The notion of putting one's life experiences out for public consumption is a fairly common one. Almost everyone I've ever met has harbored visions of becoming the next best-selling author. Journalists are notorious for believing that years of writing about current events somehow qualifies them for overnight success in the world of prose. Count me among that delusional group.

Every reporter is certain he or she can write a tell-all book about the stories behind headlines. This is understandable because the details of some stories that don't make the papers are usually left only for historians and tabloids.

The cardinal rule of creative writing is to write about what you know. Rather than waiting until I become famous, I think I'll just go ahead and write my autobiography. If there's one thing I've learned, everyone - and I mean everyone - has a story to tell. Why not me?

I can picture it now. I'll open with my hardscrabble childhood in Detroit's urban jungle. Being forced to help my family make ends meet as a toddler, I became the youngest drug mule in the Midwest. Like a human curling rock, the traffickers would skim me across the river in the dead of winter to Canada, where law enforcement was practically nonexistent. Years later, this would lead me to become a pioneer in the young sport of dwarf tossing.

Following a stretch at the Michigan Home for Preschool Reprobates, I moved South with my single-parent mother, who supported us by reclaiming 10-pound lard cans from the dump and selling them as luxury spittoons. My days of going straight were numbered when I fell in with a gang of juvenile river rats in Augusta, Ga. Long before drive-by shootings became commonplace, we terrorized the area by launching dirty diapers at random passersby from our low-rider bicycles.

However, my story finally takes an upward turn when I'm discovered while providing background sound effects for an inmate thespian troupe at the Georgia Correctional Institution for the Dramatically Insane. My big break comes when I provide the soundtrack for the campfire scene in the movie "Blazing Saddles." And I'll bet all this time you thought that was done by gassy actors.

I would later go on to greater fortune after landing a steady gig as a human soundtrack for Beano commercials, although I was later blackballed by the entertainment industry after my sordid dwarf tossing past was brought to light.

See what I mean? As a wise, old editor once told me, "Never let the facts screw up a good story!"

T&D Staff Writer Phil Sarata can be reached by e-mail at psarata@timesanddemocrat.com or by phone at 803-533-5540. Discuss this and other stories online at TheTandD.com.

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