I have a confession to make. I’m a bad influence. This is new and untrodden ground for me…I’ve always been such a good influence. When did this happen? I was always the kid that parents wanted their children to befriend. “Why don’t you go hang out with that Gordon girl. She’s so nice!” (I’d love to be able to insert some smart-alecky comment here like “If only they knew! Ha!” but I honestly can’t. I really was an unbearably “nice” kid who never, ever got into any trouble. I was boring and I was every parent’s dream.)

I think I’m probably still fairly nice—I don’t generally get into any trouble—but now I like to spice it up a bit with a little attitude and a five-year-plan to become Mistress Evil Overlord. (If I can attract some venture capital, I’m going to start hiring minions soon.) My bad influence seems to be strictly focused in two areas…convincing my coworkers to eat Cheetos and cheeseburgers instead of the healthy lunches they should be eating, and encouraging poor literary choices among said coworkers. I’m not proud of it, but there it is. You may now start judging me.

I won’t even begin to defend the Cheetos and cheeseburger thing. I know they aren’t health food, but darn it, they’re good! As for the poor literary choices, I do have an explanation for that.

A coworker of mine started reading a book of questionable merit that is all the buzz these days. I have read this book myself, but it was sort of self-defense. (Everyone kept asking me if my book was like this all-over-the-news book and I hadn’t even heard of the darn thing, so I read it.) After I mentioned how horribly written it was, my coworker decided to read it as well in order to judge first hand.

After the first chapter, I think my friend would have stopped reading were it not for my encouragement. “Oh no! You have to keep going! It gets SO much worse. You won’t believe the next part.” I was thoroughly enjoying our daily discussions (translation: our daily mocking sessions). They were hilarious! So you see, I was encouraging bad behavior AND bad reading choices. You can judge me some more here. I’ll wait.….….….….….….…

I didn’t really feel too bad about encouraging the reading of such a train-wreck at first. After all, we were having such fun picking apart all of the atrocious writing and plot flaws. Then my coworker said something that made me ponder (and spoiled my fun completely). “I kind of feel guilty reading this when I know it’s so terrible. After all, there are so many great books out there, and here I am wasting my time on this one. Years from now I’ll probably look back and wish I had read XYZ classic. Instead I’m reading this garbage.”

Now I feel bad. Here I am encouraging the consumption of something so terrible it can’t even be considered mental chocolate. It’s more like mental cotton candy, with absolutely no nutritional value of any sort at all. It just rots your teeth…er…brain. So I will try to be a better influence.

Now, to all of the others out there who have made this “cotton candy” a best-seller.…Really people? Really? Your mothers would be so disappointed. Next thing you know, they’ll be sending you over to hang out with me.

**Reading Now: Currently working my way through the My-Daughter-Says-I-Should-Read-This reading list. Lots of YA, but good stuff. Like to keep up with what my kids are reading.**

**Mental soundtrack tormenting me currently: Rock Steady (and I blame Wil Wheaton)**