”When I was seven or eight or so, I believed in God without question. Sometime between then and Eighth grade I became aware of certain inconsistencies in the Christian religion. I figured that before our enlightened information age, certain magnaminous events that could otherwise not be explained went down in the history books or oral tradition rather, as a miracle or act of God... Gods will. Everyone has heard stories when they're young about raindrops being the angel's tears or thunder having to do with God bowling in heaven. These inconsistencies had culminated in a apathetic form of atheism.

In eight grade I had gotten my third pair of glasses in a year and a half. Needless to say, my parents were quiete pissed about me losing or breaking my previous pairs of spectacles. So, one day I realized that my glasses have become either lost or no longer wanted to be in my company. For one week I searched for my glasses at school, the bus, with friends, enemies, lost and found, my house. I even interrogated my 7 year old little brother about what could possibly have become of my glasses. Throughout this exhaustive search, I had returned home to have my parents hound me, "We haven't seen you wear your glasses all week!" On the Friday of this week after I had returned home from school, they set an ultimatum since I had been lying to them and saying I left my glasses at school. The ultimatum was that I bring them home my glasses Monday after school or I'm grounded for 3 weeks. I had already resigned myself to this grounding since I had been exploring all culpable possibilities to exactly where in the sweet Christ my glasses were. But on Sunday night I said a prayer. Not a prayer so much as a demand and not a demand so much as a bargain. I spoke aloud in my bed staring at my ceiling, "Alright God, and I don't believe there is a God, but if you can return me my glasses within 24 hours I will believe in you with all my heart for the rest of my life. and only, only if they are in perfect condition and can be shown to my parents to stop this grounding. If you can do that, and I don't believe that you can, I will believe."

The next day at my Junior High School I felt that to finally prove to myself that God doesn't exist that I should seardh even harder than I previously had. I talked to every teacher, secreetary, friend and enemy. I heard that one of my eneimies had been seen with my glasses case. I confronted him and could not get a confession, but was stilll pretty sure that he had taken them. School had ended and I waited for my bus to take me directly to grounding. I cursed the universe for it's lack of a God. I cursed the people in the world who were naive enough to beleive in God. I cursed mysefl for being so foolishly optimistic on the off chance that a benevolent omnipotent creature would ever exist. As I got on my bus to go home, my bus driver said as I was taking my seat, "are these anyones glasses?" Fuck. I walked up the aisle and sure enough they were mine, but fuck! Now I can rationalize and say that the bus driver had been on vacation for a week and that's why I couldn't have found my glasses before she returned, but I made a bet and lost. I'm stilll pissed that I have to believe in God and constantly doubt my faith, but if there is a God, I believe there is, and sincerely doubt he has much tolerance for welchers. I didn't get grounded and I never wore glasses again. The point to this story is don't try to make deals with God, because that motherfucker is crafty and he will show you up. –A.P.”

”It's almost impossible to pick one thing between losing 3 best friends in a car accident, a mother getting breast cancer and my feelings of hopelessness that I couldn't make it all better as she has all my life, and having to leave college. But, in the end, it showed me that shit happens and you gotta get over it and not give up. Life is what you make it, whether dealing with the good or bad. To sum it up...Keep on keeping on. –J.”


”What has had a major impact on me? This question makes me look back into my brain, sifting through stories of fat girls, bad head, and worse...booze. My mental voyage comes to an end at The Firehouse, a bar in Pittsburgh. The Firehouse opens at 7:30 am, and believe you me, the best of the best come out between 7:30am & 10:30am, since the bar was on a bus route from the burbs to the inner city, the 71-A I believe. The early boozers were as follows; old white businessmen, old black construction workers, and young high school students (15-16)... That was me. It was quite a devided group. While drinking and not going to school, I found so much cool stuff at The Firehouse; a jukebox with the Germs (?), X-Ray specs, The Clash, punk fucking rock, you get the picture. So here we are teenage wastes, hard workers, and buiness men. Why? 65 cent drafts, 75 cents if you wanted to be classy and have fosters. With that being the scene, I felt that the Firehouse was the best place when things were down,wierd, or just fucked. I took a friend there when he got the shit kicked out of him for fucking some guy's girlfriend. 65 cent drafts didn't heal his wounds, but still his spirit's were high, and that was good. Once I ended up at the Firehouse after seeing someone eat human poo. The Firehouse was also a great spot to put off getting the results to my first AIDS test. I was so wasted, my girl was pissed, but no AIDS. Awesome!!!
At the end of the day I believe that I have learned that at the Firehouse you can always get drunk for cheap at 7:30 am with mixed company even if you're 15. Also, getting your ass kicked, eating poo, and pissing off your girlfriend, while awesome, are not very good ideas!!! -C.”

