Andrew Reid wants the ball.

He glides down the side of the court, quickly coming to a stop near the baseline. He pivots toward the lane and waves his strong, calloused hands at his teammates.

"I'm wide open!" he bellows, scrunching his lips as he watches one of his teammates shoot the ball.

As the ball clanks off the rim, Reid spins, rolls down court, weaves in front of his frustrated opponent, and barks steadily.

"Turn, turn, turn!" he urges. "Defense!"

When one of his teammates on the Temple Rolling Owls wheelchair basketball team snags a loose ball, Reid, 15, flies back toward his basket, cuts to the corner and screams, "Kick it out!"

He catches a bounce pass, pokes his tongue out the right side of his mouth and drives toward the hoop. It doesn't matter to him that he's barely 4 feet tall and only 110 pounds. Reid dribbles into a crowd of older, beefier players from the Delaware Destroyers and launches a shot.

It doesn't drop but it doesn't really matter. His team is easily crushing their opponent.

And besides, Reid isn't even supposed to be here right now.

The team, which practices every Saturday at the Carousel House on Belmont Avenue, is open to teens with spina bifida, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, cancer or any other physical or developmental challenges.

Reid has osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bones disease. He breaks easily, especially during the winter months.

"I hurt my shoulder so I'm not supposed to be playing much," he grudgingly admits.

He's supposed to be saving himself for the big tournament. He practiced with the Komets earlier in the day, but when a team he moonlights with, the Rolling Owls, has a game, Reid can't resist.

"I'm really competitive," he says. "I hate to lose. I take wheelchair basketball very, very seriously."

Kirlin's 10-year old daughter, Katie, became paralyzed from the waist down when a tumor crushed her spinal cord in 1987. Between operations, Katie competed in wheelchair games across the country. She won medals at the junior National Wheelchair Games, and set a national record in swimming.

"Playing wheelchair games gave her hope," says Kirlin, 60. "Going to all these events and seeing all these other people in a similar situation, it made her feel like she could achieve anything."

The cost of competing--travel expenses, hotels and meals--was enormous. So a group of Kirlin's neighborhood friends, mostly longshoreman, organized a charity golf tournament. They raised $800.

Katie succumbed to cancer in 1989 but the golf tournament in her honor has continued annually. The 21st event in 2008 raised more than $60,000. Over the years, Kirlin estimates they've raised more than $1.3 million, and all of the money helps defray costs for young people participating in wheelchair sports.

The Komets are the pride of the Katie Kirlin Fund. The program has a national reputation, and over the last five years, nine Komets earned scholarships to play wheelchair basketball in college. Sarah Poiesz, a current Komet, is weighing offers from several universities.

"That man is a saint," Sarah's mother, Lynne Poiesz, says of Joe Kirlin. "I don't think he even recognizes the significance of what he's doing."

He's become a team leader, and he's more independent all around. Despite his fragile legs that can sustain his body weight only for brief periods, Reid learned to shuttle himself around the region using mass transit. He maneuvers city streets in his wheelchair while carrying his basketball wheelchair and gear.

Every day, he shoots 500 baskets and sprints numerous suicides. He lifts weights three times per week. He spends all of his free time on the court--playing, observing and absorbing everything.

"He probably knows more about the game than anyone on the team," says Jordan Prusack, coach of the Komets. "He's a born point guard, a general on the court."

Reid hopes to parlay his talents into a college scholarship. Then he wants to become a lawyer and sports agent.

His greatest fault is an insatiable love of the game.

Reid arrived at the court at 9 a.m., practiced with the Komets at noon, started the game with the Rolling Owls at 3, and he's still yapping now at 4.

"Come on!" he implores. "Let's shut them down!"

Prusack, who disapproves of Reid's extracurricular game, says, "They'll shove him out of here when they shut the lights off."

Regarding Jennifer Merrill's recent cover story about getting pregnant at 18:

Thank you for printing this amazing and heartfelt article. This article will help people who have been in this situation, children who were adopted and anyone who thinks they can judge the decisions made by woman in this situation. I have no doubt Jennifer Merrill will be a successful journalist and will make the right decision for her and her baby.

Plenty of teenagers in this city get pregnant every day. Some of them will be forced to abort the baby for lack of money or support. Why are we treating this one case as news? Because she's white? Because she's pretty enough to put on the cover? Because she was narcissistic enough to think that her story is compelling and decided to write about it?

