I am reading the most delightful book right now, “The Shadow of the Wind” by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. Actually, I am almost finished. I went home yesterday and picked it up, to start it, thinking I would be reading it over the next week or so, it’s almost 500 pages. But I could not put it down. I kept reading until around midnight, when I was just too sleepy to keep going. The title is from the book, from one of the more enjoyable characters I’ve read in a while, Fermín Romero de Torres.

On the radio this morning, the dj’s were talking about advice for graduates. Some woman called up and said the best advice she had was to do what you love to do, do what you did naturally at about 8 or 9 years old, because that is probably your passion. So I thought about it, and these are the things I can remember doing. [I don’t have the best memory]

• watching tv, mostly sitcoms and cartoons
• eating candy
• finding money to buy more candy so I could eat it.
• reading
• playing with barbies
• building forts, both inside and outside.
• engaging in a pine cone war with the neighbors
• riding my bike
• playing a game with the neighborhood kids we called “murder!” Could only be played at night.
• playing a game with the neighborhood kids we called “babies.” Could only be played in the basement of the Murray house.
• playing elaborate games of fantasy that required a great deal of back story. And horses.
• swimming
• writing letter’s to Donny and Marie, as well as the cast of Little House on the Prarie
• interviewing people with my little tape recorder
• singing and telling stories into my little tape recorder
• convincing the youngest Murray kid to do whatever we told him to do. Run out the house naked… eat a slug…. I was really not the ringleader here. My brother was.
• listening to my mom’s records. Either with giant headphones on my head, or while dancing and singing in the living room. Depended on the album.
• avoiding my brother and his wrath
• sledding
• eating more candy
• playing in my grand parent’s bar before it opened, pouring cokes with four cherries
• not doing my math homework.
• occasionally telling some pretty wild stories. some might call them lies. I call them stories.
• Playing dress up.
• not cleaning my room
• living in a fantasy world all my own.
• contemplating my existence in the universe and the meaning of life.
• listening to music on my little radio.
• trying to look into the windows of the funeral parlor across the street from my Grandparent’s motel, to see if we could see a dead body. Answer: no.

And I probably rounded the whole thing off with more tv watching, candy eating, and book reading. Can someone please tell me, now, what I should be when I grow up?