somebody still owes me a wish!

Everyone has a childhood nemesis, whether this was the kid in your pre-school class that would always try to sneak off with your last Oreo cookie during snack time, or that Great Aunt that reeked of moth balls and just had to give you one of those hugs that required the jaws of life to escape from. My nemesis, however, was my bike.

It was this monstrous purple thing, and we just didn't get along. Every tree, shrub and curb in the neighborhood was imprinted with one of my various body parts. I could literally hit a leaf in the street and this would be enough to throw me straight off of that purple bike and into the neighbor's flowerbed.

Now you need to understand that for a little kid growing up in the seventies, the epitome of coolness was Evel Knevel and the Fonz. Both of whom rode bikes. My lack of skill, however, forced me early on to accept the fact that I just wasn't destined for 'coolness'. Though, this isn't completely my fault. I tried to accomplish stunts of daring, ones that would have greatly impressed the legendary Mr. Knevel himself. I constructed my own bike ramp out of an old piece of plywood and a brick, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't convince my kid brother or sister to lay down in front of it so that I could soar off the ramp and jump right over top of them. Even at two and three years old, they were well aware of my bicycling skills. And try as I might, I just couldn't find where my parents hid the matches...so my plan of catching something on fire...such as half of our backyard...and riding through it never materialized either. This led to the realization that I was going to have to achieve 'coolness' in some other form.

So I turned to music. I had a mini-idolization thing going on with Paul McCartney, and I considered him quite cool. So I decided that I'd play the guitar. The problem was, while I played the tennis racket extremely good when pretending to be Paul, my expertise didn't translate very well to a real guitar.

So then I tried sports. Gary Carter and George Brett were two of my favorite ball players, so baseball it was. I'd just have to become a great athlete. And while I did good enough with a whiffle bat in my backyard, I soon found that real baseballs were pretty hard and hurt quite a bit when they missed your glove and hit you instead.

I took to wishing for talent, but that never worked either. I'd pick up my grandma's old acoustic guitar, close my eyes and wish that I could play just like one of the Beatles...preferably Paul or John, but I was even willing to bargain down to George. It didn't work. So I'd put the guitar down for about 10 seconds, pick it back up and make the same wish again. Nothing. Same thing with baseball. I'd stand at the plate, close my eyes tight and make a wish for a whopper of a home run, then swing...only to spin around a couple times, fall down on home plate and realize that the ball was still on the tee. The next at bat's wish would bring about the same results.

The problem was, all this being good stuff took too much work, and what I really wanted to be was a prodigy. I didn't want to practice the guitar...I just wanted to play it! And forget the hours of practice to get good at a sport, where was my natural talent?! In school, we were always reading about some kid who could do amazing things in those Scholastic Newspapers...13 year olds who were considered great artists! Seven year old gymnasts who were destined for the Olympics! Five year old chess champions! I couldn't help but feel that I was gypped. Clearly my 'natural talent gene' got lost somewhere.

Well, through the years, I've learned that nothing gets accomplished without hard work and practice. With that said, I'm off to Monster.com to find me a high paying job that I love. One click on the little 'Apply Now' button is all it takes...of course, before I click it, you can guarantee that I'll close my eyes and make a wish.