Apologia

Rico says that he, like most people, has done many things in his life that he should apologize for.

 

This young lady, Deborah Stellman, is someone Rico was finally able to put a name to (assuming that is her; that's Deborah in his high school yearbook in 1970 on the right; we had two people examine the comparison). She was in his fourth grade class (the photo on the left), circa 1963, at Barron Park Elementary School in Palo Alto, California. Rico participated in (though he was not the ringleader, contrary to what everyone else said) a pelting of her with our baseball mitts (therefore no damage, other than to her nervous system). Why? At this remove, who the fuck knows; given the lack of brains of ten-year-olds, it could've been anything... We all got hauled into the principal's office and ripped a new one, then had to apologize. Just in case, Rico's doing it again.

And, just to prove that most of us do improve with age, here's Rico in 1970:

Later in life, but no smarter, Rico was allowed to drive his father's 1968 MG-B, rather like the one in the photo above. One night, out by himself, he decided to drive on Highway 280, a then-new freeway in the foothills above Palo Alto. All well and good, until he decided, belatedly, to take an exit ramp at what turned out to be excessive speed. Faced with the dubious choice between riding it over the far side of the ramp into the unknown darkness and undoubtedly rolling it (thus ending his stupidity fatally) or cranking the wheel and deliberately spinning it into the bowl in the center of the ramp, Rico chose (wisely, for once) the latter. When it came, safely, to a stop, Rico could only sit and ponder life's choices as the car that had followed him off the freeway drove, slowly and incredulously, by, with both driver and passenger staring out at the idiot in the MG...

There are more things Rico should be apologizing for, and people (like Mark Pal Freeman) he should be apologizing to, but some things are just too embarrassing to relate...