As a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, high school student clerking in a retail food store, Jerry encounters professional con artists.
As a three year old living in Granite City, Illinois, Jerry is taken to get his immunization shots in the military manner. He becomes afraid.
As a four year old living in Granite City, Illinois, after getting off a public city bus, Jerry gets lost walking to his babysitter's house. A teenager rescues him.
Living in Granite City, Illinois, Jerry is with a friend cracking walnuts. His friend becomes envious of his success and tries to exploit the situation. Jerry's protests are unexpectedly supported.
As a Wisconsin tenth grader, Jerry gets caught up in hostile Juvenile behavior that provokes a punitive response from state government.
As a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, high school student, Jerry is accused of stealing money as a part-time employee of a local YMCA.
As a three year old living near St. Louis, Missouri, Jerry is given an order by his father. At the urging of older boys, he disobeys his father's orders.
As a three year old living in Granite City, Illinois, Jerry runs away from a daycare center. He gets lost and is helped by a stranger.
At the end of his first year of graduate school toward a doctorate in psychology, Jerry decides to see a woman claiming to be a psychic. He is surprised by the woman's appearance and by her predictions.
Jerry and his friends continue their investigations into psychic experiences. This leads them to a psychic, Pat Sisson, who is trying to understand her development of psychic abilities. Jerry and his friends struggle with the psychic in understanding what is happening.
Soldier Skills, part one of two parts, is an account of the army's teaching Jerry the skills required of a soldier during the eight weeks of basic training in the fall of 1966 at Ft. Dix, New Jersey. Those skills included hand-to-hand fighting and bayonet training. Jerry's frustrations produced unique behaviors.
Podcast 57, The Chipmunk, is an account of Jerry being assigned an impossible task to accomplish at the celebration party for achieving senior candidate status a month before graduating from infantry OCS in the late spring of 1967. No one knew if the mission could be accomplished until the last possible second.
Podcast 75, "Stuck and Unstuck," relates events I observed and was involved in that demonstrated the strength of one's beliefs when making decisions or interpreting the behaviors of others. These interactions took place during my time at an alternative school. I estimate that these events happened around 1990.
As a four year old living in Granite City, Illinois, Jerry has trouble sleeping due to nightmares. Once that issue is resolved he finds himself visiting the stars.
Moving from Granite City, Illinois, to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1949, to start third grade, Jerry notes some differences in the beliefs the two communities have about children's behavior. He considers informing his new elementary school that boys and girls happily played together on the school playground in Granite City.
As a ten year old living in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jerry intervenes when he observes an older boy trying to take a bicycle from a younger girl. His intervention produces unexpected results.
As a sophomore at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, Jerry decides to hitchhike back to his old hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to spend spring break with his high school friends. The hitchhiking adventure reaffirms the kindness of strangers.
As a Wisconsin ninth and tenth grader, Jerry learns to cope with bullies. His behavior reflects the many issues within the subculture of juveniles he inhabits.
While working as a deckhand on an ocean-going dredge boat out of Port Lavaca, Texas, in the summer of his sophomore college year, Jerry learns the ropes. He also encounters racial injustice that explodes into violence.
Completing his last summer working on a Texas gulf coast dredge boat and returning to central Kentucky for his senior year of college, Jerry decides to explore Houston, Texas, late one Saturday evening before catching a train in the morning. The events of that evening confront his sense of trust on several levels.