Way back, in my last good calm, I walked out of a foresty patch onto a green hill with two shouting eggheads and there was a gardener there. He was mowing some lawn or tending to some grass. I looked at him for a moment and he was the most random, normal man who looked not friendly nor cruel nor weird and in fact not much at all because he was really too far to see properly anyway. But for some reason I envisioned him approaching me, "Hey, kid, what's wrong?" and I would tell him all my problems and all my fears and he would sigh and give me a knowing half-smile on his wrinkled face and just like in the movies he would fit together a set of words which would make all the sense in the world, tell me all I needed to know, answer all my questions. He would tell me a bit of good advice, real good advice like I've never heard, not bullshit crap like "Do what your heart tells you." No fucking one knows how to listen to their heart. Nobody knows what to do. That's why they're asking you. They want a definite answer. And he would give me one and it would be perfect and when I looked back on it I would think of how he winked at me in the end and believe maybe there was a God or some guardian angels left in the world.

This is what I wanted.

What I got was that the gardner walked away and I, shrugging my shoulders in lip-biting resolve, went to go look at the ducks.

This I remember. This is written in the files catalougued in my brain. There are the imaginary incidents I have in my head, and then the real circumstances. Sometimes I mix them up, and I can't remember whether I dreamed something or if it really happened. There are times when I think about a situation after the fact and butt-clenchingly kick myself that I hadn't said it different, made a biting remark, turned away. If I hope and wish enough, maybe I will remember it differently. Maybe, in my head at least, my wish will come true. Nobody will remember the insult fat Sean O'Brien gave to me, except me. The evidence of the occurrence will exist only in my head. Not even he will remember his asking, "Why don't you shave that moustache of yours or something?" I will then wish that I had retaliated with a "Why the fuck don't you lose some of those 300 pounds, fat boy?" I will wish it and I will wish it and one day, long from now the memory will foggy in my mind and I will know it. Ha ha, remember that? Ta-da. I've changed history. I just erase the files, replace them. Crtl+C. Ctrl+V.

Me and my overactive imagination, me and my gullible mind. We have this power.

In your English books behind the short stories and poems there's a little .75x.75 inch picture of a famous author along with his biography. This way you'll know how exactly fucked up you have to be to become a great author like Edgar Allen Poe. He married his cousin. Lost her to consumption. He drank himself to death. Built character. Made some great subject matter for his writing. Lucky bastard.

Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on February 22, 1892. Her mother, Cora, raised her three daughters on her own after asking her husband to leave the family home in 1899.

I think about my biography. Stephanie Foo was born in Penang, Malaysia, on November 23, 1987. She moved to San Jose, California in 1990. Her abusive mother left when she was 14 to marry another man, leaving her with her uncaring father. She, however, strived for creativity and exposed herself to the arts and literature. In 2001, she met Gregory Gaye, a young man whom she had a relationship with for several years and whom inspired much of her younger work.

It's frightening to think that that much of biography is already written. I can't change any of it. I can't just wish it away. It's there and it's down in writing and it's a fact and everyone knows it. Changing a moment is one thing. Changing 17 years is another matter. No matter how much I deluded myself, no matter how much a nagged at my publicist to hide my files, years and years ltaer it would all come unraveled and in my bio it would all be the above plus one extra setnence, "Due to her insecurity, she tried desperately to hide her true identity and history." Already this paragraph is written. it cannot be undone. No Crtl+Z.

Every new friend or enemy I bring into my life, I am securing a potential spot for them in my biography.

Before you smile at me across a room, think about whether you want to be immortalized in English textbooks across the country.

Then again, I might not remember you. I might now write about you in my autobiography. I might not ever mention you again. Nobody might know you were ever alive.

I don't remember evreything. I don't remember all the important things. Most of my memories are crap. Plenty of them have already been written over, and the ones that remain have completely different connotations now than they did then. Sometimes Kathy will remind me of a good memory we had last summer and I laugh. Sometimes thoughts will surface with her and me having fun digging for dinosaur bones in the baseball field in the 4th grade while others laughed and I'm totally embarrassed and my mind tries to switch subjects.

Memories are like people. If they go way for a little while, you're glad to have them back. But if you don't see them for long enough, you'll wish they never returned.