The Car Wreck

I don’t recall exactly how or when I met Shawn and Dave.  I just seem to remember them hanging out around backstage during play rehearsals and near the sidelines at football practices.  They weren’t in the plays and didn’t play football, mind you.  They were just there, and eventually I began spending more and more time with them.  They weren’t bad guys, really – I’d call them nothing worse than low-grade knuckleheads – but hanging out with those two brought me closer to real trouble than anything else I did growing up.

I had my first beer with them.  A Bud Ice on a cold March night when we were in the eighth grade.  Vile stuff, which I choked down while pretending I really liked the taste.  Many more followed in the next year.  Getting the beer was easy.  Shawn’s mom managed a convenience store and the three of us would stop in while she was working.  While Shawn would distract her with some invented problem, Dave and I would swipe a case from the cooler and sneak out the back.

There was an elementary school nearby that you could get up on the roof of pretty easily, and we’d drink up there while looking at the stars and listening to Metallica or Iron Maiden or something while never thinking all that much about the ethics of theft, underage drinking and trespassing on school property.  When I’d come home the next morning and my folks would ask me how my sleepover went I’d tell them that nothing really happened.  And I actually believed it.  We never really felt like we were raising any kind of hell.  We figured that all of the fourteen year-olds were out drinking stolen beer on rooftops somewhere.

The beerfests – maybe one or two a month – continued until April of my freshman year.  My family was moving to another town that month, so the parties were going to end, at least for me.  My sendoff was one final sleepover at Shawn’s house, which included one final stop by the convenience store.  Unlike previous affairs we had another kid with us, Jeff, who was basically the same brand of knucklehead as Shawn, Dave and me.  This time it was going to be a late night outing, so rather than going straight to the school after snagging our beer, we hid it in Shawn’s garage and hung out in the basement watching TV until we knew his dad was asleep.  It was just after midnight when we grabbed our stash and slipped out of the house and down the road to the school.

The four of us each had three beers, killing the 12 pack we had ripped off.  After a few minutes of staring at the spring stars, a beat up Chevy Chevette squealed into the parking lot and came to a stop.  Behind the wheel was a kid named Scott.  We knew him, but not well.  What we did know was that Scott had failed at least two grades and was the only person in our ninth grade class with a driver's license, which he obtained barely a week before.

Scott climbed up to see us, saw that we were out of beer, and suggested that we get some more.  We thought that was a great idea, but another trip to Shawn’s mother's store wasn't an option seeing as we were all supposed to be back home asleep.  Scott claimed he knew a place where he could get some, so the five of us piled into his Chevette and drove off into the night.

Though Scott hadn't had anything to drink that night, getting into the car with him wasn't the smartest thing we had ever done.  We all liked him well enough, but he wasn't a bright kid, and after a mile or two in his car, we realized he wasn't a good driver.  The trip to the store was fairly terrifying, but we somehow made it.  After a couple minutes inside, Scott came out with a case of Budweiser, and we were off again.

Scott’s driving was no better coming back than it was heading out.  Two miles from home he took a sharp curve too fast, the front wheels went off the road onto the right shoulder, he over-corrected left, and the car flipped over.

I was sitting in the back seat directly behind the driver.  As we began to tumble I reached out for the headrest in front of me and held on.  Everything began to move in slow motion and take place a step or two removed from immediate reality.  The sound of the roof hitting the pavement was nothing more than a distant and muffled thump to me.  When I noticed that my feet were above my head, it was much like you might notice when some clouds moved in on an otherwise pleasant afternoon.  “That’s strange,” I thought.  “This was not at all what I was expecting.  The car should be proceeding upright, and yet it’s not.  Hmm.”

Just as I was about to turn to my right and ask Shawn what he felt about this most curious turn of events, the car stooped flipping and came to rest upside down in the middle of the road.  Real time and my appreciation for the gravity of my circumstances returned as soon as the car stopped.  I instinctively reached for the door handle next to me, opened it, rolled out, realized that I was laying in broken glass and sprang to my feet.  My heart was racing, but a quick self-examination confirmed that I was not bleeding and that all of my  parts were where they were supposed to be.  I didn't even get a scratch.  Soon Shawn, Dave and Scott appeared, and with the exception of small bloody scratch to Dave’s cheek, none of them were hurt either.

