Who We Are

As keynote speaker for an Upper Midwest Booksellers Association meeting some years ago, Minnesota novelist Jon Hassler told the story of the plumber who came to his cabin to clean out his plugged toilet. The plumber came out of the bathroom and was spattered with shit. He paused, and looked up, and said to Hassler, “I hear you write books.” Hassler said, “Yes, I do.” The plumber said, “Boy, I’d sure hate to make a living that way.”

I had Hassler as a writing workshop teacher one summer over twenty years ago. Most of us students were about to finish college or were just starting our MFAs. Hassler warmed us up each morning with various writing prompts. One of the prompts was to very quickly list twenty things that described us--"don't think about this, just write," he'd say. I remember writing:

I
--drink a lot of Wild Turkey
--am madly, madly in love

among eighteen other things. We then had to write stories from the various listings. One guy after class told me he was going to ask me out until I got to the part of being madly, madly in love.

Last night, after one of the Top Ten Worst Weekends Ever, I cloistered myself in a quiet room to write. I was too ticked off to do anything else. But then, like trying to pee in a quiet lavatory among strangers, I couldn't get anything out. Nada. Nothing to say. So I thought of Hassler's writing prompts and instead of writing a list of what I have done, I tried writing a list of what I have not done.

I have never

-published a short story
-had an affair
-learned a second language
-read Jane Austen
-fired anyone
-taken my kids to Disney World
-had my body hair waxed
-camped alone
-bought anything at Victoria's Secret
-been to the opera
-grown corn
-hit a home run
-inherited money
-seen Niagra Falls, or Mount Rushmore
-been to Paris, or London
-been arrested
-made lemon meringue pie
-been inside a synagogue
-watched Grey's Anatomy
-sung Karaoke

When we are coming of age, we tend to define ourselves more for what we've done than what we've yet to do, for who we are rather than who we might become. I am somebody NOW, we say. When we are older, fully into our adult lives, we tend to look back on what we haven't done. We spend time mourning the absences of what we never did, of what we never got around to doing. (Or we boast of our "nevers": I have never gone on a cruise and I never will! Yeah, me neither!)

Why can't we be more like the five-year-old, the one in the story who says,

"I hope I stay the same. I hope I grow up just like me."