I’ve lived quite a few places over the years. This came to light in a new way recently as I had a background check done for one of the “freelance” jobs I’m doing, writing for NCAA.com.

As weird as it seems, to be a national volleyball blogger, they needed to know all about my background, legal history, etc., etc. Whatever. I have nothing to hide. That’s pretty much always been the case as most of you know I have a big mouth and will say what I think and talk about nearly any topic (except politics and deep water; I hate both), especially in my personal life. Work-wise, I’ve grown a bit over the years and now have some restraint, albeit not much.

So when they said they wanted to do a background check, I was like, Sure, fire up the computer and get the paper ready because you’re going to have a helluva list to print.

I was right.

There’s a box on the form that you can mark to have all the results from the background check forwarded to you. That way I can see what they’re looking at and what kind of stuff I have on there.

Really, it was pretty boring. Not like I’ve never had a run-in or four with the police when I was younger, but not to the point where it’s followed me and led to significant issues now.

The funny part was thinking about what the people requesting the information must have thought when it listed all past addresses in the last 20 years under all my names and aliases. Cha-ching. This was a boatload.

Under both the name I go by–Jerry–and my given name–Jeremy–there are exactly 16 different addresses listed for me since September of 1990.

Not bad. Not too shabby at all as that basically means I’ve moved to a different address, on average, every 15 months since I started college. This doesn’t count the times I crashed on couches and floors for a few weeks (or sometimes months) at a time in college and immediately afterward.

It also doesn’t even venture into the K-12 years. I may touch on that some other time, as I could talk about going to Windsor (K to 2nd grade), Olsen Park (3rd), North Park (4th), Rock Cut (5th), Marshall (6th-7th), Harlem South (8th-9th) and Harlem North High School (10th-11th-12th). Many of these years were spent bouncing back and forth between a one-bedroom house (last time sharing the room with three siblings while parentals slept on hide-a-bed in living room) and the trailer park.

But that’s for another time.

Looking over this timeline that began within two months of when Pearl Jam officially started touring, my most productive stretch had to be from 1994 to 1997. During those three-and-a-half whirlwind years, I managed to establish residence at seven different addresses in four cities/towns across three states. None of them were within five hours of where I grew up.

This era included time in a major city while living in the suburbs of Chicago followed immediately by a stint living in a 500-person town that did have a stop sign (read: A stop sign), and then some time living in a college town in Southern Illinois before a move to the East Coast and college-town life in North Carolina.

Damn, I’m lucky that little blue car got some good gas mileage.

So, what does this have to do with today?

Well, over the weekend I finally got my new tags for Georgia. It’s the sixth state I’ve lived in (fifth in the last 15 years) and now I feel official.

But the biggest reason I wanted to blog this was because I went ahead and did it. I finally got personalized plates.

If you saw my tattoo pic from last week, you would have noticed the CCMP that goes down the right side of the playing cards. That’s the short name for our group of guys from back home in Machesney Park, including the same ones I’ve been playing poker with for 23 years now. I figured if they mean that much to me that I’d get it inked on my body for life, I might as well show it off and pay a few bucks to get it on my car too.

So, here you go. I’m now a peach. At least for a couple years until it’s time to move again.