Mark McGwire

I, surprisingly, went right to bed two nights ago. A west coast miracle I tell you!

Last night, however, I was thinking about writing - what I am trying to do for money these days. When I was younger, I always said I wanted to be a doctor, there was a brief intermission where I was going to be an astronaut, but mostly, I was going to be a doctor. I was seriously considering it until about halfway through my college degree. When, one day, I realized that Scrubs was my favorite show because of the storytelling and not because of the medicine.*

*Some version of this sentence has been written on countless essays, cover letters, applications, blah, blah, blah - I need a new thing.

Anyway, a lot of the writers I admire tell stories of their past where they would write stories and plays in their rooms with their friends, and I don't remember doing anything like that. I mean, I've always liked to make people laugh, and I would try to tell stories to get someone to smile, but I never really considered that "writing."

But, then I remembered a time in fifth grade  where we had to create a piece of visual art by mixing pictures in magazines. I want to find the picture because I don't remember all of it, but I do remember two things about it: I had taken a photo of Mark McGwire and replaced his baseball bat with a giant toothbrush, and I replaced the feathers of a turkey with a pink bath loofah.

Loofah.
Loofah.
Loofah.

That's a fun word.

Well, we were supposed to write a story based on our picture, about a page long. I remember staying up until one in the morning writing seven pages front and back. I think the story was about some sort of obstacle, survival course. If only I'd turned it into a trilogy of books for teenagers, so that I could then sell the rights for the movie, so that Lenny Kravitz could be in it. Hunger Games would have had nothing on Loofah Turkey [Working Title].

Then, two years later, rather than writing a regular book report, I chose to write a puppet show for my Greek Mythology project that I had to perform in front of the class... and that is when I learned that I never wanted to "act" again, even behind a curtain and a popsicle-stick Medusa.

So, whether I believe I am a writer or not, I don't have to convince anybody that I'm not an actor.