bing: bio one

I was born, on a dark September night in a naval hospital outside of Tokyo, because there was no room for us at the inn....

That's the official version, the shiny, happy one. To be honest, there was plenty of room at the inn, but not one person there knew how to deliver babies. So, driving down the solitary road, my parents saw a navy hospital. On learning that no one but military families was served there, my dad gallantly signed up. I was born, and the following morning Dad went AWOL. I was raised on the lam.

As a fugitive, you grow up fast. By the age of 16 months, not only could I walk, I could also spot a multi-team tail and take highly evasive Big Wheel action. At 4, I left a crayon in the eye of a daycare worker I'm pretty sure was affiliated with an NGO. By 6, I'd taken to 3-hour walks home from school, a mere 6 blocks away.

But one day you wake up and realize you can't run forever. So I took up coin collecting instead. I have a beautiful set of Franklin half dollars.

Ok, I have to admit that only some of that was true. I grew up in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, nuclear-free zone and the third city in the nation to adopt a handgun ban. (In other words, it was a town that frowned on people killing people, at least by mechanical means.) I began college at the small but very good Knox College and ended it at the University of Michigan, my current employer.