If there is one near-certainty in life, it’s that almost nothing good ever starts in a middle school boys’ bathroom. Nearly every story of a young man’s first foray into juvenile delinquency takes place there. It’s two boys with an ill-gotten hall pass duped out of an unsuspecting teacher. One produces their contraband, the other takes a nervous gulp while keeping an ear out for any approaching footsteps. After a tentative pause by the nervous kid and some challenge of masculinity by the other, the deed is done. It takes little time from there before a life-altering obsession begins.

For me, the place was the eighth grade boys’ bathroom at Hillsboro Junior High School. There were 3 boys: me, Rob, Aaron. I was the nervous one, as I usually was in these situations. Our contraband was a radio. The drug it pumped directly into our young, malleable brains was play-by-play coverage of the 1994 NCAA mens’ basketball tournament. I was desperately hooked on it.