(I wrote this in third person so it would sound like someone else wrote it about me.)

Tom Larson was born in northwestern Wisconsin sometime in the sixties, although he is unable to remember the exact moment of his birth. Tom's father was an overly conscientious dentist who never made much money, and his mother was the wife of an overly conscientious dentist who never made much money. Just before kindergarten Tom's family moved south to Monroe, Wisconsin, the county seat of Green County, the self-proclaimed "Swiss cheese capital of the world," a distinction once held by the country of Switzerland. Rebellious even as a kindergartner, Tom was spanked by his teacher, Mrs. Langston, for refusing to participate in a class project in which the children were asked to use thick yarn to weave pot holders to give to their mothers as gifts. A person of deep principles even as a five-year-old, Tom refused to give in even after being spanked, citing his firmly held conviction that "boys who sew are sissies." Halfway through second grade Tom's family moved to Rochester, Minnesota, where he enjoyed social and academic anonymity throughout the remainder of his primary and secondary education.

Upon graduating from high school, Tom enrolled at a Baptist college for reasons unknown even to this day. Tom continued his tradition of social and academic anonymity at the school, Bethel College, believing it the wisest approach in an institution where one could be expelled for drinking, dancing, playing cards or smoking cigarettes. After working diligently to finish a four year program by the end of year six, Tom graduated from Bethel in 1987 with a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing. Tom completed his studies with a cumulative GPA of 2.997, beginning a long tradition of falling just short of his goals. In November of 1987 Tom married Dana Passons, his best friend's little sister, and two days after the wedding the blissfully naive couple packed up a U-Haul and moved from frigid Minnesota to sunny Colorado, with no jobs or place to live and only $800 of wedding cash between them. After six months of working as a receptionist for one of the Baby Bells, Tom landed his dream job of becoming an ad whore at the notorious advertising firm of DDB Needham Worldwide. Thus began Tom's undistinguished career in advertising, hocking such glamourous products as fiberglass insulation and accounting software.

Tom quit the advertising business in 1995, after a mountaintop "spiritual high" in which God spoke to him and told him to quit advertising and quit smoking pot. Tom quit advertising immediately, but tried unsuccessfully for years to convince God that the second directive was a little over the top. Tom floundered over the next few years in activities such as making log furniture, plowing driveways, and writing the Mediocre American Novel, which remains unpublished to this day. Weary of Tom's refusal to give up his addiction, God sped up the recovery process by banishing both Tom and Dana to the island of Hispaniola in 1997, where they would serve a year of hard labor as disillusioned missionaries in a freakishly legalistic church that preached that women should not wear jewelry, make-up or pants. After surviving hurricanes, ingrown toenails and countless run-ins with corrupt Dominican policemen, the couple returned to the US and vowed to put their year in that God-forsaken country behind them. However, God once again revealed his love of irony so shamelessly demonstrated in the Old Testament by sneakily coercing Tom and Dana to start a new non-profit that would work with churches in the Dominican Republic to provide safe drinking water to their communities. After exploiting Tom's naivete and using it to grow Healing Waters International to the point of having built projects in 70 communities in four countries, God then let Tom know that his services would no longer be required. Tom left the organization in 2008 and began a new journey as an unemployed former non-profit executive, with no further direction from God than the word "WRITE." Tom now spends his days finding excuses to avoid writing at his home in the mountains west of Denver, where he lives with Dana and their two daughters, Sara and Casey.