And once again, our next question will change things up a bit, as Chris has a personal question for me.

He writes,

Who was the first person you ever saved?

Or who was the first person you failed to save? Well, oddly enough,

the same story answers both questions, though either case applies to different people.

When I was a teen, I used to love to wander different parts of Chicago.

I suppose that habit hasn't left me really. But one

afternoon I was sitting at a bench in Grand Park near Buckingham Fountain. There

was this little girl running around the fountain screaming.

No parent or guardian was anywhere in sight to tell her to stop.

A few others were near the area at the time,

probably likely in part to the girl's behavior keeping

them away. But there was a street artist nearby. He was an older man with a bucket full

of chalk. Earlier in the day he'd created a beautiful

sidewalk rendition of Suraz Sunday on Le Grand Chate. The little girl, as she ran and screamed screamed crossed the man's artwork several times

damaging the chalk mural before it had even been a few hours old. As she kept

running and screaming the old artist drew a set of stairs that descended into some dark underground.

In the shadows, at the bottom of the stairs, You could tell there was some monstrous creature lurking,

waiting. I was seated behind him and he didn't notice me watching him create his second mural.

As he finished it and as the girl came screaming around the corner, he grabbed her wrist and threw

her down the chalk drawn stairwell.

For a moment the stairs were real, then merely art again.

...