My whole life I've been waiting to be famous.

I wanted to take bows on stage and have people throw flowers at me. I wanted to say, “Oh, sure, I'll give you an autograph” because I would be a nice famous person. I wanted to hear the roar of applause in my ears as I accepted yet another award.

When I was five, I watched Tarzan movies and saw him swinging from tree to tree with manly ease. We had a forest behind our home, and I regularly gave out the Tarzan yell. I nearly killed myself when I tried out the ape-man-like vines covering one particular tree. I was knocked out cold for several minutes.

My sister Peggy woke me shouting, “What are you CRAZY?”
But I knew; I just needed practice.
I was sure I was going to become something famous athletic; after all, I could slip my right leg around my left leg twice . It was a great trick on Sundays. It always impressed Aunt Peg enough for her to slip me a second peppermint when no one was watching. “Would you look at that! She's double jointed!” she'd say making me feel like the only person in the world that was just that clever.
I sat glued to the TV when a Hungarian Circus act performed on Ed Sullivan. I felt certain that I was going to become an international trapeze artist or possibly a ballerina like the tall woman from Russia in the stiff white skirt. I spent the summer leaping off successively higher steps on our stairs, till my mother caught me poised on the seventh step.

“You're going to kill yourself.”
“But I have to practice to be able to catch the trapeze!”
“More like practice for being a dead body. Come over here and read the comics with me. See this, this is the letter ‘a'…”

Reading always distracted me.

September came and my older brother and sisters were getting new notebooks and supplies for school. My parents were on a tight budget with little money to spare for the six almost seven kids, but I wanted a copybook and a number two pencil too.

“Okay, you can have one, but you have to use it,” My father said.
“Bill,” my mother used that wheedly mommy voice on him followed by her doe-eyed look, but it didn't work.
What Dad said “Goed.” He was The Dad.

So every night he would sit and teach me numbers, and every day my mom would teach me letters. I was hooked. I was writing and counting everything.

“Mom, do you know that Mrs. Gardner has forty-seven different kinds of plants in her garden?”
“Well, no I didn't. How do you know that? You didn't climb in her garden again did you, Carol? You know, you are forbidden to set foot in her yard after the last time. For heaven's sakes, I thought she'd never stop wailing about her strawberries.”

I held my breath paused, and that's when my writing career began.

I lied.

“I leaned over the fence real far and grabbed a hold of one of the branches from the, you know, the whip tree?”
“The weeping willow?” My mom asked.
“Yeah, and I sailed around the yard counting plants. I didn't put one foot down the whole time.”
“Oh, (snick) I see.”
I could see she and my father were having trouble with their mouths all of a sudden. They both abruptly left for the kitchen and when they left the room, my siblings attacked.

“You made that up!” Janie whispered and shoved me in the back.
“I did not.” I threw back at her.
“I'm going to pound you into sand, you liar!” My eldest sibling, Billy said.
My older brother sat on me and held my arm behind my back till I cried “Uncle.”
But the next day, I saw him grabbing for one of the whips hanging on the willow tree at Mrs. Gardner's.

My parents didn't beat me for fibbing. They enjoyed a good story as much as the next Irish family. Of course, I recorded the whole thing in my black copybook in big scrawling letters. It took up six pages. The first adventures of Carol, the famous trapeze artist.

I have written in the Chronicles of Carol every since, never thinking that this made me a writer, a writer that could someday be famous.

I grew up. I got married, had kids and did secretary jobs and then was hired for Administrative Assistant positions, (There's no difference in what a secretary and an administrative assistant do or get paid, but the title makes you feel more important. It's a scam created by bosses, so they don't have to pay you more.) At the end of 20 years of hard work, I still wasn't famous.

I have copybooks, notepads and computer files of all of my writings. They fill up boxes and drawers and hard drives, but I still did not think of myself as a writer, till I met Glenn.

When I took the plunge and leapt into being me, Glenn was the first guy I asked out. I went out with a lot of men when I left my husband, but Glenn was persistent about setting up dates with me. “Well, what about Tomorrow for lunch?”

“Uh, sorry, I have a date.”
“Well, what about for dinner?”
“Uh, um, I'm sorry, I have a date.”
“Well, when's the next time you don't have a date? ‘Cause you can pencil me in for breakfast, lunch and dinner from there on out!”

He is so cute, Isn't he?

We wound up moving in together to save on the time driving back and forth between apartments. Being male, “commitment” was not a concept he could get his head around. “I Love you” was not readily springing to his lips. He was actually masterful at avoiding such topics. And when he introduced me to his friends, he couldn't quite get out the word “Girlfriend” in the introduction, so he hit upon saying, “This is Carol, my… writer friend.”

I tried to get him to own up to his sidestepping.

“Why are you introducing me as your writer friend? I'm not published,” I said.
He quickly replied, “But you write all the time! You are a writer.”

I blinked my eyes several times when he said it, and it finally sunk in. A writer writes. I was a writer. I had been a writer since my first copybook was filled. “I am a writer.” I said out loud. Something in my blood felt different saying it. It was like the first time I had heard Glenn say my name, “Carol.” I was Carol, not mom, not dear, not she-who-must-be-ignored. And now, I was Carol the writer.

Suddenly, I felt famous in my own mind.
It was a highly satisfying moment.

Since that day, I've been on a journey to become a published author. This small following of several thousand fans has given me some measure of success.

I'm no longer waiting to become famous because I found that choosing to follow my passion means more to me than hands clapping or awards; it's just who I am.

That sounds rather like the person who hasn't won the pulitzer, but it is also true.

Having chosen this path I can hear the roar of applause from all the Carol's I ever was or will become.

Email Carol Wood at Carol@hazelst.com and tell her your favorite holiday song.