”The skinny pig gets fed...the fat pig gets slaughtered. This applies to all facets of life...not just related to money...Think about it! -D. BY '05”

”As a younger man I lived my life with little thought to my mortality or frailty, though at the age of 22 I had riden and raced motorcycles for many years. I had excaped in joy many a time... July 5th 2003, I crashed while practicing at a Mosport, Canada road race track. The subsequent crash left my left arm with a compount fracture of my humerus (upper arm) & ulna (fore-arm) along with a dislocated & fractured elbow. Along with the shock and trauma of the event, it left me unemployed from my mechanical engineering job and very depressed about my current state of affairs. Months passed as I lay around healing my arm. I was torn with many emotions during my recovery, mainly gratitude and love for my parents for nursing me back to health. But also a sense of anger to my previous corporate job for firing me because of my accident. In the words of my boss, he did not agree with me racing or riding motorcycles. Rather then fight the issue, I decided I really didn't want to work for a company with such a poor policy anyhow. After the second surgery to bone graft the fracture site with donor hip bone, I decided to turn my passion into a career. With the support of friends and family I was able to start my own company, involved in the sport of motocycles, as I healed my arm. It is one and a half years later, I've had a total of three major surguries to repair the damage to my left arm, and I've been self-employed for over a year. I still ride and race, but with a little more respect for the laws of physics, but more importantly, through all the physical pain and financial hardships, the unconditional support of family has allowed me to turn the tables and help me pursue the career I really want. After all, we have but one life to live, so we better make it a good one.

-E. Y. 2-8-05”

”A cafe I often visited was knocked down and paved into a parking lot the summer before I moved to college. The reality that the cafe is now a parking lot for a college cracks my heart every time I drive down Mulberry Street in Scranton, when I'm home from college. The cafe was a small, dingy, smoky venue where all the local punk rockers went. Yet it was so special because it was the only place in Scranton where I could talk to people about the Clash, the Dead Kennedies, or other favorite punk rock bands. It was a place to trade homemade 'zines with people filled with local art, poetry, and essays. It was somewhere to catch Scranton bands that kept punk rock alive by playing 4-chord music and allowing people to dance in chaotic circle pits. Really, it was a place to call home while I was in high school, an ideal hole-in-the-wall venue for leftist activisists, but most of all a venue always open for the kids with spiky hair who truly loved collecting punk rock records. How ironic the venue closed at a time when punk rock became ever more commercialized and exploited. I don't think I'll find a new place I can sit down (a few unreadable words...) about favorite shows and records, nor a place where I can discuss Ginsberg's poetry and downfall of America. I wonder if anwhere is left so pure, inviting, and inspiring, a place where the door is always open. -B. F.”

”Music. I was surrounded by it growing up, but only on records. No one in my family played an instrument, except my Grandfather, who played piano and guitar, but as a kid growing up in the early nineties, I could not relate to Frank Sinatra and Chet Atkins, only later in my life could I understand and appreciate what they were atttempting to convey to their respective audiences. My parents listened to the Steve Miller Band, Billy Joel, Elton John and many other good classic rock artists! However, as a kid, I thought that's what music was. I thought it sounded nice, but again, I had trouble relating to it. It was not until I heard the opening riff to "Smells like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana during the summer of 1992 on my friends front porch that I felt a true connection between music and my personality. It was agnst driven, sarcastic, aggresseive, and a multitude of other emotions that a typical middle school studen searching for an identity could relate to. I didn't need to talk or pretentd to act like someone else in my grade who had more friends than me. I just had to listen , imagine, and get lost in my own little world. –K. S.”


”Family. I think the biggest influence was family. Growing up with Father the dylan Fam, Mother classic rocker, brother, a Hendrix Zepplin afficianado, sisters both play with instruments. Family, we're thrown into circumstances beyond control. We don't choose our family and we deal with what we have. I had a fortunate variety of influences with the context of family. –(unsigned