When I was around seven years old, my mom mentioned in passing that Jim Herr, founder of Herr’s Snack Foods, had once visited our grocery store. I was excited to hear this, because I ate a lot of chips and I saw his face on the back of chip bags often. He was like a celebrity to me.

I kept asking my mom what he was like and if he was nice and if he looked like his picture, but she didn’t have much else to say other than that he was accompanying a Herr’s deliveryman on his rounds. I kept pressing her for details, but she snapped at me and told me it was a long time ago and that she didn’t remember. I told everyone at school the next day, but nobody cared.

A few years later, Herr’s ran a promotion where you could dial a toll-free number and talk to Chipper, the Herr’s Snack Foods mascot. It was basically a prerecorded message of a guy using a chipmunk voice to tell you to buy more snack foods. I memorized that number, and I would use it at parties and sleepovers as a party trick, even months after the number stopped appearing on chip bags. My friends thought it was dumb.

I tried calling that number today, but nobody picked up. 

Sometimes I think that maybe one day I’ll work for Herr’s. 

This one time, during the summer, I worked as a full-time file clerk in a hospital, but there was so much downtime that all I did was practice origami.

I made dozens and dozens of boxes, ninja stars, and paper cranes. And because I didn’t want to take them home or throw them away or have my supervisors find out, I hid my creations around the file room. Sometimes I would write words of encouragement on them for future generations.

I’d like to think a maintenance man changing out the fluorescent lamps could be inspired by a paper crane floating down from the rafters. A paper crane that said, “You’re doing a good job.”

Or the next file clerk moving the desk to reach a fallen pencil, but instead accidentally dislodging a ninja star with the phrase “I believe in you.”

It was a pretty good time…until the last day of my job, when I actually found out that there was some work I should have been doing all along that I somehow completely missed. I still feel bad about that. 

When I was about seven years old, I had a beautiful dream.

I was in my Tae Kwon Do class, and a pale-faced alien named Nikken was a new student. We became instant friends, kicking and breaking boards in tandem and sparring very playfully with each other. 

But then when class was over, Nikken said he had to go home and could never return. He had to take the ghost train to his home planet, and it would be landing in the parking lot very soon.

My initial reaction to this news was the urge to get his autograph before he left. I rushed inside the Tae Kwon Do studio and frantically rummaged through my elementary school desk for a piece of paper and a pencil. But alas! Every scrap of paper I found had dark pencil scribbles all over it! I tore through my desk for the back of a pamphlet, bare space in a math workbook…..anything, but to no avail.

A few minutes later, I heard a loud train whistle coming from outside. Panicked, I grabbed one of the dark sheets of paper and ran down the hallway as fast as I could.

And as my body burst through the front door, I caught the sight of a faint, grey ghost train lifting off and gliding away into the summer dusk.

I had wanted Nikken’s autograph to remember him by. But as it turns out, I didn’t need that autograph at all.

The first dream I ever remember having was just a pulsating, glowing green skull on a river bank. That’s it.

I went through a phase last year where I would log onto iSketch (online pictionary) and pretend to be a Simpsons fanatic. I would warm up with a story about how much I wanted to live in Springfield and how I identified with Marge and Homer. Then when it was my turn to draw…let’s say my word was ‘apple’….I would draw something like Homer Simpson in his underwear pointing at an apple. Because I drew the apple last, people would swear at me after the round was over. This is when I would change the subject to Simpsons trivia. I did this so often, people recognized me by my username.

I want my summer back.  

When I was in middle school, I used to collect magazine advertisements. I would tear them out, put them in plastic sleeves, and organize them in a three ring binder. However, if I deemed a magazine advertisement to be especially great, I would photocopy it and place the copy in my binder, so I could preserve the original state of the ad in the magazine.

I wish this were a lie.

I am disgusted by online reviews of Batman products that start with “Holy (product name), Batman!” Please stop using that phrase and start telling me your experience with the product. You are not Robin. Not even close.

Spitting is cool and manly. I wish I were better at spitting, but oftentimes my body gets in the way. I’m riding my bike and spit to the side. It hits the back of my wrist. I’m walking and try to spit on the ground in front of me. It hits my pants. Now I have a wet mark on my pants, and I have to angle it towards the sun so it dries faster. This wouldn’t happen if I were good at spitting.

I get physically uncomfortable around full-screen DVDs.