I always wanted to be an artist, dammit. Some kind, any kind. The rightful aspiration of any sensitive child. In sixth grade, I enviously observed two friends tap dancing in the school hallway. I ran home, face a-holler: "Why didn't you ever enroll me in dance, Mom?" She told my squealing face plainly: "You never seemed interested, dear." Wha-HUH? Everyone knows how it works: you must force a child to wallow in the arts, or at least tempt it with Twinkies. Duh, Ma. I was eleven already and didn't even know how to do The Bump. Time was running out. So, bleak, bewildered and befuddled, I spun around like a top on snot, hightailed it to my room with rubbing thighs, tears flowing over my pimples, flung myself on my bed, and wrote death poetry. Why me? Why couldn't I be an artist, too?

The following year I took a special smarty English test and was told I didn't have to take grammar anymore. All it meant to me was reading boring crap like Walden that I was far too young to appreciate. All I cared about was going to the hair salon and getting "wings." And buying that special round brush for that special brushing action. And becoming an artist. Any kind of artist. Dammit. So, if I couldn't be a dancer, by gum, I'd be a musician. I forced my parents at dagger-point to buy me a guitar. Unfortunately, my demented pinky reigned supreme, and I learned but a few John Denver tunes that sounded deeply foul. The guitar took it's permanent place under my bed with the behemoth dust weasels. I cried to my Barry Manilow poster, "Why can't I be an artist, too?"

My singing career launched when eight kids from school were chosen to sing on a real record with a ga-zillion other kids. Vinyl, even. I was picked. Unfortunately, I was not told to avoid milk before singing. My future as a songbird was forever sabotaged. I was too petrified to be a thespian, and my career as a painter was thwarted when my grandest masterpiece, a colorful tapestry of the words "Sharon loves Herman," was discovered by my brother. And his best friend, Herman. My artistic future was for shit. (Insert forceful tug on artstrings here.) Still, I retreated to my room to write more death poetry, and a casual novella, whilst moaning my bane and munching on Chee-tos (crunchy). Through high school, I excelled by reading lots of Cliffs Notes and bragged to my friends that I still didn't know what an adverb was. But alas, I lamented my artless life.

Ten years and myriad published pages later, I realized that writing is art. I am an artist. Duh. Thank god. Now I can officially live the rest of my life being sensitive, temperamental, poor and unknown.

Woodstock Times, 8/99