Kevin N. Fair's Blog: Kevin's Hang Suite

I don’t know why this stands out so clear in my mind, but I remember one Christmas – I couldn’t have been a teenager yet – my parents hid a book in the tree. It was a Goosebumps story. My older brother found it and happily started flipping through the pages. My mom then came out, saw him with the book and said, “uh uh, that’s for Kevin,” as she unglued it from his hands and gave it to me. Pre-teen Kevin was happy to get the book. Adult Kevin is like, “damn, that was kinda messed up for my parents to do that.”

The reason why they did it, however, was clear. Anyone who has known Kevin for any kind of extended period of time knows the thing he has always loved doing was reading and writing. My brother liked reading okay, but sports were really his thing. Kevin wrote. Frequently. Like all the time. That same brother and I laugh to this day at the many times I ran into his room trying to get him to read some new literary masterpiece that my seven-year old mind just created.

But here’s the problem. Adulting sucks! It’s a thief. It robs you of your passion, your loves. The magical forest of dreams as tall as redwoods in which you danced as a child is replaced in your adult life with the dry, scorching-hot sand dunes of the Reality Desert. Dust storms of bills, student loan repayments, and career and family obligations, cover everything within your sight as you wander through this desert aimlessly and listlessly. Responsibility plasters itself to you like sand in your buttcrack, as you frustratingly attempt to get it out.

This doesn’t happen to all of us, of course. Those of us were lucky and smart enough to be able to either turn childhood passion into an adult career, or are able to maintain enough spare time as an adult to still pursue their original loves are the blessed ones. I, however, was not among that group. In college, I switched from my original major, journalism, to education. And although I did find another passion in teaching, I wish I still held on to the writer in me (beyond the college research papers).

As I was spring cleaning my house last year, I ran across a collection of writings that I had penned over a decade ago. As I sat down to read them, a flood of flashbacks washed over me. I found myself dancing in my forest again, and it was just as beautiful as I remembered. Nothing had changed. For the next few days, I dug through a container which held items from my childhood: school notes from girls, yearbooks, and the like. As I searched through it, I pulled out several of my favorite books that I had read as a kid and held on to for all of these years. Out came A Wrinkle in Time. Then Sideways Stories from Wayside School. A little deeper down: Do-Over, a Rachel Vail novel that was one of my absolute favorites.

A last one: Goosebumps: Night of the Living Dummy.

Feels good to be back in the forest. That desert sucked.