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**ONE:** *Bad Influences*
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The year was 1995; late Spring, almost early Summer.
The way I remember it — with rose-tinted glasses firmly affixed atop my nose — that was the first truly gorgeous day of the Summer season. *And I was missing out on all of it…* I should have been outside with my friends, either skateboarding downtown, or swapping boot-legged cassettes, or maybe just smoking a little grass; but instead, I was stuck inside, suffering through the longest detention sentence of my life. *(Two and a half hours, to be exact.)*
Now, I know what you’re thinking: *What was my crime?* The one that landed me with two and a half hours of miserable detention time. Don’t forget, this was in the hay-day of Bart Simpson; plenty of rebellious teenagers my age got suspensions because they tried the ol’ cherry bomb in a toilet gag. Well, let me tell you…