My father took me places when I was young, movies, concerts; my father worked for the newspaper, but not the big newspaper, not the morning newspaper. He worked for the afternoon paper, a smaller newspaper, a more hometown paper than the morning one.

My father was a reporter, but sometimes he wrote movie and concert reviews and we would get free tickets, sometimes, even backstage passes. When I was seven we went to an Elton John concert, he played a gold piano. He wore gold-glittered shoes with heels at least five inches high, and there were people backstage waiting to get his autograph. My father nudged me up to the front of the line.

My father took me to the circus when he reviewed it for the paper. I was eight and he let me write the review, I had a byline and everything. I wrote about a gorilla that rode across a tightrope on a little motorcycle; really it was a man in a gorilla costume. I made sure that was clear, in my review.

My father took me places, sometimes we went downtown to the newspaper office, the smaller, afternoon newspaper office that seemed big as all the world. I sat on a phone book in an oversized chair, the teletype machine clicking in the background. I hunt-and-pecked hours away and wasted a lot of paper.

My father took me places and the memories live in pictures, yellowed now by time that's long been spent. But the stars in a young girl's eyes don't shine for place or time; it never really mattered where we went

Log in or register to write something here or to contact authors.