On top of the container was a Coca Cola collectable holiday truck set. I opened it up and immediately took a grease pencil and drew a small town on my countertop, where I could drive these small vehicles.

The act of doing this summoned one of the most purely evil moments of my entire childhood, when I was about eight. Georgie Jones from down the block was in my back yard with me. We were playing with our cars and trucks in the dirt of our newly-built house in Lawton, Oklahoma. I was using a garden hoe to carve roads.

(At that point in my life, an observer might guess that my adult career choice would have been “civil engineer” or “urban planner.”)

Anyway, I was building a road to a new subdivision, and I told Georgie that the road was closed. He drove his truck down it anyway. Something inside me snapped. When he got close enough, I yanked the hoe up hard enough to hit him in the forehead. He grabbed his head and ran off crying.

Later in the day his mom, understandably angry, told me he needed five stitches to sew up the gash in his forehead.