"Wizard of Oz" books. I was the firstborn kid and my dad must have
thought the stork brought him an alien. We had nothing in common.
My dad was a big sports star in high school, was very handy with
tools and was completely incapable of developing deep emotional
relationships. He did not get me at all. I remember one Christmas he
got me an erector set. Really? I wanted the new Monkees album!
Even though I was a straight-A student, I always felt like a disap-
pointment to him. To compensate for my inability to be a "real boy," I
over-excelled at school. In grade school, I was always the teacher's
pet. Teachers loved me, but, as you can imagine, that was not a good
strategy for making friends. In fact, it was a great strategy for being
bullied! I was high school valedictorian, but I was miserable through
high school. I would have traded all the academic success to be popu-
lar and liked. I could not wait until college. I was desperate to start
fresh.
Big man on campus
As a freshman at California State University, Fresno in the fall of 1976,
I was willing to do anything to be liked and accepted. When I moved
into the dorms, I didn't know a single person on campus, so I was
starting from scratch. Plus, I was still a long way from coming out of
the closet.
As I came to discover, Fresno State was a party school. What better
way to fit in than diving into the party scene with both feet? It started
with binge drinking every weekend. It wasn't long before pot smoking
was added to the mix and even the occasional line of coke. It still
amazes me how easy it was for 18- and 19-year-olds to acquire all of
this.
This time in my life was critical, as it was the foundation for a radi-
cally new "David Applegate." This new person would be everything
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