Today’s story more closely fits the serious part of the theme of No Facilities. This story started 50 years ago this week and my telling it is long overdue.

I met Marty on the playground on my first day of 5^th grade. Marty and I were not so much drawn to each other as we were both squeezed out like asteroids in the wake of Jupiter’s gravity. Cliques were forming around cool kids, around smart kids and around junior jocks but many ordinary kids didn’t seem to fit into those nascent groups.

I didn’t fit in because I was a new kid and the economy, demographics and the quality of the schools in the town I had come from were just not up to the new standard by which I was being judged. Marty didn’t fit in because Marty never fit in. He was awkward. He had unmanageable…