If You Don't Know Where You're Going, It Doesn't Matter How You Get There

That's one of those sayings that people attribute to just about everyone -- from Nietzsche to Yogi Berra to my friend Mike. But no matter. The point being, for 50 years, I've wandered the planet directionless. So no destination to guide my choices, I took whatever road lie ahead. Again, one of those oft used, rarely credited quotes, "When you see a fork in the road, take it." And I did. Often.

I've always envied people like my sister, Bonnie and my son Ryan who always knew what they wanted to do from a very young age, and then let nothing stand in their way of achieving it. I know that from the time my sister was very little, she wanted to be a math teacher. I know this because when I was little I stole her diaries and read them, and somewhere in there, in one of the Dear Kitty passages, was the declaration "I want to be a math teacher when I grow up." So at that very moment, I too wanted to be a teacher. For about 20 seconds. But then an actress, and then a flight attendant, 0r "stewardess" as we called them back then. And then I think for a while there was beautician or maybe that was just a ruse to get my grandmother to let me have my way with her thin, blue, curly hair.

And then there is my son. My son Ryan, the product of two people who couldn't set a goal if their life depended on it, decided when he was 6, that he was going to become a filmmaker. Have you ever heard a six year old declare himself to be a filmmaker? It's adorable. And you pat them on the head and say, "that's nice dear." But then you realize, when they are 10 and asking you to sign them up for animation classes at the local art school, or they are 16 and they are the most prolific, writer, producer, editor, of their school film program, and when they are 17 and they are writing producing and staring in a special on the WB called, Getting Real: My Life as a Teen, or winning the TV Production Student of The Year award at Graduation from high school and shipping off to California to go to Film School, that maybe, indeed, this man is going to be a filmmaker.

But THAT, is not my story. That is his. My story begins like this: How does one go from being a homeless, teenage, high school drop out to having a Harvard undergraduate degree, and a master's of science in education, working at a fortune 500 company with a comfortable middle class income living in a comfortable middle class neighborhood with two wonderful kids and a dog?

I don't know.