A pregnant teenager is not news. This is a sanitized version of an everyday event and a pity party thrown by a member of a demographic that PW desperately wants reading their paper masquerading as something newsworthy.

If this is really what we have to accept as content these days, you could at least do us the favor of having an editor look at the story or make it an "as told to" deal and let someone who can actually string words together to make a sentence relate the melodrama to us. This article is cliche-ridden, overwrought and trying far too hard to be "writerly." The cover of a product that's going to be consumed by an audience is not the place to hold amateur hour. We readers deserve much better than this.

Jennifer Merrill is a brave young lady. As a young woman myself, the thoughts of pregnancy are more than a little overwhelming. I'm sure it was hard for her to get a positive perspective, but she has proven that unexpectancies in life can be shockingly happy discoveries in the end. Merrill may be young but her mental strength is inspiring. To think that she is making such a weighty decision during this time of her life may be unfortunate in many ways considering the finance, time and attention needed for a child in addition to our already hectic and stressful lives as students, but from this story I have faith she will be able to make the right decisions for herself and baby.

Not to sound heartless, but this is nothing compared to what some people go through. How about the teenagers who get pregnant and their parents abandon them? I don't see why this is newsworthy and I am offended that this story is being glorified while so many are out there with zero support and no one cares to tell their story.

This story is beautifully written and one that touches the heart whether you have ever been in a similar situation or not. I think it's great that PW is looking to the next generation to contribute. I mean, do we really need another story about the economy or housing crisis? Merrill may not have the writing ability that someone who's been in the business for 20 years does, but I think her article is amazing and heartfelt.

Not to disparage the young author and mother (I wish her the best of luck in the choices she decides are best for her and her child), but this is not a realistic view of the lives of most teen parents. Because she's white, pretty and middle class, it's newsworthy?

I'm also a little turned off by the seemingly anti-choice vibe this article gave me. Certainly it wouldn't make for a newsworthy story if she had chosen to terminate her pregnancy. Society puts so much shame and secrecy around abortion; it's really unfair. I respect the choice she made, but the fact is she had a choice. We never focus or write articles about the similarly brave women who choose not to carry to term for their own reasons. The section about abortion seemed to demonize the act, not discuss it as a viable choice for many people.

Jennifer Merrill has written an important and engaging article. She and her family are dealing with her unplanned pregnancy with courage and thoughtful pursuit of facts, in order to make the best decision possible for the child involved. To complicate this decision, as she has so eloquently expressed in her article, her choice cannot be made by rational thinking alone; this is a decision that will be influenced by the heart.

This story raises awareness about the important issues of unplanned pregnancy, abortion, adoption and responsible decision-making. The writer's story is enhanced by the authenticity of her young age, voice and demographic.

Whatever Merrill chooses to do, once

her choice is made, I hope that she will have peace of mind and spirit in the knowledge that she made the right choice, and go forward with self-confidence into the rest of her life.

My main concern over the article about a young teenage mother's experience with an unplanned pregnancy is that Philadelphia Weekly has been conned into putting forth a pro-life perspective veiled in a human interest story. The young writer should be commended, along with the thousands of others across the country in similar situations, for confronting her situation and exploring her options and feelings, and as someone who is pro-choice, I fully support her decision to continue with the pregnancy. But PW owes its readers a better explanation for how this article came about and why it chose to publish such a piece.

While abortion is never something to be celebrated, it is a viable option for women in her situation, yet all the tell-tale signs of someone who has been co-opted by the pro-life establishment are pretty clear within the article­--but they aren't explored in any detail. If publishing this article was an attempt to create dialogue about the politics of the abortion debate, fine, make that clear. By not addressing this issue in any meaningful way, it leaves the reader suspicious of the fact that PW has been used as a pawn in a very serious debate that continues to captivate the country. At the very least, readers deserve an opposing point of view.

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Philly artisans worry the federal government will put them out of business.

The handmade wooden cars that Frank Burkhauser sells in his Pine Street shop will not poison your children. He's sure of it.

"It's wood and some mineral oils," says Burkhauser, who owns Spirit of the Artist, a store selling a wide array of crafts. "I happen to know it's safe, whether it's tested or not. It's wood and finish. They can eat it if they want."

