More Fantastic Than Any Dream...

Stuff your eyes with wonder,

live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds.

See the world.

It's more fantastic than any dream.

-Ray Bradbury

I lead a somewhat fantastical life. Truly. Always have. Some nights I crawl into bed and think about what happened that day: what I saw... what I heard... what happened to me or around me. And sometimes even I don't believe it.

In 2000, I worked at a small ABC affiliate station south of Abilene. I got home one night around nine, and got out of the car with two sacks of groceries in my hand. It was December, and dark. I was just about to slam the car door shut when someone grabbed my elbow. He silently began pulling me down the driveway toward the street. I yelled, and swung the plastic grocery sacks across my body as hard as I could. He gasped as the sack of canned goods hit him square in the pants' zipper. Even today I close my eyes and remember the glare of the street lamp, and underneath it a plastic sack splitting open and cans of green beans rolling toward the street and him stumbling backwards.

Later, after the cops left and my boyfriend came hurrying over, I told him the story. He was, I think, already used to my life. He sighed and I remember wondering if he was simply tired of believing my life. Then the next day he found the guy's wallet near the stairs of my above-garage apartment. My would-be attacker was named Jeremy Damon Kelsey, an ex-con who served time for possession and sexual assault. I let my boyfriend hand the wallet over to the police. Even I was tired of dealing with my life.

And so it's gone. I met President Bush today, I'd say. My friends would roll their eyes. Today I talked to Martha Stewart, I reported one May day. (If I hadn't worked for CBS Radio, no one would have believed me.) And, Two bailiffs hunted me down and hauled me in front of Judicial District Judge Steve Ellis today because I sneaked a recorder into his courtroom. And, I have a cervical cancer issue, I told my family in 2001 and again in 2003. Again, disbelief. But I did, I did, and I did.

That's about the time I decided I needed to start carrying around a camera. About the time I realized my own life was as big a story as I'd ever get. The darn thing just won't stop.

In yesterday's comments, Grace said my life reminded her of Nancy Drew's. After all, I'm always in some tangle or another, and trouble has a way of finding me. She would know. But sometimes I wonder if even those close to me get tired of the stories and the impossible. Stories like, Today on the way home to Freeman House I ran into a herd of Arabian camels and one yelled at me...

Well, I did. And unfortunately for you all, I now carry my camera.

This life. I'm telling you. It's more fantastic than any dream....