Colin (not his real name) and I went to elementary school together.  We were only in the same class in 1st and 4th grade, but he was prominent enough for me to remember because his mom was a first grade teacher.  We weren't in her class for the obvious reason that he'd either be picked on mercilessly by his peers or picked on mercilessly by his mom.  He was lucky.  I was put in his mom's class once as "time-out" for acting up in my own class, and I didn't like being there either.

I also remember who is was since Colin's dad was a deacon in the church.  This being a Catholic school, the dad was involved in fund raisers and business of that sort.  However, unlike his dad, I don't remember Colin standing out all that much from the rest of the crowd.  I could tell you more about his dad being a jerk and how he delivered a really weird sermon one of the few times they gave him a turn instead of the presiding priest.  In fact, I think that was the only time he ever gave one, probably because it was so out of sorts with what we were used to getting.  Maybe he had issues.  He died of a heart attack at a relatively young age, around the time Colin was in high school, I think.  

We had moved away by the time that bit of news reached me, but my mom used to stay current on the talk of the town through her contacts in the old neighborhood.  I heard more about Colin after the move through that grapevine than when he and I lived in the same subdivision.  For one thing, his name turned up in the paper a lot whenever he appeared in a play.  There was speculation among the locals that he might be headed for Hollywood any day now.

He never really made it to Hollywood until recently, and even then it's only been a handful of tv movies over the past few years.  In the meantime, he got to be a big shot on the theater circuit more as a director than an actor since getting stocky like his dad meant he was less leading man material than grumpy sidekick, much like his dad.

He ended up heading a theater company in New Orleans, then got a better one in NY, then a few years later came back to NO after (by his own description) being burned out.  Most recently he ended up heading yet another company across the Golden Gate from San Francisco, hence his recent push into the movie biz.  Or maybe vice versa?  Whichever, the commute isn't nearly so bad.