In the eleventh grade, Billy Campbell's class was given a 'huge' assignment -- which Campbell naturally did not begin to work on until the night before it was due.

"We were supposed to find somebody in the real world and interview them and have a whole relationship with them and write a paper about it. And I made the whole thing up -- I just completely made it up.

"Some itinerant preacher from Spiderback, Montana, is where he was from, and I made the whole thing up, and the last day of class I told her I'd done this..."

And? "She was so cool that she gave me extra points for creativity."

[A self-confessed superstitious white-knuckle flyer, Billy often kissed the planes on which he was flying before take-off, and planned to keep kissing them. ("It's worked for me so far!")]