This evening, Tomomi was cleaning out the closet while I worked on prep for the coming week. She found the notebook that I brought to Japan back in 2009 (back when I still used a spiral-bound notebook). Leafing through was a trip down memory lane. One thing in particular stood out to me: an introduction to a book that my brother, several friends and I had started writing in Summer of 2008. I think the introduction is pretty good, myself! Here's the introduction to "We Must Be Monsters". I hold out hope that someday when we all retire from our respective careers, we'll sit down and finish this or one of the several other stories we've started writing over the years.
Thinking back to middle school, it's not hard to remember who the popular kids were. They could run faster, jump higher, and sink the game-winning shots. When they spoke, everyone listened. Where they lead, everyone followed. Maybe you were one of them, one of these playground deities. Or, maybe you were like me. If I'd been one of those kids, I probably wouldn't be telling this story today. My name is Curtis Baker, and I'm a follower. Always was. Sure, people liked me well enough. I treated others decently, and they returned the courtesy.
Still, every once in a while, one of us gets the chance to do something great, to be someone important. Under extraordinary circumstances, we humans are capable of surprising things. Popularity and schoolyard cliques are broken down, shuffled and re-dealt. Everyone has a role to play, and it's not always what you might expect. For us, that extraordinary circumstance was the cave.
Much of the brainstorming having slipped my mind over the past six years, I found myself wanting to read the story and find out what was so important about the cave, and what happened to Curtis Baker. I guess that's a good sign we wrote a decent intro! Reading this encouraged me not to give up on my dream of writing a book someday, even if it doesn't happen until many years from now!
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