This is the photo from my student ID card at Franklin high in 1994. I was fifteen at the time. My hair had never been long; I’d never kissed a girl; I was only just learning to play guitar, only just starting to write songs; I hadn’t yet met let alone befriended and fallen out of touch with and gotten back in touch with and fallen for my wife, Angela.

I’m creeping up on double that, now. In April I’ll hit 27, my first cube since I turned 8 in the third grade. I think things have gone well in the space of thirteen years. The question of what then-me would have thought if he’d got a glimpse of now-me is ridiculous on the face of it, but I think he’d be more-or-less pleased.