It Could Happen

I was digging deep again, as I do every year or so, into my box of keepsakes and relics that I really don't know why I kept them but did. Stuff I wrote as a kid (some of that, I must say, rather disturbing), old letters of the real life mailed sort, newspaper clippings of miscellany, that have strangely yellowed and gotten brittle already and that shit just ain't right since it seems not so long ago ... whatever, I'm getting old.

From the Kansas City Kansan, newspaper that we got delivered daily, Friday, July 25, 1975, I had cut out and kept this one particular article headlined "Youngster completes first novel." I was always writing as a kid, so I remember very well snipping this one item, on account of the twelve-years-old youngster was my same age, and I very much wanted my own novel published. Of course I hadn't written it yet, but I figured this proved I could do it, too, kept it for an affirmation thingy.

Over the years I've remembered saving that specific one, but never had brought it out it read it again, because why would I really? Not that it matters (I'm just wasting space here), but I was reading it tonight and it struck, the beginning:

"Alexandra Sheedy sat on a loveseat, giggling and chattering about the novel she just finished ... She is petite and has long, golden hair. She is 12 years old and her friends call her Ally. Her first book comes out this fall, published by McGraw-Hill."

The book she wrote was She Was Nice To Mice: The Other Side of Elizabeth I's Character Never Before Revealed by Previous Historians (which you can pick up for a piddling two cents at Amazon, with mostly good reviews from all both of its readers!)

I Googled to be sure that this was, in fact, the Ally Sheedy: St. Elmo's Fire, The Breakfast Club, and so it was. Also War Games; I like that one a lot, too. Short Circuit, not so much.

I don't know why I think clipping that article someone means squat. She obviously never went on to success writing anything else, which was my reason for keeping it in the first place. Hell, she hardly even had much success as an actor, aside from just a few notable roles. But dollars to doughnuts no one else knows her first publicity write-up, or what it was for, and I'm pretty sure nobody has it in a box like I do.

I maybe could yet write a book someday; it could happen.