3:38 p.m. - 2004-08-13

1st 15 minutes

Well kids, it�s Friday and I�m looking forward to the weekend. Not that there is anything terribly exciting going on, just that it�s the weekend. Is that sad or what? It doesn�t take much to thrill me.

On a side note: my tummy is full of homemade, wonderful, specially blessed, especially made, fattening (but that doesn�t count because it was made by a friend) carrot cake.

I digress ...

The other night in my ritualistic nocturnal mental meanderings I was reminded of a quote from Andy Warhol which went �Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

This brought to mind the fact that I�ve experienced two �15 minutes� of fame, and I thought I�d share at least one with you now.

When I was 15 (going on 16) and very good in �Creative Writing� at school (grade 10), there was a television program on after school on CBC (only in Canada, you say?) called �Pencil Box�. This program invited kids to write stories or poems and submit them. IF your story was chosen the people of �Pencil Box� would re-produced your creation involving a wide range of techniques, including puppets, mime, masks, and animation. On a whim I sent in a story I�d written called �Money doesn�t grow on trees!�

Loosely based around the saying, it told the story of a stingy husband who didn�t lift his butt off the couch, and a wife who needed to pay the bills. He rants and rants and rants about how hard he has to work and I, being uninitiated into the world of Political Correctness wrote about �those Mexicans looking for a free ride�, �those lazy blacks�, and completing his rants with �money doesn�t grow on trees, you know!� (It�s amazing what kid�s pick up in their own homes). The producers of Pencil Box wisely re-worded some of my script, and produced a lovely 3 or 4 minute skit deleting any discriminatory areas. My ending to this story was the paperboy coming to the door to be paid, the husband refusing, and the wife quietly going into her kitchen (where the husband NEVER ventured) and taking a freshly grown dollar bill off of a tree � lush with money � and winking at the camera with knowing savvy.

I was very proud of my moment in infamy. It was a real kick to see something I�d written, actually produced on TV � with live actors and everything. Shortly after it aired I received a plaque commemorating my moment in TV history. I still have it somewhere, but I have absolutely no idea where it is exactly.

I�ll save my second �15 minutes� for another entry.

Cheers � LJ

End note: I stopped writing after that Grade 10 year. That is until I stumbled upon Diaryland. And I do not hold the same racial and politically incorrect views that I did as a child.

And next week � possibly I�ll address � �Why I don�t like Chain Letters.