I’m asked quite often if the stories and poems I write are really all about me. I have to honestly answer, that most of the posts on this site are pure fiction. Although, most of the time, it’s a pretty thin line that separates fiction from reality. I mean, let’s face it, writers by nature are liars. We make up stories. Our talent is the ability to create something so believable that it’s hard to distinguish it from the truth. Not that the story isn’t based on fact…just maybe not the real fact. There’s often a good reason we tend to ‘embellish’ things a little.

Let’s just take a quick peek at the first ten years of my life for example. That’s 87600 hours. Sounds like a lot. A person should have a ton of stuff going on. But for 29200 of those hours, I was asleep, dreaming of childhood things. The really bad part is that some of those dreams were probably the highlight of my existence.

Now that leaves me with 58400 hours. Before I started 1st grade, I just played around the house and goo-goo-ga-gaed a lot. That took up about half of the remaining hours.  Of the last 29200 hours I was in school getting thumped on the head by Old Lady Conway for about 11200 of them (that really explains a lot). So that leaves me 18000 hours of nothing much going on at all. Sure, there were a few memorable moments scattered about. Things like the first day of school, some birthdays and a few funerals. Let’s say, maybe 24 hours of anything with enough action to justify the cost of the ink to put it onto paper.

So don’t fault me for trying to spice things up a little bit, you know, just a pinch of a white lie to add some flavor, well maybe a dash or sometimes even a whole handful. So what of it if I’ve changed a few names here and there. Maybe I might have turned a her into a him. Who’s to say that my favorite four legged friend ‘George F. Bungle Dog’ couldn’t talk to me.

But I’m getting old now, and I’ve decided it might be time to lend a little truth to my life. So I’m going to dedicate all Friday’s to postings only true stories. I’ll call the series, ‘Real Life Friday’ (what a shocker right) so all my children can get a better idea of just who their old man really was.

You know, answer that age old question; if not for who I was, would you be who you are. Or better yet, you know what I did, so don’t do that.