Part of me couldn't believe that I was standing here talking about this. Or that I was pretending to be completely oblivious to the fact that my mother (not to mention Maureen Toomey) was almost certainly in the audience somewhere. I just kept going, saying whatever came into my head and not worrying about what anyone in this town thought; they may have worshipped Colgan, but they didn't know him.

“In tenth grade, Colgan and I convinced his dad and my mom that there was a Scholar's Bowl tournament in Birmingham on the first day of deer season, and we had to be at school at 5:30 a.m. My mom was sleepy enough that she didn't pay any attention to the fact that nobody else was in the parking lot when she dropped us off. We had hidden our huntin...

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