August 30, 1975, a doctor brings a screaming little bundle of life into the world. On Chester Boulevard in Richmond, Indiana, my world began that morning in Reid Memorial Hospital. My Mom, Nancy Harrison (neé Criss) and Dad, Jim Harrison (neé Harrison), looked on their little brown-haired child for the first time. I'm sure Christi, two years old at the time, looked on me too, but I don't think either of us remember it too clearly. So there I got all cleaned up and ready for this thing called life, with the proper reaction, no matter what the age -- screaming a lot.

I've met people who have said they remember their early life very clearly, but can't remember last month or last year very well. I'm not sure of the neurology involved, but I'm on the other end. I have occasional memories of life through elementary school, but I couldn't tell you what most of my elementary school teachers looked like or were named. They must have done alright with me despite my poor memory of them. Being born on the borderline of a school year, my parents had to contest my entry into the first grade at the time they did. I'm glad they did, since I'm still in school to this day and probably will be long after. I'm glad they got me jump start on all this so I wouldn't be any further behind than I already am!

There are some distinct memories from those formative years, so this might get a bit Vonnegut-esque, but I'd like to relate a few. I sit and watch the cartoons on the TV, there in our first house in Richmond, learning about the important things from Sesame Street and Schoolhouse Rock. My sister, back from one of her first few days and that new thing called school comes home to ask me a question to prove how smart they've made her in a single day. "How do you spell 'of'?" she asks. "Is it o-f or o-v?" For some reason I really wanted to show her that despite her newfound erudition, I was still the smarter toon watcher. Or maybe I just wanted to make her mad by guessing the right one. I don't know how you can have intuition at that age, but I just knew she wouldn't have asked me if it were easy or obvious, so I guessed 'o-f.' I think she thought I might have cheated. Maybe I really knew, but the point was that I showed her up. As a brother, that's all that mattered at the time. I think I still carry that story with me as an example of early education.

I saw the bike in my grandparents' barn in Liberty, and I though I could try learning it (and not have to wait on one of my own). Sure I'd had the Big Wheels and Spinout 360s, but this was…dangerous. I'm not sure how old I was, but I know the bike was much older. Dad bought into the idea and somehow we got it back home. I can tell you the direction and probably the place, within a few feet where we started. I don't know how many, if any, practice runs we made, but I remember the one. The one that mattered. I remember encouraging words in my ear the reminders about how to do this. I remember concentrating 100% on the task at hand and pedaling as if my life depended on it. There was a strange silence when I took a moment to realize. Guess Dad didn't have anything to say for a while. I must be doing it right. No, that wasn't it at all, he wasn't even holding the bike anymore. It was me, pedaling myself. I think I looked back, though not for long at all or I'd fall. I'm not sure how or if I ever stopped, but I had done it. I had pedaled the bike myself. Exhilarating freedom. I think of that day often in moments when I've started to stand on my own, though the bikes are different and the words of encouragement my be different. The feeling is still the same. I still look back. I still keep at it. Driving a car, soloing in an aircraft, going away to college, and getting commissioned in the Air Force, all still take me back there. I know I've been given roots and I know I've been given wings too. Thanks, I love you, Dad.

I remember learning 'ch', coloring the alligator in for the letter 'A' on the first day, getting in trouble in the cafeteria, getting in fights in gym, recess, and getting kissed by the swings by Ginger Harris (and getting in trouble for that too). I remember art class, crying in Mrs. Warner's advanced reading class because I couldn’t understand the reading and all the year-older kids laughing. I remember my parents letting me make the decision to stay in that class or not and me making the decision to stay. I remember the frustration with piano lessons and having to tell my teacher that I didn't want to play anymore.

Most of all at that age I remember playing in the outdoors. I don't think I had to be told many times to get outside and do something. I usually had to be told to come inside. My parents, also indicative of a different age, when pedophiles and abductions weren't rampant, gave me extraordinary freedom to roam about our neighborhood and the surrounding woods. There was so much magic in those woods, so much wonder. The forts were numerous and constantly changing, the paths became memorized, the adventures never-ending. I still like climbing trees. I wonder how many boxes of Band-Aids I went through, but I'm sure it showed up in the bottom line of the Johnson & Johnson annual report. I rode my bike all over that neighborhood, nearly killing myself on it many times.

I think of all of this as typical, because it is the life I knew at that age. It was what I did and my friends did. I assumed all other kids in the world did pretty much the same stuff. Only after a few more years behind me am I starting to appreciate how lucky I was to have those experiences, to have that freedom, to experience the outdoors. To fall and make mistakes and not always have someone to pick me up.

I did have to grow up too.

Once we moved across 40 to NW 'C' St, I remember getting to know the neighbors, Chris and Nick, by playing in our cul-de-sac. I must have slipped one day playing kickball and scraped something. I started to cry, but the older two brothers were quick to ask 'What are going to do, cry?' I think the answer to that one just might have been rhetorical. I don't know if I ever cried when injured in sports or much else after that until I tore a ligament in my knee in high school football. I also was still a difficult kid at school and I hated Lee Walk. I don’t know why I hated him so much, but he was the focus of a lot of my negative attention. We did cooperate once to avoid getting paddled (the game of how fast can we get our stories straight on the way to the principal's office). The discipline problems still went on, and word did get to my Dad. His words ring in my ears to this day. He never threatened me with punishment for the trouble I was causing in school, he just said, "I just don't want you to get in trouble, because those people see you and say, 'That's the Harrison kid' and they think that's how we all are. That we don't know how to act right." I'm sure Freud would cite guilt or shame, but I took it more of a challenge to be a better person. I realized from that day on that my actions didn't just reflect on me, they also reflected on the people who raised me, the people who taught me, the people and groups I represented. I wanted my Dad to be able to say, "That's my boy right there" and I knew I wasn't doing it. Ten years later, that same kid and same Dad got to sit in an auditorium of over a thousand people and hear the name Harrison called as the Outstanding Graduate for the Spring 1997 graduating class. I know in my heart there was a connection.