On Reagan: Reagan is an almost mythological creature in my mind. He's somehow mixed up in my head with Hawk from GIJoe and Optimus Prime and all the other stuff from my childhood that exemplified greatness and nobility. I realize the idealized picture I hold in my mind is probably as distorted a caricature as the puppets made of him on the old Spitting Image and DC Follies TV shows, but it's still noble and great to me.

I realize that lots of kids who grew up with me probably have the opposite view. In their minds he represented the Emperor from Return of the Jedi, the wrinkled old man who wanted you to do bad stuff.

I don't think I knew too many of those kids. To all of us he was cool, he was funny, he was tough, he was everything we thought a president should be.

So now that I'm older, and I try to sort through all the data and books and articles that have been churned out about him, try to filter what's true and what's written by people whose glasses are tinted as red with blood as mine are by the rose, I find a noble, courageous, optimistic man, idealistic and caring when needed, but firm and unrelenting when necessary.

I'll miss him.