Last night I dug through some old VHS tapes in search of Tank Girl, which I did not find. I did, however, find the tapes with my four It’s Academic shows! I appeared on the Baltimore version in both my junior and senior years of high school, winning both first round matches and losing in the second round each year. I was 14 years old in the first show, 15 years old in the second and third shows, and 16 years old for the last show. (After my first game, some of the cheerleaders came up to me and asked if I was really a 14-year-old junior…and yes, I was.) The tapes were a lot of fun to watch - but I was really nasty to my teammates in my junior year! I gave out the look of death more than once. My hair was also extremely interesting to me; in my junior year it was barely shoulder length (and I had bangs in the first show) but in my senior year I had it in a bun and my patented cowlick-that-still-sticks-straight out-from-my-temple was already there.

My wife suggested bringing the tapes to her dad and having him make a DVD out of them. I think I will indeed ask him to do that, and I’ll try to make copies of the DVD to offer to my teammates - if I can find them.