Jeff wasn't as lucky.  Sitting in the passenger seat with the window open, he had been partially thrown out of the car as it flipped and came to rest half in and half out, seemingly pinned by the collapsed passenger door.  He was conscious, but the back of his head was bleeding badly and his hands were shredded due to the impact with the asphalt.

As we ran to his side, he seemed stunned and non-responsive.  Then, in an instant, he thrust himself out from under the door and leapt to his feet, shouting that he smelled gasoline, though none of the rest of us did.  He paced around for five or ten seconds before he noticed his hands and felt the blood running down the back of his head, at which point he crouched to his knees and started breathing in and out slowly and deeply.

As the Chevette lay on its back with its rear wheels still spinning, four shocked teenagers paced about, and twenty four cans of beer littered the road.  Within a minute or two a sheriff's deputy rolled onto the scene, lights flashing.  Shawn, his priorities not exactly in order, ran to the beer cans and began pitching them off the side of the road and into a ditch when he saw the deputy, apparently believing that being caught with some beer was our most serious concern at the moment.  Maybe the deputy’s priorities were screwed up too, because rather than rush into the scene to see if everyone was OK, he shined his spotlight on Shawn and yelled at him to quit tossing cans.  Once he saw bloody Jeff he left Shawn alone, but not before ordering him to go and pick up the cans he had already thrown down into the ditch.

An ambulance soon arrived.  They looked Jeff over and found that his injuries weren’t anywhere near as bad as they looked.  His hands were a mess, but the head injury, though bloody, was fairly superficial.  Rather than put him on a stretcher or anything, he climbed into the ambulance himself and sat down when they took him away.

A couple more deputies showed up.  Scott was ushered away from the rest of us to take a sobriety test, which he passed.  He was still taken away though, for paperwork, to have his parents called and to do whatever else they do to sixteen year-old drivers who flip cars at 2 A.M.

Shawn, Dave and I sat in the back of the first deputy’s cruiser as they dealt with Jeff and Scott.  Eventually the deputy came back and asked us to tell him what happened.  I did most of the talking, giving him as much of the truth as I felt he needed (i.e. I didn’t think he needed to know that we had been drinking up on the school roof before everything went down).  Then the deputy said something quite unexpected:

“You boys got somewhere to be?”

We nodded.

“Then y'all best git there,” he said.

He didn't need to tell us twice.  We ran off on foot, covering the two miles back to Shawn’s house in what seemed like a minute.  After sneaking back into the house undetected, we crawled into sleeping bags on his basement floor and eventually managed to get to sleep.

We woke up the next morning and had breakfast with Shawn’s parents, who somehow didn't notice Jeff's absence.  After ten minutes of wondering if we had truly gotten away with it, the phone rang and the jig was up.  It was my mom.  Jeff's mother had called her once she realized that there were other kids in the wreck besides her son.  To say that my mom was angry and hysterical would be something of an understatement.  I didn't help matters when I calmly asked if we could discuss all of this later, seeing as Shawn, Dave and I had plans to go bowling that morning.  There would be no bowling.

Everyone's parents were at Shawn’s house within an hour taking turns yelling at the three of us.  Dave more or less saved our butts when he reminded everyone that the sheriff's deputy just let us go like he did.  In an instant all of the grownups’ ire was off us for being dumbasses and onto the sheriff’s office for being outrageously negligent.  Sitting here more than twenty years later I can’t remember what, if anything, happened as a result of all of that.  I mean, I have to think that someone’s parents complained, but no one ever asked me to go on the record about anything.  Maybe our parents just let it drop to save us some sort of charge related to the beer all over the road.  I have no idea.  At any rate, by the time our parents' attention was turned back to us, their anger had subsided and was replaced by relief that we weren't hurt.

My mom and dad took me home, constantly watching me as we drove, wondering why I wasn't nervous to be in a car so soon after being in an accident like that.  Not quite sure how to react when I told them I was fine, they eventually settled on trying to convince me how terrified and damaged I should truly be.  Later that day they took me to the hospital to visit Jeff, who had been kept for observation.  If they intended this to be a sobering experience, it backfired massively when Jeff, seeing me come in the door, smiled broadly, gave me a bandage-covered high five, and said “Dude!  How cool was it that we walked away from that shit?!”

