As the oldest of five kids, I had a lot of responsibilities at home and little time for extracurricular activities as a kid. Most of it was self-inflicted. My parents were both hard workers and scraped by to provide the bare essentials and a happy home. I couldn't ask for a pair of new shoes and $25 to pay for softball after watching my dad count pennies to get a gallon of milk, you know? So, I wasn't a star athlete or drama club queen or anything like that in school. Thanks to the band director and a pair of battered marching shoes and old white gloves he dug out of a closet, I was a member of the marching band. Me and my secondhand clarinet that was forever dropping off B flat keys at the most inopportune times. More than one Tuscarawas county football field swallowed up one of those keys on a Friday night. As those of you who are familiar with the clarinet can attest, missing the key that covers the very first hole in your instrument is not a good thing--it means nothing but air comes out. My mom and dad paid more money replacing that darn key than they ever did on the instrument. If you can remember back to an Indian Valley football game in the late 80s/early 90s with a short, chubby girl in tattered band gloves and goopy-polished shoes faking her way across the football field, then, chances are, you are remembering me.

With my music career going nowhere, I had nothing left that was mine other than my books. I loved to read. If I wasn't reading, then I was in the middle of an adventure. (My best friend Mistey and I had some grand adventures.) We were the two coolest single chicks on the planet. If we weren't hanging on the ski slopes in the Alps or jetting across the Atlantic on the Concorde, we were helping our hunky pirate captives battle evil British commodores or recording one of our many platinum-selling records. Most of our adventures also included two particularly adorable superstars of the day.

Halfway through sixth grade, I moved to a new school and faced Mr. D, the hardest, meanest English teacher to ever step into a classroom. Jenna Rose talks about social suicide in The Perfect Girl--you want to know about social suicide? Have the hardest, meanest English teacher to ever step into a classroom smile at you as he's passing back writing assignments on your second day of class, and you have the only A he's given all year long. (Okay, so maybe I'm not positive if it was the only A of the year...I know it was the only one that day. The way the other students treated me after that A, you'd think Mr. D had never in his history of writing assignments ever given an A to anyone.)

Two years later, Mr. D moved to eighth grade with us and we went through it all over again.

But (and he'd kill me for starting a sentence with a conjunction) I can honestly say that I learned more about writing and English from Mr. D than any other source I have ever studied. For the first time in my life, an adult was showing interest in my writing. Maybe I really could do this...

...and here I am. I'm doing what I dreamed.