Sports

"No one within shouting distance of the Hartwig home will ever forget the year dad got in trouble with the Olympic Committee for claiming that he invented tennis. It turned out that the game had been around for hundreds of years and bore only a passing resemblance to the game dad had invented at home with a couple of picture frames and a tomato. We went through the whole thing all over again a few years later with table tennis, but the Chinese had dad beat on that one, too. He tried to argue that they'd stolen the tomato part from him, but in the end dad was never able to prove that a tomato had ever been used in a regulation tournament.

The whole tennis debacle soured dad on inventing sports for several years, until Uncle Otto sold him the rights to his idea for a no-holds-barred fighting tournament. Dad worked out the kinks using my brother Goose and I as human guinea pigs, as per our usual role in the family. This lasted until the school counselor suggested to my dad that the ongoing 'Fight for Your Supper' tournament might be affecting Goose's scholastic performance. Few believed that Goose's grades could have possibly sunk below their customary level, so it was widely assumed that Goose had been caught stealing food from the cafeteria. This made sense, since he had gone 0 –for-17 so far in the tournament, even losing to Stephanie on several occasions.

Some in the neighborhood blamed me, and suggested that I could have let him win every once in a while. But until Goose figured out how to cut eyeholes into his mask, there wasn't much I could do to keep him from coldcocking himself on the banister and missing dinner every night.

Eventually dad sold the idea to another entrepreneur who had more resilient kids, and he reluctantly moved on to other pursuits. It was probably for the best, though, since Mom was getting tired of sanding teeth marks out of the banister every year."

Uncle Bing
"Growing up, Uncle Bing was like the uncle I never had. He was my father's estranged brother, who had been kicked out of the family for loving jazz. That's what he said, anyway, it didn't seem that bad to us. Dad would secretly invite Uncle Bing... (11/25/02)

Lottery
"A wise man once said: 'It takes a fool to win the lottery.' Wait, no. That's not right. In retrospect I think it was 'It takes a fool to get into pottery.' That's it. And that man was my father. Dad hated pottery, ever since he was kicked out of... (11/11/02)

Viking
"When I was a young boy, no older than 24, my uncle asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. He said "Sampson, I want you to touch me right here between my testicles until I tell you to stop." My answer that day, as it always had been, was... (10/28/02)