We used to have to go to chapel at Zero-Dark-Forty-Five.

1969. I was sixteen. Or almost sixteen. I was the editor-in-chief of a nationally esteemed prep school publication called the Mercersburg News. I had watched my school fall apart in about two years. There were two jock dorms when I arrived in 1967. In 1969 there were two drug dorms.

Then came the chapel walkout. A huge, life changing event. Half the school walked out of the Mercersburg Chapel during a Thursday 8:45 am service. The headmaster, who used to have a box of Gettysburg musket balls on his desk for awards to good students, called a school meeting. My best friend and roommate was one of the ones who walked out. Life had been riven.

You know. My best friend. He’s dead now. At forty. I’m alive. 62. He did meth. I didn’t. Or cocaine. Ever. We were both Harvard, don’t you know.

But the world cleaved in half that day.

I published the only extra in the history of the Mercersburg News. In a day and a half. Linotype.

So. I didn’t die. He didn’t die that day. But in reality we both did.

Never heard how lovely the voices are.

You had an idea, did you?

Went there. I really did. You try surviving four years in a place that tries to kill you every single day.

What do you do for the next forty-five years? You write and write and write and write and write and you wake up in the morning as I did today, saying only two things I’m grateful for. My ability to write and my love for my wife. That’s it. The total.