MY STORY, AS WRITTEN BY JARED DIAMOND AND CARL LEWIS.

I came to one of the most exciting realizations yesterday evening while I was teaching my daughter how to do the triple jump*: sometimes I am resentful of the fact that technology didn't evolve earlier, like when I was in high school, so that I would have had the opportunity to be an early adopter of things like Facebook, YouTube, blogging, and inexpensive access to digital hardware. I woulda been all over those things.

But then I think: the fact that those prolific ways of documenting life that we take for granted now WEREN'T around during my high school years really are a bit of a blessing for somebody like me, who tries to be careful about letting truth interfere with reality. It will be much more challenging for my children to check up on the accuracy of the stories I tell about my high school glory days** then it will be for THEIR children to someday check up on theirs, due to the ubiquitous nature of social sharing and publicizing of great feats. I suddenly have a renewed vigor for sharing my many, many accomplishments long ago with great attention to broad storytelling strokes rather than any particular interest in details. If any of you knew me long ago, then it would be so mean to ever imply otherwise to my children. Besides, that's basically how history gets created: tell the same story enough times and it becomes canon. Truth. 
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*the triple jump is similar to the long jump in track & field, only it is three times cooler and five times harder and I was very, very good at, and we*** are thinking that we may have our daughter someday accept a full ride to Stanford on a triple jump scholarship. Thus, the training in the rain.

**umm...
***I