By that evening I was back to normal activities:  watching an Atlanta Braves game while shooting stuff on my Commodore 64.  I think such normalcy must have pissed my parents off something fierce, because it was only then that they came into my room to tell me that I was grounded.  Still, it was a fairly empty gesture given that six days later we would be moving to a different town where I knew no one and would have nothing to do anyway.  In light of this, I think my response to the grounding was “um, OK, whatever.  Is that it?”  I really wanted to get back to the ballgame.  I’m surprised my parents didn’t give up with the constructive discipline and just smack the living shit out of me.

It would be several years until I would truly appreciate how idiotic we had been and how lucky we were to still be alive.  Hell, if anything the wreck made things worse for a while in that it gave me a vague sense of indestructibility that lasted until well after I got my own driver’s license a year later.  I sometimes marvel that I got out of my teens alive.

They were great guys and all, but if I hadn’t moved away from Shawn and Dave, I might not have.

My Christmas List

Since Anna started reading herself she doesn't usually want us reading books to her before bed anymore. Instead we talk or, more recently, write things with her or watch her write in her little spiral notebook. Sometimes she draws pictures. Sometimes we play hangman. Sometimes she writes stories or lists.

This week it's been Christmas lists. She wrote one for herself (Barbies, Littlest Pet Shop toys, a fuzzy sweater). She wrote one for her stuffed cow (hay, hay, fuzzy sweater). She wrote one for Carlo (seventeen Bakugans; fuzzy sweater). Not sure where she got the idea that everyone wants a fuzzy sweater, but I probably need to go to the store tomorrow and get her one.

Tonight she decided to write one for me, so as I sat next to her in her bed, she asked me what I wanted.  I decided to be Super Dad and say "I just want to be with my family."

Anna protested.  "No, daddy, we have to write something for Santa to bring you." I didn't want to offer up anything real because then she'd just bug Carleen to go out to the store and buy it for me.  So I said "I can't think of anything I want.  How about you just write what you think I want."

So she did. And the first four items she put on it were "beer," "wine," "a sandwich," and "fuzzy sweater."  Then she drew a picture of a Christmas tree with all four of those things underneath it and the words "for Daddy" above it.

If you're looking for me this Christmas, I'll probably be talking to Children's Services.

Fruit Helper

Today was Carlo's preschool Christmas party. So instead of picking him up at 3:15, I went at 2:45 to help out and join in the festivities.

When I got there all the kids were at their tables waiting for snacks. Two or three moms were there to help out. I was the only dad. The teacher put us all to work handing out the plates, cups, napkins and food. My job was to hand out the apple and pineapple slices. Carlo said I was the "fruit helper." Soon the other kids called me fruit helper too. A couple of them called me "Mr. Carlo's daddy."

As the kids ate, the moms and I stood to the side and talked. One of them asked me "So, what do you, um . . ." and left it hanging, obviously intending to ask me what I did for a living. In half an instant, her brain seemed to process the fact that she was talking to a jean-sneakers-and-hoodie-wearing, one-or-two-day unshaven father who was free to hand out fruit in the middle of a Thursday afternoon, and realized that I was quite probably unemployed.

I get the sense that your average suburban mom doesn't encounter too many dads at these sorts of things.

I briefly toyed with the notion of allowing her to feel awkward for a while, but I let her off the hook and told her what I do now.  "Oh, like the guy from 'Everybody Loves Raymond!'" she said.  That's the second time I have heard that this week. Do people not know what sports writers do outside of the context of that show?

The party soon broke up and I took Carlo home. In the car he told me that I was a really good fruit helper.

"Thanks Buddy."

"I don't have school again for two weeks. That's fourteen days."

"I know Buddy."

"It'll be 2010 when I go back to school."

"Yep, Buddy."

"That's next year so it's a long time."

On the whole I'd rather be in Darfur

I spent most of last week in Indianapolis covering the Winter Meetings.  All of the baseball stuff can be found over at NBC.  The best thing that happened there, however, had nothing to do with the game.

Tuesday night:  Though it's a under a mile from the meetings to my hotel, I take a cab back because it's snowing and blowing and the temperature is plummeting. I love talking to cab drivers for some reason, so I immediately launch into conversation with my driver, who is quite obviously a newcomer to our shores.

We talk about the weather. He says it's very hard for him to get used to, what with him being from Africa and all.  Yeah, that would be difficult I agree.  Africa, eh? Whereabouts? Darfur, he says. Wow, I'm impressed. I've never met anyone from Darfur before. Must be some culture (and weather) shock to be in Indianapolis, eh? Yeah, he says, but Indianapolis is way better than where he spent the first few months after he got to the U.S.

