drum" are two of my favorite books. And, like Oskar in Gunther Grass' "The Tin Drum", I have a preternatural sense of self-determination. Unlike Oskar, though, I neither willed myself to be 3 ft tall nor to have a hump.

When not reading, I have a profound affinity for chocolate milk.