I really love talking. A lot. When I was in preschool, I was the only kid who couldn't walk yet. If I remember correctly, I had hip problems as a child, so I was delayed in my physical abilities. I was more of a verbal child rather than a mobile one. I could talk for hours on a subject I had no idea about. As they say, “kids say the darndest things”. At age 4 I could tell you that I was a republican and I could tell you why....but it didn't really make sense. I guess you could blame that kind of thing on my parents, but my parents were democrats. They had no idea where I got my opinions. I honestly am not quite sure either. I guess you could say I was that one kid with the “smart mouth”. I though the whole idea that children should be seen and not heard was preposterous. To be honest, by age 6 I thought I was of higher intelligence than most adults. I would always question everything anyone would say and make arguments about things that I thought I was an authority on. When I was 8, I remember having a long argument with my hillbilly grandfather about sentence structure. I remember him writing a document for his real estate business and noticing that a few of his sentences didn’t sound right. My grandfather isn’t the smartest guy around, but I’m pretty sure he knew how to write a sentence. I spent about an hour trying to tell him that every sentence must have a subject and a verb. I think he was a little embarrassed that an 8 year old was correcting him on grammar, but in the end I was right. I had those kinds of arguments with many, many people and the times where I won the argument were far fewer than the times I lost. I wasn’t an argumentative child; I just liked being educated, and being able to educate others. I think that having a 4, 5, or 6 year old trying to educate made most adults uncomfortable. Both of my parents had PhD’s in pharmacology so I was always being filled with knowledge. I now believe that my parents really shouldn’t have educated me on certain things. When I was 4, I asked the question that most parents dread hearing; but when I asked my mom where babies came from she brought out her reproductive science textbooks. So when I went to preschool the next morning I found myself teaching the whole class about people’s reproductive organs. This kind of thing happened a lot. My preschool teachers were always calling my mom complaining about what came out of my mouth. In kindergarten it got worse. I was always talking about my opinions on gay marriage, religion, etc. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut. Whenever I have an opinion about something I usually just keep it to myself.

I think that being so talkative and having so many opinions as a child has helped me as a writer because I can now write about anything. My opinions are something that I enjoy writing about. To me, writing is like talking but in a more silent and respectful manner. So now I can voice my opinion about anything, while raising my grade point average…and not making anybody angry.