Remember when you were in grade school, and just before
graduation, your girlfriends would ask you to fill up their slam book? You’d write in three pages full of things
they knew about you anyway, and at the end you’d leave a message professing
undying friendship, complete with little smiling hearts, stars and XOXOs.
I saw one among my daughter’s things recently, and aside
from the realization that I was really growing old, it tickled me that aside
from loving Justin Bieber and the iPad as “the
favorite thing in the whole wide world,” the things these almost-teenagers
wrote weren’t very different from what we wrote back then. Favorite
motto: Time is gold.
And I thought, what if I answered those blanks now that I’m
thirty-something instead of thirteen?
Here goes.
Favorite color: Anything except pink.
Favorite food: Italian.
I also love coffee.
Favorite pet: Shoes with 5-inch heels
Favorite movie: I watched Avengers, and I liked it. But then I also liked Forrest Gump. And that’s about it. I don’t watch TV either.
Favorite song: Somebody by Depeche Mode. But now I listen to my daughter’s music, and
I make sure I read the lyrics before I download them for her. In the last week it’s Jessica Sanchez, and I
have LSS for “Dance With My Father.”
Favorite book: I love all of them. My lunch-break book is 50 Shades of
Grey. My book in the bathroom is Stephen
King’s Lisey’s Story. My bedtime book is
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera.
Hobby: Shoe-hunting, reading books, writing stories, doing
little DIY projects that never end.
What you want to be when you grow up: I haven’t figured it
out yet.
Love is: Staying up all night with a sick child – or a
healthy adult. I read that somewhere.
Your best friend: Myself.
If you think about it, it’s true.
Favorite motto: Life is short. When you’ve gone through all of that,
finishing school, raising a family, fighting for a career, getting your heart
broken, losing a friend, dancing in the rain, blogging during office hours, you
can sit back and realize that there is still so much more to do. But you are mortal. So do it all; life is short.