Life is, as the saying goes, stranger than fiction.

I suppose that’s why I’m here, sitting at Gate 4 in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport with an NSA agent to either side of me, complete with dark suits and sunglasses. My hands are cuffed, yet neatly tucked under an obtrusive blue hooded sweatshirt. That’s what we called them back in 1991, not “hoodies,” though I’ll admit I kind of like the new term.

Can you picture this scene? I’m not sure what the point of the sweatshirt was. I mean, it was obvious something was going on with the three of us and anyone with half a brain would know that I was a prisoner of some sort. Probably highly dangerous, wanted by the FBI on multiple counts of murder and mayhem, right? Well, not quite.

This is ten years before the World Trade Center bombings. There was no fear of terrorism from Islamic extremists; those guys were over in Kuwait and Iraq getting there asses kicked by General “Stormin’ Norman” Schwarzkopf while the oil fields of Kuwait burned.

This was the year the Soviet Union would be gone for good. Both the United States and Russia agreeing to do away with most, if not all, of their nuclear weapons. The Cold War was finally over.

1991 was the year the Los Angles police beat Rodney King while George Holliday caught the whole thing on video, the year Jeffrey Dahmer was caught with the remains of eleven chopped up bodies in his home, and the year that Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court was held up by allegations of sexual harassment by Anita Hill.

The AIDS epidemic turned ten years old in 1991 with an estimated eight million people infected world-wide. When Kimberly Bergalis died from the disease after contracting it from her dentist, there was an outcry of mandatory testing of health care professionals. Yep, it took ten years for people to realize that AIDS wasn’t just a “gay disease,” and in 1991 the world was still scared to death of it.

This is the year the economic boom of the 80’s died when unemployment jumped to almost seven percent and companies were making unprecedented lay-offs. IBM, General Motors and other big businesses were cutting the fat any way they could and job hunters became so disillusioned that they started giving up looking for work. Savings and loans were being bailed out and everyone from businessmen to politicians to pundits were pointing fingers. Anything about that sound familiar to you?

Stuff was happening around the world. Big news.

So who am I? I must be someone important, being manacled and escorted by Federal Agents, right? People walking by us in the airport were wondering. I could see it in their faces.

There was big news happening in 1991, after all.

I’ll tell you how I got here. I’ll tell you all about it.

It all started with a guitar.