Burkhauser's toys probably won't appear on a kids' menu anytime soon. But he and numerous other Philadelphia artisans are worried that new federal testing rules designed to protect children will end up forcing them to give up making toys, bibs, sweaters and other handmade items for children--leaving the entertainment and clothing of American youth entirely in the hands of big corporations.

"There's panic in the market already," Burkhauser says.

That panic was created by the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), a federal law passed last year in the wake of safety scandals involving Chinese-made products. The act requires that all products created for children--including books, clothes and wooden toys--undergo testing and certification for toxic substances such as lead and phthalate.

What's more, the rules apply both to big businesses and the "mompreneurs" making bibs to sell on Etsy. Mattel can afford to pay $550 to test a toy; for Philly's community of knitters, woodworkers and other artisans--as well as the stores, like Burkhauser's, that sell their goods--that same cost could be a deal breaker.

"There's fear in the buyers because the buyers think they're gonna have to pull out in the future," Burkhauser says.

The crafters have already received one break. Facing an uproar over the requirements, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has issued a "stay of enforcement," meaning the new rules--which were set to go into effect this month--won't be enforced until Feb. 10, 2010.

That leaves the craft community uncertain about what's next.

"There's been some attorneys general who say they intend to enforce the law," says Kathleen Fasanella, author of the book The Entrepreneur's Guide to Sewn Product Manufacturing. "We don't know how stringent they're going to be."

But there is an opportunity to make the law work for everybody, she says, including consumers. She and many other industry insiders believe that the responsibility of testing for lead and phthalate should lie with the suppliers of raw materials.

"A lot of suppliers already certify their products, so we would like to be able to use our vendors' third-party certifications. And right now, we're not allowed to do that, which doesn't make sense," Fasanella says.

"If you make pajamas, you have to comply with flammability rules for kids, and we're allowed to use certifications from fabric vendors for flammability. So we're just saying it makes sense to do that with lead and phthalate testing as well."

Even with the stay of enforcement, nervous chatter about CPSIA was prominent at the recent biannual Buyers Market of American Craft, hosted at the Pennsylvania Convention Center.

Wendy Rosen, president of the Buyers Market, is protective of her community.

"These people are the most organic people on the face of the earth," she says. "We all know that the toys that have been of the greatest concern have been imported toys."

Rosen says the fear created by CPSIA has already damaged the industry.

"In a time of so much fear right now for small businesses, this is just too much," she says. "What is the impact of fear and what is the impact of legislation? Those are two separate things."

Fasanella, though, was hopeful.

"The point is that consumers need to be protected," she says. "It's not a situation of either/or, where only consumers or only manufacturers need to be protected. We can make this situation work for everybody."

Watch Jeff Fusco's slideshow from the funeral.

It was a fearfully cold day, and thousands of police officers marched past the memorial squad car for yet another fallen officer. They shared the same small steps, the same grave looks, the same stiff backs. They marched into the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul past a sea of fellow well-wishers who stood outside, cheeks red and cold in the wind. They marched inside until the Basilica was nearly filled with people; those left outside stood solemnly during the Catholic funeral of Officer John Pawlowski.

After the service, the officers marched out, same as before, then police cars zoomed off in an endless line. The hearse carrying Officer Pawlowski was followed by a phalanx of motorcycles and sparkling white cars from the Police Department. The motorcade went up I-95, toward the neighborhoods where the grid system breaks down, where so many of the police officers live in stout postwar houses near the Delaware. (Pawlowski still lived where he grew up, in Parkwood Manor, a stone's throw from the suburbs.)

The procession swept past officers and firefighters on overpasses, past officers paying their respects in solemn roadside salutes. It went into the suburbs and by the schools and strip malls on Street Road. It went through fire-truck arches and past bikers holding American flags in the brisk February winds. Finally, it went through the gates of Resurrection Cemetery.

Yet the number of police officers who memorialize their fallen brother or sister seems to grow each time. The services, the procession, the officers at the cemetery--it all seems like more this time. Even actor David Morse, the guy who played a former Philadelphia cop in the TV show Hack, stands against a light pole outside the church. With each loss, the department grows stronger.

Enormous groups of police personnel gathered in John Pawlowski's memory last week. They lined the pews at St. Anselm's in Parkwood on Monday night. They marched down Academy Road on Thursday at dusk to the funeral home for the wake. They processed in and out of the Basilica and stood still at the cemetery as the cold wind swept across the hillsides lined with headstones. The fierce, consistent presence is an impressive show of unity. It shuts down streets; it silences cities.

