Since we are pretty much relegated to the house during the winter months, I can't help but look around at the messiness that is our living room. We clean it pretty frequently, but for some reason, by the end of the night, it literally looks like we strung together every toy in our house and spread it out across the floor like it was a toy bread spread.
Most of the clutteriness is from the fifty or so books that Wub has; big ones, small ones, rhyming ones, boring ones, classic ones, strange ones, colorful ones, black and white ones and the list goes on an on. It's actually the books that we pick up almost everyday and what he beelines for when he gets home from school that are the real clutter culprit. "Read this one!" "Now, this one!" "Wait, go back. Read that last one again..."
Kids books have become something with which I'm very familiar. And at least once a week, I think to myself, "Who writes these? And how much are they making?"
I remember when I was a little kid, my parents and their friends would drink a few cocktails and then get into lively discussions about current inventions, products, ideas, etc. that "They could have thought of!" (Notice I put the exclamation point, because for some reason, they would always shout out these ideas.) I even think at different points they may have tried to come up with one of these ideas. It usually would go like this: someone throws out a product/idea, the group would rally around it with comments like, "There you go, Tom! That's our million dollar idea!" And they would laugh and plan and think and that's as far as it would ever go. (My guess was that the hangover the next morning outweighed the "go get'em" attitude of the night before.)
And so I guess it's a genetic trait of mine: children's books are that "sit around the table and drink a few and wonder why I'm not the next Dr. Seuss" internal discussion. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that these books can be done/written by just anyone, but seriously, I feel like given the proper thought, I could be a children's author. I say done because seriously, some of the books that Wub loves the most are just pictures and then that word: picture of a dog, then the word dog; picture of a backhoe loader (whatever that is), then the word backhoe loader. And so, when I read books like that, I think, "Hey, I've got a camera; the neighbors have a dog and there's a quarry not too far away, I could totally write/do a book like that."
See, I could write a book right now, just from looking around at the room I'm sitting in. Here goes my story: One day there was a little generic store brand cracker who was friends with a bagel crisp chip. Together, they would do things like, play outside in the snow. But their friend, generic store brand medium salsa couldn't go outside and play. His mother told him that he was made of glass and he would break if he played outside. This made the little generic store brand medium salsa very sad.
So you get the point. I know that it's a pretty vain thing to think and then discuss and then actually write about, but I mean no disrespect to any children's author; I actually appreciate them very much. Wubbles is very verbal and curious about everything, something that I think books have really cultivated. It's a really inspiring thing to have the development of someone elses child be impacted by your work.
Someone recently told me that they were going back to school to pursue their dream of becoming a therapist and I think that's awesome. He said that instead of retiring, he wants to start his own practice. Well that's kind of what I'm thinking I should do. Once I decide to retire, I'm going to try this whole writing a children's book thing and mothers everywhere can read and reread and clean up my books from their living room floors for years to come.
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