Greg Raleigh:  

Life Married since 1991, no children. Switched from active duty Army to the Reserves in 2002 to take a job. Result? 226 days in a combat zone in 2003. I'm back in the Army until March 2010. It turns out, they missed me. I live in the Washington DC area for now, but they have big plans for me in 2009. n my spare time, I'm remodeling my townhouse and writing my second novel. My first novel is adored by loved ones, but ignored by publishers. If a man's true wealth is in the quality of his relationships, I should never want for anything. School Mr. David Barclay, my eighth grade literature teacher, was in a class by himself. He loved what he was doing and wasn't there just for the paycheck. I gained more literary knowledge from one year of middle school than I would ever pick up from high school and college. It was customary to walk by the school building at six or seven PM and find him still there, preparing the next lesson, rehearsing for the school play, or coaching the softball team. Energetic and positive, I have a vague memory of him doing a Groucho Marx imitation: low crouching walk, waving an imaginary cigar, stage voicing something about Mark Twain and the antebellum period. After 30 years, I don't know for sure if the memory is genuine, a telling fact of its own. Mr. Barclay was pure gold. I've begun to seriously consider submitting works of my own for publication and if I'm successful, it will be a great honor to include Mr. Barclay among my acknowledgments. For reasons unknown even to me, I treated my feelings for Stacy Humphrey as if they were a State secret. I told a trusted friend and no one else. I saw her in the bookstore before classes began freshman year and was crushed until I met Anne Arnold in the summer of '84. It wasn't like an obsession; I couldn't tell you anything about Stacy other than thinking she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Whenever I saw her, my throat got tight, my stomach went warm, and my blood turned to ice. In total, I've said probably ten words to her. "Hi", ten times. If somebody came to my door and offered to send me back to September 1975, free of charge, knowing what I know, I'd toss him a quarter and tell him to hit the road. It took me a long time to get to where I am, and the lessons I learned came at a high price. On the other hand, if I wake up in the morning to discover I'm back in 1975 and the past 30 years were a dream, I'd make some changes. My Dad always said I'd never be an athlete and I wasted a lot of time trying to prove him wrong. My Mom always said I'd be a great writer and I wasted a lot of time trying to prove Dad wrong. John Devine always said I should ask Stacy Humphrey out and get it out of my system and I wasted a lot of time proving him right. And this time, Laura rides in the front seat with Scott. College An imminently forgettable time in my life. I made it my business to experiment with harmful things and challenge proven belief systems. My name appeared on the front page of the award winning Evansville newspaper for making an unorthodox attempt at a return to school. The local constabulary provided me the required curriculum. During my college years, I wrote rebellious short stories nobody will ever read and a novella that painted itself into a corner after 100 pages, missed early morning classes because I was still under the influence, and declined the offer of a beautiful woman to disrobe for me on the grounds that she was married. I was a sinner and a saint at varying times and simultaneously. I broke into Harwood Elementary School to return books from a beloved teacher, and perhaps steal a typewriter. I selected a typewriter but refused to take $2 discovered in a drawer because I feared it belonged to a student even though school was out for the summer. If classes were boring, I failed them. If they were interesting, I made high marks. I refused to take notes and usually employed my hour of attendance in Ethics and Philosophy writing a short story about the daily lecture. I emerged with a degree in Electronics Engineering, useless it turned out, until I enlisted in the Army seven years later. Elizabeth Schneider (sp?) replaced Stacy Humphrey as the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and I once again failed to ask her out. This time however, I took such joy in talking to her, I never stopped to actually tell her anything. Like for instance, how much I wanted her. It sometimes seemed as if she wanted me to make a move, but I always feared my imagination had run wild and never acted. She, like Stacy, vanished from my life when my academic career ended and remains now as only a lovely clouded memory. The last time I ever saw her, I was dating someone else and allowed the opportunity to pass albeit with great regret. Workplace During my high school and college years, I always had at least one part-time job and sometimes carried as many as three. Though I wanted to, I didn't participate in after school activities. My grades suffered and I became bitter. When I had a minute of free time I usually used the opportunity to chemically escape reality. Somewhere in the summer of 1984, I gave up altogether. I quit my jobs, quit school, and began hatching plans to hitchhike across America. For real. That summer, Anne Arnold became the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I met her at a party and made my usual witty opening. "Hi." According to a trusted friend, Anne threw a party the following weekend and invited my friends specifically to get another chance to meet me. Learning from past mistakes, I quickly asked her out and a summer romance ensued. From the beginning, it was agreed to be a summer fling. She was leaving in the fall for Purdue and I was swirling into rapid career decline though I wasn't advertising the fact. Despite the agreement, I fell in love with her anyway. I didn't think I had anything to lose. The first stop on my tour of the fifty states would just...Expand for more