evermansice

So, as long as I can remember I've had a profound like of good stories. They've always been one of the most wonderful things to me and have dictated the various forms of media I would take in. It goes back to my father reading, no, telling me stories as a child. So long as we were in bed before nine (Yes, we had a late bedtime, but when you look at your parents and say, "But to wake up at seven I need to go to sleep at eleven to get a full eight hours, I think they're kind of stuck.) he would tell us a story. I don't remember him ever reading us one, though. Instead, he would just weave it as it was being told. They were invariably fascinating and I'm sure at least partly responsible for my never doing my reading homework, as on any given day, hungry for stories, I would most likely had read through the story assigned for class months before and already answered the comprehension questions in my head, therefore having no desire to repeat the endeavor on paper. I remember being so fascinated by The Indian and the Cupboard as it was being recounted to us during reading time that I borrowed the books from my teacher at one point when we had a three day week-end and read ahead, finishing the entire series before she finished reading to us the book we were on. When I was eight I took my birthday money and went to Borders, which had become my new favorite place in the world, and bought as many books as I could afford. Most of them were disappointing, but Bunnincula, the one hardcover I purchased has remained a favorite to this day.

I remember the exact point where my desire to read good stories evolved into a desire to tell them. I was in the tenth grade where we were given the task of writing the account of an astronaut's findings on another planet. Most of my classmates wrote a paragraph or so detailing specimens or resources found. I wrote a four-page (I think it was four, but don't quote me) account of an astronaut whose shuttle went off course taking him outside of the solar system where he was picked up by an alien shuttle just as the last of his ship's life support was failing. In the end, he ended up joining up with a rebel faction who stopped the government from plunging the alien planet into an interplanetary war with Earth. While writing that story I thought about how I always enjoyed essay assignments and decided what I wanted to do was to write for a living. This decision would be challenged various times, but it would never lose. That is not to say, however, it is the only such decision with any conviction behind it, but that is a story for another time.

I'll write about my trip to Mexico next time. I meant to now, but I keep running into posts I forgot I was writing.