Me: Where was that?

Him: Lima, Ohio.

Me: What did you think of Lima?

Him: After two weeks there I wanted to go back to Darfur, and people were trying to kill me there, brother. 

Radio Days

I got my job at WCIR through my dad. He had met the program director, who let slip that he was in desperate need of a gopher/office slave. Dad told him I’d be interested and soon enough I began sorting cds, copying reel-to-reel tapes, handing out contest prizes, setting up the transmitter for remote broadcasts and doing all sorts of other odd jobs for the radio station to the tune of $3.35 an hour, which was the minimum wage in 1989. I was 16, though, and it seemed like a pretty good deal.

I didn't really have a desire to get on the air, but eventually did as the result of some dumb luck. There was a week-long teacher's strike in March 1990. With no school, I’d drive up to the station every day to see if there was anything they needed me to do. One morning I arrived to find the P.D. in a heated argument with the overnight guy, whose shift had ended an hour or two before. The overnight guy had somehow locked himself out of the station at 4AM, leaving nearly two hours of dead air until the morning guy arrived, making no effort to bust back in or call anyone about his dilemma. He just sat on the hood of his car and smoked. The P.D. hadn't planned on firing Mr. Overnight, but when people argue for a long enough time someone is going to eventually say something stupid. Mr. Overnight did, and he was gone.

A few minutes later the P.D. came by where I was copying some tapes and asked me if I wanted to go on the air. After an hour or two of the most basic training, he told me to go home and come back that night, as I would be working the 11pm-6am shift until the teacher's strike was over. If things worked out, the weekend overnight guy would move to full time, and I would take over the weekend shifts. Things worked out, and I had the job for the next couple of years.

Like almost everyone else at the station, I was given an awful air name. Following 1950s-era conventional wisdom which held that people won't want to listen to a DJ with an "ethnic" name, the P.D. changed me from Craig Calcaterra to Craig Miller. Within the first couple of weeks the jock who worked before me took to calling me "Madman Miller" as I was coming on the air. While it was stupid I didn't really object, and Craig “The Madman” Miller stuck.

Though it was by far the biggest, most popular station in town, WCIR had antiquated equipment, making the technical part of the job pretty easy. The 1960s-era control board consisted of several round mixing "pots" as opposed to the more modern sliders and equalizers, and the two cd players were haphazardly patched into the board. A rarely-used turntable sat off to the left. Commercials were all played on cartridges that resembled old eight track tapes which would give off a deep and satisfying clunk when you pressed the play button. Rather than sit as if at a desk, the DJ would stand in front of the board while on the air with the microphone hanging at mouth level, much like it would in a recording studio. There was a comfy leather chair in which to sit for the three to five minutes one had to wait before the next station identification, weather report, or segue between songs.

And, oh, were those songs terrible. The pop charts of the late 80s and early 90s were dominated by hair metal bands singing power ballads and some of the most soulless R&B ever recorded. There were some bright spots – REM had a couple of mainstream hits by that point, and you could always count on war horses like Tom Petty and Madonna to have a hit or two – but my play lists were dominated by the likes of Milli Vanilli, M.C. Hammer, Wilson Phillips, Poison, and Michael Bolton. Since the P.D. slept during my graveyard shift I could get away with a bit more freelancing than the other jocks, but I usually found it easier to simply play what was programmed, mostly because people would call in to complain if I didn't play the hits on a constant rotation. Today there is no small amount of grumbling about the bland repetition of top 40 radio, but Clear Channel and the other corporate radio behemoths are giving the people what they want. Or at the very least, are giving the people what they've trained them to want and with what they now feel they cannot do without.

Music aside, I loved the job. No dress code. No paperwork. No manual labor. Working from 11pm until 6am gave me almost total solitude, and as long as I was able to do the station ID at the top of every hour, play the commercials when programmed, and segue from song to song without dead air, I could do almost anything I wanted. Some nights I spent reading a book. Others I spent on the phone, talking to girlfriends, buddies, or whoever was bored enough to call the DJ to chat. When I got really bored I would make up contests. Within a month or two of beginning the job, I met the guy who worked the same shift at the big country station in town, WJLS. He and I would talk on the phone all night, comparing the weirdos who would call in and daring each other to do silly things on the air.

