When I Grow Up

My poor parents. I don’t feel that any more attention would’ve helped me as a child. Believe me, I had a lot. More than most kids. Trust me, there was a good 20 minutes devoted to my daily activities at dinner. Retrospectively, I don’t think that an eight year olds daily routine will take 20 minutes. I managed to stretch them out and provide details, everything from what my friend told me at recess to what I traded for my chips at lunch.

If you met me as a child, you would have thought I had neglectful parents. I acted as though I was never paid attention to. Anyone willing to talk to me was going to get an earful, the thoughts on life from the perspective of an eight year old. I craved attention, some would argue that I still do, some would argue that it naturally comes to me. We’ll let people think what they like, as long as they’re thinking about me, I don’t really care.

At holidays I would act out scenes from movies as entertainment for my cousins, aunts, uncles, and friends. My award winning reenactment was from Gone with the Wind. My mother wouldn’t let me use a potato to emphasize my displeasure with Yankees in Tara as Scarlet O’Hara did. I also used to act as an on the spot news reporter at every Christmas and Thanksgiving. I was adorable with my little suit and coke bottle glasses asking people their thoughts on the food, people, and their resolutions. I lived for school plays and musicals, I wasn’t often cast as lead, but sometimes the best talents are often overlooked, Madonna was not cast as Frida Kahlo despite her persistent auditions. In 4th grade, my teacher said I was going to play the part of an, “intelligent, snooty professor,” and that it would “be perfect,” for me.

With such a desire for attention and the ability to make up lines (or lies) that sounded believable, I knew Hollywood was my destiny. I desperately wanted to be a child actor. Each movie I saw in theaters that had a child star in it disgusted me. That should be me up there is what I would think. Every time I heard a radio advertisement for open castings and William Morris open calls I would run up to my parents and beg and plead and get on my knees asking them to take me. I was often met with, “What? No. No. I’m not taking you to no god dog audition. They’re going to make us sign you up for classes and pay them all kinds of money. And money doesn’t grow on trees son. And no no no, mijo, no uh uh. Nothing is free, uh uh. Stop, get up, go rake the leaves.” I was crushed. I knew that when I was famous and they made a movie about my life, this would be a pivotal scene.

I used to have fantasies as I raked the leaves and did my chores that a limousine would pull up to our half cul-de-sac and a handsome Hollywood agent would step out and say the words, “Derek, we know you’re talented, we’re going to take you away from all of this and you’re going to be a big star.” I drop the rake and run up to this agent in my tattered clothes and bandanna (in my fantasy I was dressed like an extra from Slumdog Millionaire even though we were upper middle class), and throw my arms around the suit and weep tears of joy as I thanked him for rescuing me.

I might have wound up on Dancing with the Stars or Celebrity Rehab had I become a child star. Or I could have been a Drew Barrymore, to hell and back kind of child star. Or even better, a Brooke Shields! A child actress turned teen model turned pop star date to the Grammys turned America’s Sweetheart. But I laugh too much, and that would limit the roles I could have taken. But I’ll never know. In my next life, I’d like to come back as a child star. I should start planning my dramatic techniques.