I was born just early enough to be called a child of the sixties, two months before Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the surface of the moon. I used to get nervous on the first day of school. I have a weakness for my dad’s soggy tomato sandwiches. There’s something nostalgic about the way the juice soaks into the bread. I used to read under my covers with a flashlight at night until my mom (also an avid reader) told me I had no bedtime if I was reading. A first-grader once told me he would not tell the « Santa secret » because he understood that the others needed to believe. I once wanted to run away from home so I hid under the front porch to see how long it would take my family to miss me. My grumbling stomach never allowed me to find out. When I was 9, I saw my first dead body as they pulled a bloated seven year old from the public swimming pool in the park down the street. When I grow up, I want to be a writer. I love my job, but I still get nervous on the first day of school.
