Malibu, California - 2001: She was smiling. She said she enjoyed it, and I sensed something important had just transpired. In my life there have been many people who have played important roles - a disproportionate number of them women.

The events that brought Suzanne and I together were pure happenstance - transcending time and geography - two Baby Boomers, both from the suburban prairies of the Midwest who just happened to meet at the somewhat exotic locale known as Malibu, California. But for that chance meeting, you might not be reading my words right now.

You see, as a young teen I began writing a story - a journal, really - recording my thoughts, feelings and the events of the day in contemporaneous prose; each entry written, pretty much, as the event described was unfolding. I had no idea that the times in which I lived and wrote would prove to be so politically, technologically and socially intoxicating; no idea that I was chronicling the collective thoughts and experiences of the largest generation in our nation’s history - that post-World War II population explosion that came to be known as “The Baby Boom Generation.”

The seed of the story came from my high school English teacher, Miss Langilier. Miss Langilier was one of those shapely young women that teenage boys lust over. She was probably in her late twenties at the time, not yet married with children of her own.

Young and pretty though she may have been, Miss Langilier was not one of those cool, hip teachers who wants to be everybody’s pal. Miss L knew that since she was only a quick decade older than her students, respect was not a given - she needed to earn it. In the end, for me at least, Miss L far exceeded mere respect; in the fleeting time I knew her she managed to become one of a small handful of women who would have a profound and lasting effect on the course of my entire life.

Miss L assigned a writing project to our class. The project would be in lieu of a midterm exam and would count as 80% of our semester grade. Nearly every one of the students was ecstatic about there being no big midterm exam. But that glee quickly faded when we learned what our teacher had in mind.

The assignment project was to keep a journal of our experiences as high school students for the entire semester. Immediately the boys - myself included - went into grumble mode, complaining that we could hardly be expected to keep diaries like a girl. Several females in class began to giggle. Sure, why shouldn’t they giggle? This assignment was a piece of cake if you were a girl; most of them probably already kept diaries and took pleasure in recording their daily thoughts and emotions. To us guys, the whole idea was foreign and completely absurd. Absurd or not, we were stuck with this writing assignment and took refuge only in the fact that it was still preferable to an exam.

The day she assigned the writing project to our class, I’m sure Miss Langilier had no way of knowing the lasting impact it would have upon my life or the baleful kinship she was creating. Indeed, the mark Miss L left upon me has proven indelible and everlasting.

While I don’t recall whatever became of that original journal-keeping effort or what grade it earned, long after the semester’s assignment was completed, for some intangible reason, I continued writing on my own. Not a day-by-day diary by any means, but irregular entries that pondered and recorded events . . . the compilation of which began to chronicle the life and times of an entire generation.

And this is what ultimately brought two members of that generation - Suzanne and I - together. But I suppose the best way to begin is at the beginning - back at a time when the social upheaval of the 1960s was in its infancy, its cry barely audible at my small home town in Illinois; back when an entire generation was just beginning to come of age, venturing forth into a world that would soon become virtually unrecognizable; a generation that would move through time, changing history like some vast tidal wave by their sheer numbers; a generation on the move, never intending to settle for the life laid out for them by their predecessors.

There is where my story begins . . .1965.