They are feared and comforting, loathed and respected. They are always late and always on time. They inspire strong emotions.

So it's fitting the police funeral has become such a spectacle. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey came here from Chicago, where police funerals almost stop time. He felt Philly needed more pomp and circumstance. He wanted to march with the mayor to the funeral home for the wake; he wanted police recruits to dot the road to the gravesite; he wanted the horse-drawn carriages and the symbolic reminders that one good man is missing.

At the cemetery, helicopters flew overhead in a missing-man formation. Police officers from the 35th District signed off Officer John Pawlowski for the last time: "From members of the 35th District and your entire police family, we thank you for a job well done."

The words of the service, the procession of cars, the final words at the cemetery are ritual and tradition, done the same way many times over the last few months.

But they are done with a precision that shows great care. The pallbearers practiced in the days leading up to Pawlowski's funeral by carrying a casket stuffed with dumbbells. When the time came, they marched despite the cold weather. The spectacle of it all is maybe the most uplifting thing the police department does. They just do it right.

It's funny your question--with its hint of gay panic--should arrive today. I've been on vacation with the family all week snowboarding in beautiful British Columbia, and what I enjoy most--besides the snowboarding and the half-naked, fully stoned Australian snowboard instructors lolling around in hot tubs at the end of the day--is watching the straight boys who refuse to sit four to a chairlift. They want to ride up alone or ride up two at a time on a four-seater with two empty seats between 'em. They seem to think gayness can be contracted through thigh-to-thigh contact.

Which it can.

Now, MK, there's kissing someone with your come on her breath and then there's kissing someone with your come in her mouth. It sounds like you're interested in the latter, which makes it sound like you're interested in passing some of your boyfriend's load into his mouth--i.e., snowballing--and not simply being rewarded with a kiss, his come on your breath, for a blowjob well-done. And that's an entirely different wad of spunk.

Just because you enjoy tasting yourself on his lips doesn't mean your boyfriend will enjoy or should have to enjoy mouthing his own load. First, there's a significant difference in volume and consistency between you kissing his glazed lips and him eating his own spunk. And then there's this: After a woman comes, MK, she's still in a groove, still capable of more orgasms, still cranked up. After ejaculating, a man is essentially uncranked. He's not capable of another orgasm (not right away, anyway)--he's been knocked out of his groove. So even if the idea of snowballing appeals to a man as you're blowing him, it might not hold the same appeal the moment after he comes.

Some men are afraid of tasting their own come because they believe that doing so, like sitting too close on a chairlift, can turn a guy gay. And it's not an unreasonable fear: not because it will turn a guy gay, but because, judging from my mail, a lot of women are convinced that any man who would taste his own come must secretly be gay. It's possible that your boyfriend is dying to taste himself, MK, but like the boys on the chairlifts, is afraid of getting a reputation if he goes ahead with this and you blab about it to your friends.

The best I could come up with on my own, MACHO, was this: "A Little Night Music--original Broadway cast recording or original London cast?" But that line will get your ass kicked in a lot of gay bars--as I know from bitter experience. So let's toss this out to my readers, the folks who came up with the definitions for "santorum," "pegging," and "saddlebacking": Okay, gang, we're looking for an innocuous question that 1) all

fags everywhere would know the answer to but 2) no straight guys anywhere would. My long-suffering interns--their uniforms chafe--await your suggested questions at mail@savagelove.net.

Some folks think I was too hard on SBOOO, some think I was just hard enough. Like I said in my original response, I intentionally came down hard on SBOOO to compensate for the vast and overwhelming majority of advice professionals who would, per LF, side aggressively with her because a nonmonogamous partner--even an honest one like SBOOO's mate--is always perceived as the bad guy.

For the record: I am not biased toward nonmonogamy. But I do think monogamous people should be with each other and should refrain from marrying folks who are self-aware enough to inform them in advance that they don't think they're capable of being monogamous.

Some folks who wrote in about my advice for SBOOO raised a good point: I should've come down on the husband as well. If nonmonogamy was a deal breaker for him, then he was a fool to marry SBOOO before verifying her ability to be nonmonogamous. Agreed. So, for the record: SBOOO's husband? You're an idiot, too.

Finally, LF, I'm always happy to see money go to Planned Parenthood.