.I had a fairly normal upbringing, nothing too out of the ordinary. Igrew up in the suburbs of a medium sized city in Alabama; nice family,a loving mo...m and dad, an older brother and a younger sister. Ourneighborhood was quite nice, friendly people, I had plenty of friends,played all the usual sports that growing boys play, had a part-timejob, all the normal things one might expect from a suburban upbringingin the late 20th century.During high school and college, I dated several girls and. “What are you staring at?”“Oh… erh… nothing” I glance at Em. She glances back, blushes and smiles. God I love it when she does that.“Okay, well concentrate more please.”“Yes, miss”The day goes slow. I don’t see Em much, but she never leaves my mind. We have science next; I’ve been looking forward to it all day, the only lesson where Em sits next to me. I walk in, take my seat, and wait. Em walks and takes a seat next to me. “Hey you.” She whispers.“Hey” I smile back.It’s a boring lesson, we. The same pastor who helped me get the job helped Derrick get his. “What’s it like here,” I asked Derrick after he showed me around all the niches and crevices of our new place and we had talked enough to get to know each other a bit. I liked the guy. “Well, when I first got here, I was coming off a lot of trouble and bad luck. It was hard at first to tow the line and I got a lot of spankings. But, I been here four years and now I settled in a bit.” “What were the spankings like?” I asked. . . I met this woman on an airplane and we chatted for a while about stupid small-talk crap. Somehow the conversation turned to marriage and relationships and how tough they are. We are both married. The conversation was never inappropriate and we exchanged business cards in the end as I told her I would help her find someone in my company that she could sell her product to. I received a different sort of e-mail a day later. It said, "I enjoyed meeting you. I know this may be a little crazy, but.