What I want to be when I grow up:

Do you remember the good old classic movie Funny Farm? With Chevy Chase? God, I love that movie. Mostly because Chevy Chase is my hero, but also because in the film, he is trying to write a novel. Was it a children's book? I can't remember. But his wife in the movie actually does write a children's book, and I thought that was the coolest profession in the world! Still do, actually. My choice of professions through the years have all seemed to have something to do with either art or children. Now, I am spending my days working with books and art and children at the Richland County Public Library's Children's Room, and reading gajillions of children's books to Alice, and I'm thinking....I can do this. I really can.

       Over the past year working in the Library field, I have met three very brilliant and distinctive and accomplished childrens writers; Lowis Lowry, Jack Gantos and Jane Yolen. They all had me spellbound with each of their speeches, discussing their eventful pasts, comical or not so much. What gets me worried is that I haven't enough crazy experiences to write an award winning book. My childhood was well...well... it was normal. Didn't travel much. Didn't break any bones (well, there was the one time...), didn't have any traumatic experiences, unless you count gettin' popped on the butt every now and then. I guess it helps to know that Jack Gantos actually had to go out and buy a cat for inspiration for his award winning Rotten Ralph series. Well, surely Alice, my two cats and Charlie will be enough fodder for the first book, anyway. Or maybe I need to take a vacation-for-one to a remote area in the desert and become "one" with myself. I'd come back with an interesting story then, I bet.
      Perhaps I need to move to the countryside into a house with a window in the attic and a typewriter, like Chevy Chase did. Yeah, that seems more my speed. What do you think about that, Matt?
      Well one day. One day. Yep, One day.....