I've always wanted to be a writer, ever since I could remember (original huh?). Starting all the way back in the 90’s, when I was what they call nowadays a tween-ager, writing scripts for Saved By the Bell in my bedroom that never saw the light of day. Then in high school I wrote way too serious love poems and letters to whichever girls that stole my heart on a week to week basis.
Then life hit.
Writing became just a dream that I would get to do someday for real, but not anytime soon kind of a dream. I kept telling myself I’d become a real writer eventually. Maybe when I’m older… after college. 4 majors and no degree later the Navy came calling, so obviously after the Navy, that’s when I would make my mark on the book world.
This then turned into waiting until after my second career, outside of the navy, which in turn led to thinking maybe after the kids leave the house, maybe after I retire at 75, maybe after I die, but before I am in the ground. The dream never actually died, but I wasn’t doing much to keep it living either.
I used to believe this was just part of the growing pains of becoming an adult. Dreams were for the sleeping, and I needed to be awake to earn a living. At first just for myself, but then for my family, which made it all the more easy to crank that back burner down even more nearly extinguishing the flame that my dreams sat on.
That was until my first anniversary with my second wife rolled around. You see, my wife is amazing at gifts. I used to think I was great at giving presents, until her anyway. I now know I completely stink, with a capital gross, at gift giving.
Literally every gift I’ve given her (besides the big ones like a car or the car after that one), so figuratively, every gift is even now as a write this is collecting dust somewhere in our house. It’s either hidden or on full show in the place it was set after opening, never to be used again. If there was a grown up version of Toy Story, these gifts would be the old, sad, and neglected ones.
So for our first anniversary I racked my brain endlessly on what to give her that would not only blow her away, but also let me win the gift giving contest, because come on, it is a contest right?
After I Googled what the traditional gift for the first year was supposed to be, Google dealt me a crushing blow, paper. Are you effin kidding me? Paper? How am I supposed to win, I mean be a sweet new husband with paper? This must have been the go to gift back in the day after not being able to afford anything for a year after paying for the wedding and honeymoon. So I understood, I just didn’t get it.
After a few days of floundering in a paper hell, it finally hit me. Write her a story, dumbass, but it couldn’t be just any story, it needed to blow her socks off. So I wrote her the story of how we met, and fell in love.
For the next few weeks (that’s right… weeks, I actually thought about this gift way before any man really should, so just for that I should have won… stay tuned) every spare moment I had went into writing this story. Which at that time there wasn’t a lot of while working in the oilfield, before the bottom dropped out.
I loved it though, I more than loved it actually, I never felt anything like it. I was either sitting in front of the computer in between helping the kids with homework and while my wife was grocery shopping, or writing on my phone during my daughter’s soccer practice.
Our anniversary night came fast, and I thought for sure I wasn’t going to finish in time. I did though, just barely. We were in Dallas for our oldest daughter’s cheerleading tournament. Rah. Not to worry though, Nanny came along and kept the kids in her room. Her room, however, was joined to ours, so rah rah.
The time came to exchange gifts and I was just as nervous as I was excited, almost jumping out of my own skin waiting as she read it. I watched eagle eyed as she laughed at the parts she was supposed to laugh at, and tearing up at the sappy parts. Now I am down right giddy.
She finishes and goes to open the door that should have remained locked until morning, giving it to Nanny so she could read it. She loved it too. Then she reads it to the kids and they love it, and now I am riding a high like never before thinking two things; maybe I can do this writing thing after all, and yes I won.
Until she pulls her gift out from the luggage that is.
She hands me a signed first edition of Stephen King’s Under the Dome. A book signed by my idol, she wins again. Not only did she win, but ever since then, on every gift giving day of birthdays, Christmases and anniversaries she tells me “I’m still waiting on part 2 of our story.” A guy can’t win.
So that's why I decided to give this writing thing a shot about 30 years before I thought I ever would. The reason I chose this story though was completely unexpected.
Shortly after our anniversary I got super sick, like someone please shoot me kind of sick. One night while I was sick I had a fever dream that was so realistic I actually thought for a few minutes after I awoke that it actually happened (I was on a few meds too, so that might have contributed to this a bit as well).
It was a dream about this teen-aged boy who absorbed all the sickness and disease in the world, but it stayed with him, inside of his body and eventually he basically turned into the size of a 2,000 pound man. He became so big that he could only be moved by heavy equipment.
Once the last person was cured he had them dig a hole in the ice of Antarctica and bury him as deep as they possibly could so as to not let the sickness out… Fast forward 100 years to an earth that hasn't dealt with flu or colds or cancer since, but thanks to climate change melting the ice in the arctic everything is released back in to the world. Or something like that.
Now this book is so far off from that story that I can't believe it came from the same starting point. The story really does take a life of it’s own once you start putting it on paper.
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