It takes more than a fire truck to stop Drop Dead Fred.

When I was a kid, I fancied myself a storyteller. At sleepovers, when everyone had gotten in their sleeping bags and finished giggling for the night, I was the one who made up stories until everyone fell asleep. I wrote stories for school, I made my own "books," and inevitably, whenever I was bored in class (which happened a lot), the words, "once upon a time," would pop into my head and I'd be gone.

I'm afraid to say that this storytelling tendency has made me a bit of a liar. Maybe liar is the wrong word. Exaggerator is probably better. Or, you know what? Bullshitter is perfect. Sometimes I exaggerate stories a bit, but only to make them better. And I don't even do it on purpose. I'll tell a story so much (with juicy extra details) that I begin to believe it's the exact truth. So it's not my fault I'm a liar; blame my imagination.

"Where is she going with this?" you're asking yourself. I know, because I'm psychic (lie). The answer is . . . I don't know. TRUTH.

In 2nd grade, Mrs. Weaver made everyone in the class keep a journal. Each day, she'd give us a topic and we'd have Journal Time. Sometimes she'd let us write about whatever we wanted. Those days were my favorite. One day, I wrote about my imaginary friend. He was a purple dinosaur with green spots named Figment. But here's the thing about Figment. I don't think he was ever my imaginary friend. The more I think about it, the more I think I just made him up for class because I thought, "Haha! Figment! As an imaginary friend! The fools will bow down to this magnificence!" Although, I'm not sure I even knew what "figment" meant in 2nd grade and also I think I stole the idea from Disney. I just added green spots.

I wish I could tell you I still have this story somewhere, but my 2nd grade journal has long since disappeared. Even though I'm a bit of a packrat and tend to keep EVERYTHING, I sometimes have this terrible need to purge my life of anything that reminds me of the past. I don't know why. It's not like I magically forget about it just because it's in the dumpster, but I do it anyway.

To the best of my knowledge, the story had something to do with Figment and I going on an adventure and then Figment did something bad and I got blamed for it and I think there was also a rocketship involved. In any case, here's a picture of what I remember Figment looking like:



He sure looks friendly, whether he was my imaginary friend or just plain imaginary. On the other, he sort of proves that I've been a big liar (and a thief!) since 2nd grade, which is something I could live without knowing, I think.