Billy B. explores his techie side by creating a Home in cyberspace.		August 1, 2002 American Salon
	When I was a kid, I used to lay in my twin bed and listen to a little white transistor radio on my nightstand. I would listen to it for hours really low so my parents wouldn't hear. The radio station was based in Chicago, and I listened as the callers made requests. I imagined what each person looked like, how they lived, and what they did. I had never traveled, but I had seen Chicago on the "The Bob Newhart Show," and was fascinated by it—or at least by the perfect place I created in my mind. Every night I would listen, and every night I took this trip. Even if just for a little while, I was somewhere else. I wasn't just the same old Billy, laying in the same twin bed with the wagon-wheel headboard, in the same bedroom, in the same house, in the same town. I listened to the words of tunes like "I Write The Songs," as I cried myself to sleep. But before you feel too sorry for me, I should tell you that to this day I cry when someone wins a car on the "Price is Right." But on those nights, it was different. I cried because I was lonely. I didn't feel like I fit in at home or school, and I didn't know why. I grew up with the same kids my entire life. In a town of 5,000 people, you started school with them, and if you finished, you finished together. In order to be accepted, I was the clown. I tried to make people laugh. Girls always liked me. My best friend was my cousin Lorie. She was a tomboy, and everyone knew that if they bullied me, they would have to deal with her. So nobody really bothered me, at least until Lorie moved away in seventh grade. Things became more difficult for me as a teen. Peer pressure was intense. My new best friends were Julie Bowen and Lisa Jurney. We were inseparable. Listen, I know kids are kids and can be cruel, but what I realized just recently is that I was a bully too. I would look for the weaker ones, even weaker than me. I would pick out the poor kids, the kids that didn't have clothes that matched or had greasy hair. To divert the attention away from myself, I would make fun of them. I would join the same crowd that had called me names and excluded me. Elizabeth Chaney was very poor, taller than all the other kids, overweight, and what's now called a "special-needs kid." Alan Robinson was also poor. Ultimately, they were just like me. None of us really fit in, but Alan tried really hard. He ate bugs and crickets during recess and would flip his eyelids inside out for attention. We called him "Alan Robinson, the skid row bum." He would laugh, and eventually he proudly referred to himself as that. Maybe he had the right idea. Maybe I should have called myself "Billy, the big sissy." I guess he thought that made it hurt less, but I know it still hurt. Elizabeth Chaney became the tagline for the worst insult you could possibly give. I don't know if she ever knew that. I hope not. We all finished school and went our separate ways. It seems like a million years ago since that transistor radio and twin bed, but if I let myself, I could go back in an instant. I work at it everyday so I never end up there again. If I could change anything, I wouldn't change the difficult times because it has led me to where I am today. But I would change the way I treated all the Elizabeth Chaneys and Alan Robinsons throughout my life. As much as anyone I know how it felt, and I'm sorry.		Billy B. with childhood buddies Julie and Lisa. Billy B. as a young boy.