This is Kinda Like Being a Writer.....

From my earliest days, I can remember wanting to be a writer.  Don't get me wrong - I had other dreams too.  At different stages in my life, I wanted to be a carpenter, or a botanist, or an architect, or Grizzly Adams.  I really really wanted to be Grizzly Adams.

 

When I was older, though, I realized that I couldn't ever be Grizzly Adams.  So instead, I decided that I wanted to be that guy from "That's Incredible!" who jumped over a car as it was speeding toward him at 90 miles per hour.  I actually practiced that move in my backyard, figuring all I had to do was get enough height and the car would just pass right under me.  That dream came to an end when my grandma showed me an article that she had cut out of The National Enquirer.  The article graphically described how the guy was nearly killed when he tried to push his luck, jumping two cars at once.  I saved the article, as a warning to myself that I might want to consider a safer vocation.

 



So I wrote, and I wrote.  I wrote short stories on scraps of paper and proudly read them to my family.  At the end of each story, I would include one or two questions about the story, just to see if everyone was listening.  Based on the results of the quiz, I quickly learned that they weren't.  But I kept writing anyway.  When I couldn't think of stories to write, I copied entries out of the World Book Encyclopedia.  I was about 10 pages into an entry about the African Rhinoceros before my brother explained to me what plagiarism was.  Undeterred, I kept writing.

 

The lesson on plagiarism didn't completely sink in.  In the sixth grade, I was 43 pages into a detailed story about a boy who goes back in time and meets up with dinosaurs, aliens and an ape-boy.  I put the story on indefinite hold when one of my classmates pointed out that the story sounded an awful lot like Land of the Lost.

 

But I kept writing.  I wrote short stories.  I wrote letters.  I wrote poems.  I wrote fake newspaper stories for my fake newspaper.  I got a typewriter for Christmas one year and decided that was about the coolest thing ever.  I was more convinced than ever that I wanted to be a writer.  My passion did not go unrecognized.

Then, one day, I stopped writing.  I'm not sure why.  It might be because I discovered girls, or video games, or math.  Maybe it's because I simply ran out of things to write about.  Recently I've discovered that I still like writing.  That's cool, but for sure it's not as cool as jumping over a car.