It was 2 AM on some July night of 2003 and I was hopping on foot – or it felt like I was hopping. The fire in my pelvis was like a thousand needles traveling through some tube I couldn’t pronounce, but I knew worse pain was coming – soon. Doc warned me. I was locked onto my wife’s steady gaze. “Now you know what it’s like having a baby.” Actually, I had been thinking about that old joke: What’s the difference between having a baby and a kidney stone? You don’t have to put the kidney stone through college. In a pathetic way, this was kind of funny – how many guys were up right now at 2 in the morning hopping on one foot? I’m gonna have a kid kid kid but I can’t say that I’m glad. I’m gonna have a kid kid kid but I ain’t gonna be a dad. I’m not sure what I did did did. It hurts me to the bone. ‘Cause I’m gonna have a kid kid kid kid kid kidney stone… The night I gave I gave birth to a kidney stone, I also gave birth to a song called Kid, which became an idea for a musical about a hospital. It would be called Stitches. But it was always just an idea. Over the years I wrote a couple other tunes for it and convinced myself I was making progress, but writing Stitches was going to be as painful as giving birth to another kidney stone…