My eyes are open, but I'm not looking.

I don't think she is.

We have three sons (8, 12, and 18).

I am 51 years old (December 1947).

I could pass for 49�.

My students say that they think I'm in my latethirtiesearlyforties.

But my students are generous and willing to lie.

I'm growing into my age. Slowly.

I take some pride in the fact that I was on the planet at the same time that Gandhi and Einstein were breathing.

I am not above claiming to have met them.

I don't drink much. It's October, and there is a beer in the fridge left over from last Christmas.

I'm the older kid in the photo there. I was about three months short of three when my father took it.

I look the same today. Just add glasses. Maybe some weathering. Draw a mustache on me, if you like -- it's your monitor.

The younger kid is my brother. He's about three months old in the picture.

Now he's older than I am.

Dying does that to you.

He has been dead for over ten years, but the fact of his death still matters to me.

Every day.

He was gay. You can guess the rest.

When he died, the body count from AIDS-related causes in the U.S. was around 25,000. It has gone up a bit since then.

The AIDS-quilt project came to town about a year after he had died. It was set up in Ahearn Fieldhouse on the KSU campus.

I went.

That was a mistake. I was paralyzed by grief.

For days.

Our parents first learned that my brother was gay when I called them at his request and told them over the telephone that he had AIDS.

They behaved nobly, heroically, and compassionately.

So did the attending medical staff at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

He did too.

If you've read this far, thanks.

If you'd prefer to go home, I'll understand. Really.

I like sub-compact cars.

I drive a '98 Metro to and from work everyday. If I didn't have to drive so far to work, I wouldn't own a car.

But I love to drive.

We also own the obligatory kid-hauling mini-van and an antique Chevy pickup, a '58.

You can do the math: the antique was new when I was a kid.

I was born in Philadelphia, attended elementary school in Hicksville, NY, and secondary school in Houston, TX.

I have attended Tulane University (New Orleans), the University of Texas (Austin), and Kansas State University (Manhattan).

It's not correct to say that I attended Tulane University. I paid tuition, room and board, and enrolled at Tulane, and thereafter I dropped into my classes just to keep in touch.

Sound familiar?

Newt Gingrich was in graduate school at Tulane at the same time I was an undergraduate.

I seldom mention that.

I do, however, frequently mention the fact that I went to high school with Brent Spiner (Data from Startrek) and was in the same advanced drama class as he.

He is a bit further along in his career than I am.

I have not tried to contact him since high school.

I have lived in Kansas longer than I've lived in any other place on the planet. This fact amazes rather than appalls me.

If you think that public schools in Kansas do not teach evolution, then you didn't read the news reports carefully.

If you don't believe that what did happen here could happen in your state, beware.

On the evening I first prepared these remarks (October 6, 1999), I came home to find an AP story in the local paper reporting that the Kentucky State Department of Education had deleted the word "evolution" from the required school curriculum and substituted the phrase "change over time."

Has the religious right targeted the "K" states?

K-A, then K-E.

K-riced!

I have lived in the same house for 19 years (since October 1980).

I eat too many fatty foods.

I have enjoyed near-perfect health most of my life. I take my health for granted, and I will pay for it in the next phase of my life, I suspect.

I don't really believe that.

I walk two miles every day.

I don't know why I'm telling you this.

I don't know why you're reading this.

If I've left something out, that might be because it's none of your business, but ask anyway.

I'm an agnostic. I'd put my money on the atheists if it were possible to learn the truth.

But it's not.

I reject Pascal's wager.

I think garlic and onions go further in proving the existence of god than Aquinas and Anselm do.

I think that some atheists are as stridently doctrinaire as most fundamentalist Christians are.

Nonetheless, I'd prefer to hang out with the atheists. There's less meatloaf at their potlucks, and more wine.

I didn't need glasses until I hit 40 and could no longer read my watch.

During the 60's, I was a swimmer. I spent countless hours in heavily chlorinated indoor pools.

For a short time, I wore glasses to alleviate mild nearsightedness that might have been brought on by constant chlorine irritation. They were wire-rimmed spectacles and were part of the uniform of my generation.

When I stopped swimming in college, I no longer needed the glasses to correct my vision.

But they were necessary for that angst-filled look essential to a happy adolescence.

I saw perfectly without the glasses, but I looked good with them.

I love roller coasters that scare the bejeezus out of me, but if my kids didn't insist that I ride, I bet I'd wuss out.

I don't know why you've read this far, but thanks again. I'm beginning to like you.

I'm an INTP. But I wonder -- don't other people who take that test figure out how to respond in order to arrive at a desired outcome, an outcome that fits the persona they wish to present?

Am I the only sleazeball in this game?

I love freshly baked bread, and I don't care if it's bread-machine bread.

Corn is the only necessary vegetable.

Homegrown tomatoes too, but a tomato is a fruit, no?

My favorite meal is leftover fried chicken, eaten cold over the kitchen sink with nobody watching. Like you couldn't live without that information.

If I were to say that all green vegetables except asparagus are a waste of good molars, would I have to change the "P" in INTP to "J"?

Yes, asparagus does that to mine too.

Others have told me my face is unexpressive.

When they tell me this, I just look at them impassively and shrug.

People don't usually chitchat with me.

They do confide in me though.

Maybe because they know I don't chitchat.

I'm funny.

Okay, wry maybe.

You needn't smile so patronizingly.

I'll keep my day job.

By day (and sometimes night) I teach English composition, creative writing, literature and some general education requirements at a community college in Kansas.

I love my work.

All my children can do a one-and-a-half from the high or low boards, so my job as a father is almost done.

My youngest child, a third grader, has never misspelled a word on a spelling test. He told me to tell you that.

Some day we'll all be doing what he tells us to do.

After first grade, he could read at the eighth-grade level, the upper limit of the test.

During the test, he kept reading and reading, progressing through graduated levels of difficulty, and amazing his teacher. She asked if he wanted to take a break. She tells us that he replied, "I'd rather get this over with."

He read the test completely and flawlessly. For his trouble, he missed recess.

He was seven and pissed.

He dries his toothbrush. He always dries his toothbrush, or so he says.

My middle son sings beautifully. He has the body of a god and the generosity of a saint.

He teases his younger brother mercilessly.

I wanted to name him Atticus Finch.

I had to settle for calling him "Boo," the nickname his older brother gave him.

I miss the naps we took together when he was a toddler.

My eldest son has taught me that when kids are ready to leave the nest, parents are generally ready to let them.

But not without regret.

The short version of this record: I'm average.