I miss sixth grade. I was so confident and ambitious. There was a day when I asked two girls to be my girlfriend on the same day. They were best friends and sat next to each other in every class.

     On a different day, I picked up a saxophone for the first time and put a band together later that night.

     Neither venture met success, but the band, by far, is the happier memory of the two.

     I really enjoyed writing songs. I wrote a great one called “The Joke’s on Me.” It had a four-minute trumpet solo.

     The other guy in the band played trumpet. So, yeah. We were a two-piece saxophone-trumpet band.

     We fizzled after about three weeks, which was about a week...

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