Looking back, I'm not sure how I survived my childhood. My best friend in elementary school was Chris Kouri. We were like two peas in a pod, he and I, two peas that I can't believe didn't get squished into split pea soup. We did everything together, including (but not limited to), jumping as hard and as high as we could on his trampoline, desperately trying to "jump off" the other (the game was called "Popcorn"). And mind you, his trampoline wasn't the sissy trampolines of our current generation, with the fancy nets to protect one from falling. Nope, not only did it not have a safety net, but it had those huge metal coils in all their painful glory, just waiting for an unsuspecting foot or ankle to tear to shreds. We did somersaults and back-flips on that thing, and I'm pretty sure we even debated trying to jump on it from the roof. Thank goodness the good Lord gave us the few extra brain cells we needed to deem that not a good idea. We managed