I certainly remember building model rockets. It was fun to watch the rocket blast into the air, suspenseful to wonder if the parachute would open to bring the rocket safely back.

Keep everything in perspective if you wish to be happy. For example... Losing an arm is more an inconvenience than a catastrophe. Things could be a lot worse so why not be grateful they aren't and thereby happy rather than sad?

My freshman year of high school I joined the chess and math clubs.

It was there I met my future wife, Celeste Landry, although our lives took us separate ways for many years and we were not to marry until more than ten years later.

The 1970s, the decade of my teenage years, was a transitional period in American youth culture.

My fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well.

My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English.