Once, when I was little...

When I was a kid, and first learned about the rotation of the earth, I thought I should be able to jump in the air and eventually get places. That the earth would turn, while I was in the air, and I’d move like that: One jump at a time.

Sometimes, it still seems like that should work, but it doesn't. What did you believe in as a child?

I thought that I might one day float down the Mississippi River on a raft. I believed that if I wanted to be a cowboy all I had to do was be a cowboy. I never imagined school mattering that much. I thought that one day I might live in a trailer and just drive around. I believed with as much sincerity as my naive little heart could muster that nothing bad would ever happen to me...that I'd stumbled through my quota of bad things early on and would be past all that by the time I grew up. I believed that I would stay best friends with my best friends forever. I thought Toby was the coolest dude I knew. I wanted to be cool. I didn't think about money. I thought that maybe, if I wanted it long enough, and the right idea struck, that I could write a book. I believed that practice made perfect. I thought that I could hop a train and survive all on my own. More than anything I thought that earth's rotation thing would've worked.