Time was rushing around me like water around a big wet rock. The only difference is, I was not so durable as stones. Very quickly I would be smoothed away.

I have brothers and was a tomboy, if that's still a designation. It wasn't a stretch for me to think and write as a 13-year-old boy - it is freeing.

The world tips away when we look into our children's faces.

If life's a joke, then suicide's a bad punch line.

By the time I was done with the car it looked worse than any typical Indian car that has been driven all its life on reservation roads, which they always say are like government promises - full of holes.

I had a very free childhood and ranged around on my bicycle the way boys do. I had few restrictions.

But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with the facts.