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    My buddies, most of whom didn’t read it, just seemed to think it was weird. They’d call me “Shakespeare” and make jokes about me and Jerry Prince. Even Dad didn’t quite know what to make of it and was more than glad to turn his attention back to my next football game. Mom thought it was nice, and Sandy made a fuss over me, but the message you got if you grew up when and where I did was: Girls write, boys do other stuff. If you were going to be a boy and a scholar, it ought to be in the general area of math or science or business .
    You make some strange decisions at that age. You decide you would rather be a jock than a writer, and you decide, because that’s what all evidence seems to be telling you, that you can’t do both .
    Even in my one semester of college, there was this love-hate thing with writing. I signed up for a creative writing course, right out of the gate. And then, in the first class, I looked around, and two-thirds of the other students were girls, and the boys — most of them a bit younger than me by then — mostly looked as if they were much smarter than me. When the professor said we would be reading to each other and critiquing each other’s work, I was gone. The idea of reading stories I’d made up and then having these strangers sit around and pick them apart was too much for my tender ego .
    We’d had to submit an essay before we could be admitted to that class, and the professor went to the trouble to call me two weeks later and tell me what a mistake I was making, how promising my writing was. He was probably all of 25, not much older than me, and what the hell did he know? But I should have listened to him. If I’d stayed in school, I might have given that creative writing course another shot. I did still plan to major in English .
    Shoulda, coulda, woulda, as my father used to say .
    After that semester, though, it was one headlong plunge. The move back home, marriages, kids, responsibilities, hanging out with the old crowd .
    On the road, I’d find myself making up stories about the people and the places I saw, and believe me, I saw a lot of people and places, driving an 18-wheeler. You’d think that kind of life would just beat any kind of creativity right out of you, but not necessarily. You can get inside the noise .
    Even as a kid, mowing people’s lawns, the noise was like this shell I could crawl inside, and the most amazing stories would come to me. I was very popular with my little nieces and nephews, not because I was a football star, but because I could make up stories that would keep them out of mischief for hours on end. Sometimes, I’d make one up and tell it to them in little 30-minute segments, string it out for months, like chapters in a book. Later, I was too busy, too tired, too something to do that for Brady more than once or twice .
    The thing is, you can choose to live your life in some kind of diminished state. People do it all the time. You can even be happy, if nothing unusual comes along, like an old man in baggy clothes who’s prone to disappearing .
    Women give it up to do 90 percent of the child-rearing (no matter how sensitive and new-age Daddy is) and hold down a job at the same time .
    Men, because we’re just naturally dumber, give it up sometimes just to be cool, just to be like everybody else. You’ve got this certain range of possibilities, and Writer of Novels isn’t in the range for some, unless you want to be considered a little light in the loafers .
    And then, sometimes, a thing will happen that will make you realize what a loser strategy that is, to not lead with your strength .
    And you see that the kids who were a little off-center, not in the thick of all that seemed to matter, the ones in the Library Club and the French Club, might have learned this particular lesson long before you did .
    You pay a higher tuition when you come to it late, like I did, but the