Perhaps the oddest thing about the job was that there were groupies. I thought the P.D. was joking when he told me to expect it, but I’ll be damned if I didn't have women calling me at all hours of the night. I was flattered at first, but it quickly became obvious that only the truly deranged among us obsess about someone just because they’re on the air at a piddling little radio station in a podunk little mountain town. Maybe “deranged” is too strong a word. For the most part they were simply lonely people who felt comforted by a familiar voice coming out of their radio each night. In this way the DJ isn’t all that different than a bartender. You listen to people talk. You act interested but you never pry. When the person asks for a drink – or in my case a song – you give it to them.

I never had a stalker, and despite some random threats over the phone, I never came face to face with an angry fan. The weirdest thing that would ever happen would be when women would call in and ask me how old I was. Seeing no reason to lie about it, I would tell them that I was sixteen or seventeen or whatever. Most giggled about it. A visible minority seemed aroused by the idea, which creeped me out quite a bit. One took to calling me "baby," and referred to herself as "mama." I quickly memorized her phone number and avoided her whenever it popped up on the ID. For the most part, however, it was harmless, and given the format of the station, the vast majority of callers were teenagers wanting to here the latest tripe from the New Kids on the Block or Bell Biv Devoe. I got a lot of nice cards and letters from twelve year-old girls.

Within a month or two of starting, the guy working the weekday overnight shift quit, and it would be over a year until the P.D. could find a stable replacement. Despite school still being in session, I pulled several seven-night weeks during the frequent intervals between replacements. I would work until 6am, leave the station, grab breakfast, and then go on to school. I'd go home after school, crash for a couple of hours, eat dinner with my parents, and then crash for a few more until it was time to work again. I'm sure all of this was in violation of all kinds of labor laws, but as long as my grades stayed solid Mom and Dad didn't much care.

After some initial bumps I quickly developed a fairly smooth and confident on-air persona. Maybe too confident. On one occasion I got in trouble for allegedly interfering with police business. On most Saturday nights, the first hour of my shift was a remote broadcast from the lobby of the movie theater, promoting the theater's Midnight Movie series. Following my last break at 11:45, I would get in the car and race to the station, hopefully in time to make my first commercial break after midnight. If I didn't, the guy who played the prerecorded show from 8pm until midnight and manned the boards for my remote would have to do the break. I hated that, so I usually drove like a maniac to make it.

One night, doing about 60 m.p.h. in a 35 zone, I was pulled over by a policeman running a speed trap. Obviously dead to rights, I figured that I would quickly cop to being a lead foot, accept my ticket, and do my best to get to the station as soon as I could. The cop, thinking he had pulled over a partying teenager on a Saturday night, took forever to walk up to my window. When he got there I apologized for my speed, explained that I was late for work, and basically did everything I could think of to make the whole transaction go smoothly. Rather than ticket me, he asked a hundred questions about where I was going and why. He thought I was lying about working at the radio station and gave me a hard time about that. Then he made me get out of the car while he gave the backseat a once-over, looking for drugs or beer or whatever he assumed I was on. Eventually he went back to his car. After an extended lecture about my speed (which I deserved) and a bunch of criticisms about the radio station (which I didn't) he gave me my ticket and let me go. The stop probably took three times as long as a usual traffic stop and by the time I finally got to the station I was pissed and the guy working the board was having a meltdown.

During my first commercial break I took the opportunity to alert anyone who may be out driving where the speed trap was and to watch out because it was manned by a cop who liked to hassle people. About twenty minutes later someone at the police station called me. It wasn't the cop who had pulled me over, but he was angry all the same. Immediately sensing that I may be in trouble, but not knowing for what, I hit "record" on the reel to reel machine attached to the phone. After a minute it seemed clear to me that the call was less than official. Yes, it was a cop (caller ID confirmed that), but it wasn't anyone in a position of authority. Maybe Officer Speed Trap's buddy. He complained that by saying what I said I not only was disrespecting a police officer, but I was "interfering in official law enforcement business." Though I knew enough about the First Amendment to be pretty confident that I hadn't done anything wrong, I kept my responses to simple "yes sirs" and "no sirs" out of an abundance of caution. After a couple of minutes the cop hung up.

