Yesterday, I spent my morning telling ninety or so middle school children about my job. The fact that I am now somehow qualified to guide children of any age in their future careers scares me deeply.
That said, I gave them the run-down of my life: from my beginnings as a beggar child on the streets of Chicago, learning to read and write from bus advertising and Roger Ebert movie reviews, to my schooling with Jack Dawkins, my first published piece (decrying local Lake Michigan as a minor Great Lake) in the Lawndale News, and my radio spiels calling for Monday to simply be known as "Oprah".
We then moved on to the fluke that placed me in the Editor's chair (like I was somehow supposed to know that we had assigned seats? On my first day? Please.) and my subsequent career as a man of letters. 26 of them, in fact.
I told them how I had engaged in activities both larcenous and lascivious, illegal and illuminating, all for a little more than minimum wage. They were suitably impressed. Both with my story and the giant asp I kept in a glass cage next to me in order to inspire fear.
They asked me questions. I answered them by tapping on the glass to anger the asp. We dialogued.
In the end, I think I successfully persuaded them to avoid writing as a career and to pay attention in school, especially to that regrettably good-looking fireman who was one classroom over that all the girls would not, for the love of God, stop giggling about.
Until I released the asp.
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