November 14, 2013 at 08:51AM

via Facebook I've been given the number 3 : 1. The first piece of writing I ever published was a short newspaper article I wrote for my seminar class in Third Grade. I was defending why Ronald Reagan was going to be such a great President against all the other members of that class who believed in Jimmy Carter. It was published in the "Kid's Korner" of the York Daily Record in 1980. This article and the ensuing debate in my class were the beginning of my political awareness. I thought for a time I wanted to be a political journalist after I graduated college, but I realized I didn't want to spend my life working in a job that would piss me off each and every day. I did, however, earn a Bachelor's in Journalism with a minor in Political Science and a concentration in Criminology. I was able to take classes like American Foreign Policy since 1945 and Politico-Military Strategy the year the Berlin Wall came down. 2. I once wrote a research paper extolling the virtues of David Duke as a possible senator. I didn't believe a word I wrote and only chose the topic because I knew it would piss off the professor. I wanted to piss off the professor because the first words out of his mouth on day one of the class were, "I know all you women are only here to get your Mrs. degree." I got an A on the paper and had the joy of sitting through the conference with the professor who admitted that while he hated the content, I had more than met the standards of the assignment and he couldn't give me an F just because he didn't agree with me. I don't remember the professor's name anymore. 3. I am adopted. There has never been a time in my life when I didn't know I was adopted. Nor has there ever been a time in my life when I wished my natural mother had kept me. My natural aunt and adoptive aunt have been best friends since high school and have never lost touch with one another, but I didn't meet my natural sister until after my natural mother died. I never met my natural mother and my only regret regarding her has been that I wish she would have let my mother adopt both me and my sister instead of insisting that my sister was too old to be adopted when I was.