I Tempted Fate, Fate Had The Last Laugh`Psyguy

In March and September 2024, I published my first two books of a four-part series, "Creative Destiny~A Poet Turns 40," which is a poetic journey of how I became a poetry writer, and how I've come full circle in dozens of ways over my 40 years of life. It is also a nod to Jimmy Buffett's "A Pirate Looks at Forty," which really made me think about my life when I was 19 in 2004.

In my first book, I write poems about my childhood, family, Christmas, 1990s fads, TV shows, my favorite cartoons, and my friends. On my street, I had eight friends, five from the same family. From December 1989 to October 1995, my eight friends, brother, and I ruled our street. We were always outside playing hide and seek, football, baseball, swinging on my swingset, and had our own art club, walked two blocks to our favorite Deli for penny candy.

When they moved in October 1995, it set the climax in my book—the thing that changed my own destiny. Once they moved away, there was a big void. I still hung out with my other three friends, all girls around my age, 12, 10, and 10. But there was something missing.

In 1997, my mom, dad, brother, and I went to see my friends in their new house, and that was the last time I saw them.

In 2012, I did reconnect with the oldest daughter at Cracker Barrel, and I found the others on Facebook, where I shared our childhood pictures and posted things about our childhood. But its not the same as seeing them in person.

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In 2013, my past came slowly seeping back; my childhood home came back up for rent but didn't take it. It got torn down a year later. But in 2017, my past came roaring back with the DuckTales reboot, going to comic-cons, organizing the community parade I watched as a child, the rescue rangers movie coming out, reconnecting with my high school and donating my time and books to the library, and going back to Philipps Swim Club after a 21-year hiatus.

In 2019, I had a 100-poem idea about writing about my journey, but as things came roaring back, I realized I needed two books, then three; now it's four.

I thought the book ending would end in 2023, with the parade, but 2024 came along, and I had a few more childhood full circles.

But there was something missing—the complete full circle, the perfect ending to my story—and that was reconnecting with my childhood friends.

In October 2024, I saw Molly post that her sister was going to be a vendor at a local show, and I signed up to be a vendor.

I was tempting fate; I knew I had to be there. I was writing my own story; the perfect ending to my story, Hollywood couldn't have done it any better.

The day of the vendor show, as soon as I showed up, I laughed. The vendor show organizer put me right next to my friends. Oh, she didn't know that she was playing a part in fate, or was it destiny, but for the whole show, my friends and I talked about our childhood, their town, what they've been up too, and how long they had been doing vendor shows. I sold them copies of my book, Our Childhood, forever immortalized in this strange story. The different roads we all took in life, and yet it was our creative journey that brought us back together.

I also ran into my high school friend, a girl I wanted to take to Homecoming my sophomore year, and she was in my second book about me being shy towards her, then having the dance I wanted at Homecoming.

Oh, and the church where the vendor show was, it was at the church my dad and I passed dozens of times taking my dog to see his favorite cows in Indiana.

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