How Jared Lorenzen inspired so many, including me

We never got to be friends, exactly. We were more like soldiers who had fought in the same war. We talked in shorthand. I didn't have to explain eating a box of Girl Scout cookies in one sitting. He didn't have to explain trying to find a pair of pants that fit his waist and his thighs at the same time.

In a lot of the important ways, we had lived each other's lives.

In other ways, we hadn't. Jared Lorenzen had been a star quarterback at Kentucky and won a Super Bowl ring with the New York Giants. I'd had desk jobs my whole life, stringing together words for a living. That's why I was writing about him, instead of the other way around. But when we talked -- and we talked a lot, that spring…