I got my wits about me and listened to the tape. I hadn't realized it during the call, but it turns out that the conversation was pretty damn funny. As my "yes sirs" and "no sirs" got quieter and less respectful, the cop got angrier and angrier. Eventually he was ranting incoherently, calling me "son" and starting every sentence with "listen here!" and stuff like that. I decided it was too good not to use, so at the next break I took to the mic in a solemn tone, referenced my earlier comments about the speed trap and apologized for being disrespectful to the professionals of the Beckley Police Department. Then I played the tape over the theme to the Dukes of Hazard. A couple of days later someone at the police department called my boss to voice his "profound disappointment" that a station as active in the community as WCIR would exhibit such an immature disrespect for law enforcement. I had to write another letter of apology. If I wasn't working an impossible-to-fill shift for minimum wage, I suppose I could have been fired.

I manned the DJ booth from March 1990 until I left for college in September 1991. Just before leaving, the P.D. sat me down and told me that, my mouth aside, he thought I had what it took to make a career out of it, and that he'd be willing to offer me a full time job on the spot with actual adult pay and benefits and everything. Though I agreed to think about it for a couple of days I knew I would never seriously consider the offer. I didn’t yet know what I wanted to do for a living, but I knew I wanted something more stable than radio. For all of the fun and flair of the job, the DJ was becoming increasingly superfluous to the modern radio business. My sense was that any stations that weren't already automated or run by giant corporations soon would be, and even if you could make a life out of radio, it would be a pretty itinerant one. I thanked the P.D. for the offer, politely declined, and went off to college. With the exception of a couple of months back at the station the summer after my freshman year, my radio days were over.

Though I still have a lot of life left at this point, I’m pretty sure that I'll never have a better job. And that’s true even if it would take me a decade or so of full time overnights at the wages I made back them to make what I now make in a single year.

Great Moments in Mix CDs

As I'm winding up work this morning, a law student who has worked in my office as a clerk since the beginning of summer left me a mix CD entitled "Music that Craig Likes?" She and I have been friendly enough, but we've never talked about music or pop culture or anything like that. Certainly not about anything of enough substance that would give anyone a sufficient lead to go and pick out 15 songs that are likely to be up my alley. Skeptical, I put the CD in.

The results: fabulous. Mostly old school punk -- Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Stiff Little Fingers, The Damned, and more mainstream stuff like the Ramones and the Clash -- but also some nice 80s and 90s flavor like Billy Bragg, Nick Cave and the Pixies. To top it off, she ended it all with "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow because, hell, just because.

All stuff I love, but mostly stuff I last had on Memorex tapes circa 1990 and lost somewhere between then and real adulthood. If she had merely parroted my current record collection she would have gotten points for coming up with a good profile. Putting together stuff I (a) love; and (b) have lost turned what merely could have been a fabulous mix CD into a transcendent one.

Is this law clerk some sort of mind reader or, as another coworker said a few minutes ago, do I merely give off a super obvious aging hipster vibe? I don't think it's the latter. In fact, I've always assumed most people who meet me figure that I'm an old fart who generally wants people off his lawn. Which is true, of course, but either way doesn't lead anyone to think that I'd actually enjoy a CD full of punk.

But I do enjoy it, and I suppose the lesson here, such as there is one, is that you just never know, ya know?

Jobs I've left: an inventory

As I wind up my last week of legal work before starting in with NBC, I'm nostalgic for the many, many jobs I have left in my 20 years in the workforce. An inventory:

Little Caesar's Pizza: My first job. I worked there for two weeks in August 1989. I was scheduled a grand total of three shifts. First shift: I scrubbed out used pizza pans. Second shift: I put the little prefabricated dough balls into some dough stretching machine despite the fact that you were supposed to be 18 years-old to operate it. Third shift: cheese and sauce station. The franchise owner moved me off sauce because he said I was making "race tracks" with the ladle. Then he moved me off cheese because he said I was "gonna put [him] in the poorhouse" because I was too heavy with the cheese. Best part: I'm not entirely sure that in 1989 Little Caesar's was using real cheese. After the cheese he sent me back to the pans. I quit the next day.

WCIR FM: What started out as a gopher job around the radio station turned into a full-blown gig as a weekend overnight DJ (though I often worked during the week too, in violation of child labor laws). Great job, even with the bad 1989-92 top 40 music I had to play. Best job I've ever had. I kept it until I left for college and even came back for the summer after freshman year. My last shift was seven straight hours of non-format music from my personal collection. My boss figured it was easier to let me do that than to argue about it.

