During a recent writing workshop, a year 5 student asked me why I wrote crime stories. This is what I told him…
Living in a small country town, I always wanted to grow up and be a police officer or a spy. My favourite comics were detective/spy ones and I learned all I could about secret ways of messaging, writing with invisible ink etc. At one time I went through a phase were I would smooth out a patch of dirt late in the afternoon, in a strategic part of our back yard, then first thing in the morning I would hurry to my patch of dirt and see what/who had walked through it.
All around my back yard I could identify who in my family had been there by the size or tread of their footwear. I could even pick out when a neighbourhood dog or cat had wandered through.
When I hit high-school, I chose subjects that would help me in my quest to be a police officer. In my final year of high-school, my English teacher helped me achieve my dream by contacting the Police Academy and arranging for application papers to be sent to the school. The Academy said that providing I passed the entrance exam, they would make special allowance for me to come straight from high-school to be in the first intake of the new year.
There are no words to describe the excitement and anticipation as I began filling out that paperwork. I was going to fulfil my dream. But then… on the last page, it said ‘Must be an Australian Citizen or a British Subject.’ I was almost 17 years old, was a US citizen at the time, and I felt as though my life was over! The guidance counsellor was no help, asking, ‘Well, what else do you think you’d like to do?’ There was nothing else – I was BORN to be a police officer! It wasn’t fair.
I ended up taking an office job, and discovering that my life wasn’t over. It was just beginning in a new direction that I hadn’t anticipated. I never lost my desire to be a police officer, and I watched all the crime shows I could through the coming years. More than 20 years later, when I sat down to write my first novel, I wrote about what I knew. Police procedure, crime, detecting…
You could have heard a pin drop in the class as they thought about the loss of my dream. Then the same boy asked ‘It’s not too late. Can’t you still become a police officer?’ Bless him… Some dreams are to remain dreams.
Do I regret the path God chose for me? No way. I sometimes wonder what I’d look like in a Police uniform :) but I have had a life I wouldn’t trade.
DJ
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