A Life Worth Memoir

I was taking a shower today and thinking to myself, "Why don't you have more adventure in your life?" I couldn't find an answer. All these people churning out memoirs at such a steady pace kinda makes me wonder how they got lucky with all the hardship and tough times the world has to offer. I, on the other hand, have the ability and the inclination to write my experiences down. I just don't have the kind of experiences that warrant an entire book. Or do I? I once watched my dad nearly fall thirty feet into the white water section of a river. He barely saved himself, and as a result, broke a couple ribs. That was pretty exciting, but only because I saw it with own eyes. On paper, it doesn't sound nearly as intense.

I want to be able to tell a story about that one time when my friends convinced me to rob a convenience store. Naked. Now THAT would make a good story. Why don't I have that? Everybody else has stories about when they were drinking in the woods and accidentally started a fire that burned nearly a quarter of the state of Colorado. OK, so maybe I made that up. I bet someone has a story like that. I don't even have any great stories about being beaten by an alcoholic father or sent to my room with no dinner by a bipolar mother. That's the kind of thing people want to read about. If I wrote stories about the time when my cousin and I danced in the street for money and ended up in jail by that evening, people would be asleep before I was finished. Or if I tried to write about the time when I ripped off the top of my big toe while riding a bike barefoot, most readers wouldn't be back.

I feel the need to impress. To shock. To regale you with crazy stories about my wild youth and how my mouth has nearly gotten me beat up about a dozen times. Unfortunately, all I have are stories about the guy I saw at the grocery store who looked just like Tucker Max, or yet another time when someone in on of my classes said something stupid. Personally, I blame the media. It's not my fault; it's MTV's.

I might as well just start making stuff up and become a fiction writer. That's all anyone will believe now, as we all learned from James Frey. Even the stuff that's real, like a man's battle with drug addiction, won't get noticed unless the author spices it up with a minor stint in prison, an impatient girlfriend, and a less-than-supportive family. Clearly, overcoming a heroine addiction is just not that impressive.

Maybe I should start my own cult. It worked out well enough for L Ron Hubbard. I'd just make up a story about how all humanity is just the manifestation of various facets of a sleeping wizard's personality, and we're currently living in his dream. If you simply donate enough money to my religious organization, meditate 22 hours a day, and eat enough lead-based paint products, then your essence will be heavy enough and substantial enough to pass through into the actual physical world and live forever in the mind of the wizard. If you meditate even more often and donate even more money, then you may stand a chance at getting removed from the wizard's mind in a controversial ego-ectomy and living for eternity in the glorious comfort of some hospital trash can. If not, then you simply cease to exist when the wizard wakes up. I'll make millions. There are plenty more stupid celebrities out there looking for "meaning." I'm sure one of them will be willing to donate $10 million to me to start this important breakthrough in self-help and the path to inner peace, or whatever.