A Columbus, Ohio public opinion polling company whose name I honestly can't remember right now: I worked there a month during my sophomore year in college. Seemed like easy money until you realized that people hated me calling them to interrupt their dinner and/or "Wheel of Fortune" watching even though I wasn't selling anything. I quit without really telling anyone. They called me three weeks later to ask me if I would ever be picking up my last paycheck.

Ohio State University Bookstore: Office supplies counter. I had this job for the balance of college. It was about half student employees, half-lifers. The lifers were a bit scary. One of them said that the worst thing that could ever happen to him would be for him to win a lottery when the jackpot was below $20 million. Why? "Because there are certain things I'll need to do if I win, and I'll need all of that money." His expression when he said that was serious, approaching dire.

Limited Credit Services: A second job in the summer between sophomore and junior year. Fielding customer service calls from people with Limited, Victoria's Secret and Express credit cards. Most of it was fielding calls from mall stores where the account holder wanted to buy $250 worth of ugly clothes but only had the credit limit to buy $150. I was a bit of a pushover and usually let them have it, so I'm probably partially responsible for the state of our debt-heavy, consumerist economy.

Department of Justice, Antitrust division: unpaid clerkship the summer after my first year of law school. Since they weren't paying me I could pretty much leave whenever I wanted to. They called it the "13th Amendment Schedule." That summer they were going after Ticketmaster for gumming up the concert industry, Microsoft for monopolizing the operating system market and was looking at GM for trying to put entrepreneurial electric car companies out of business. My contribution: I searched LEXIS for criminal cases with interesting fact patterns that I could maybe one day adapt into a mystery novel.

Law Firm Number 1: A litigation boutique here in Columbus. Crazy screaming partners who always made you feel like crap. Insane hours. I quit to make more money at Law Firm Number 2. When I quit, the screamers said that I was making a huge mistake and would regret it for the rest of my life.

Law Firm Number 2: A big, international law firm here in Columbus. Crazy, passive aggressive partners who never let you know where you stood. I preferred the screamers. It was a pretty big mistake leaving the screamers, and I did regret it for a time. Insane hours. I quit to go someplace less passive aggressive. When I did, they sort of casually let me know that they were probably going to let me go soon anyway. Did I mention that they were passive aggressive?

Law Firm Number 3: A big national law firm here in Columbus. Crazy partners who had all kinds of humanizing personal problems but who were, on the whole, nice to me. The place actually worked out OK for a good long while, but I soon started to realize that my life might be better if I didn't go out drinking after work every night and living and breathing the facts of my ethically-shady clients to the exclusion of quality time with my growing family. Naturally, such a decision was terrible for my career, and after a year or two of coasting, I was laid off. But hey, at least I started up the baseball blog during the coast.

State Government Job: Started back in February, leaving on Friday. Bad money, but good work. Nice people. The first time in 11 years that I realized that one can practice law for a living and actually be happy. If it weren't for the NBC gig, I probably would have stayed there until I retired or until the state pension system went broke, whichever came first.

So, doing the math, that means I average a new job every two years. I'm 36 now, so I only have, what, fourteen or fifteen jobs until I retire?  Watch this space for coming career announcements!

Programming Note

When I started writing ShysterBall in the spring of 2007, the idea was to give myself a place to be where I could escape the stress and unpleasantness of my legal career, if only for the briefest of moments. As time went on, it began to consume more and more of my waking hours and, in all honesty, interfering pretty significantly with that legal career. No, I never dropped the ball on a case, but it has been a struggle. I mean really, how is someone supposed to prepare for an oral argument when Roger Clemens is testifying before Congress? I'd like to say that I eventually managed to find balance with all of this, but that would be a lie. My life hasn't been in balance since at least 2006. Maybe earlier. Something has to be done. So I'm doing it:

I'm quitting the law. Starting November 30th I will be writing about baseball full time for NBC Sports.com at the Circling the Bases blog.

Obviously this wasn't a unilateral decision on my part. NBC has decided that they want me all-in on Circling the Bases, and that's not the kind of thing you have to ask me twice. The people over there have been fantastic to me since I started moonlighting back in April. They've never censored a word I've written. They've never declared a topic off-limits. Their instructions to me when I started were to make some fucking noise, and they've allowed me to do that non-stop since. When they asked me to do it full time, it was a complete no-brainer.

I don't yet know how it's going to all work out -- the enormity of this is just starting to sink in -- but to say I'm excited would be something of an understatement.