Meme Challenge 1.21.06 Here it is: List the 5 events/things/or people, that have made the most impact on your life. Events, places, or people, that have made a mark on your life, as you’re living it now.

These aren’t in order … they’re just my list:

1. My daughter
Your life completely changes after you have a child. I wouldn’t change a minute of my life since she entered the world. Except, I would have taken more naps when she was a newborn instead of holding her and watching her sleep every time.

2. My husband
He’s the first guy who ever really “got” me. He thinks I’m just the cutest thing ever and mimics my mannerisms, which is both fun and annoying. I had to do a Myers-Briggs personality test once and I brought home the descriptions of all 16 types and asked him which one he thought I was. He took one look and pegged it.

3. My mom
My mom believes I can do anything and supports me daily. She sacrifices to make me happy, shares my joys and listens to my woes. Plus she will come over and clean my bathrooms — it makes her happy.

4. Sister Marie Frances Regis Collins
Sister Regis unlocked the English language for me. I was a great reader, and she took that love of reading and gave me a rock-solid foundation in grammar from 6-8 grade at Holy Spirit Catholic School. She made us say our prepositions in alphabetical order, and I can still do it .. about, above, across, after, against, along, among, around, at … plus she taught me how to diagram sentences. It’s a long-lost skill, but one that still helps me as I make my living by writing.

5. Craig Thomas and Glenn Hargett
These two gentlemen have to share the space, but both gave me my start in my first career. Craig was program director at WJNC-AM in Jacksonville, NC. He gave me a job as a DJ after I spent my junior year doing my high school’s radio show on Friday nights. For some reason, it impresses people to know I was a DJ in high school. Glenn gave me a job as News Assistant and then Assistant News Director (funny how switching around a word gives a title more oomph!) and taught me more about news, fair & balanced reporting and the NC Open Meetings law than anyone person has the right to know. When a later News Director in TV told me the problem with me was that I was a “Big J Journalist” I knew I was a journalist with a capital J because of Glenn Hargett.

You know, I could do a whole new list on places and events. I may just do that in another post.

My book club read “A Million Little Pieces” by James Frey last month. I enjoyed reading it, except for all the descriptions of his different-colored vomit chunks, and the horrible, painful description of his root canal on his front teeth without any anesthetic or pain medicine.

I thought he seemed a little smug about his addiction and his iron-willed sobriety, and I was interested in the end of the book to read that everyone he met in the Treatment Center (capitalization a la Frey) died except him, basically.

I couldn’t believe that there would be a dentist in Minnesota who would perform a front-tooth root canal without anesthetic, or that Hazeldon would require such a sacrifice from a brand-new resident. (“I know, let’s cause our drug-addicted clients extra pain so they’ll be sure to go through recovery!) So I asked a substance abuse counselor if that would really happen. She thought it was highly unlikely.

So when I started seeing news that he may have lied about parts of the story, I started reading. I read the whole report on TheSmokingGun.com. How interesting that he expunged parts of his record. Why would you do that if you’ve already told the world about it in your book? I was sickened when the family of a girl killed in a train accident, a pivotal part in his book, said they didn’t think he was very close to their daughter.

So what does eloquent James Frey say when he’s asked about these things? “let the haters hate, let the doubters doubt, I stand by my book, and my life, and I won’t dignify this bulls___ with any sort of further response.”

Let the haters hate? Where does that come from? Are we, the reading public, just one more small-town cop out to get him? Is it really everybody in the world against poor James? And after all his grandiose capitalization in his memoir, why doesn’t he call it a Book?

And why, oh, why, did Oprah call in on Larry King last night? I think Oprah’s pretty cool, but if James is telling the truth, he doesn’t need Oprah to back him up. And if he’s lying (oops, I’m sorry … “embellishing”) and she’s coming to his defense then he’s just dragging her down.

Now his publisher is forcing him to add an Author’s Note to the next printing, and has even offered a refund to anyone who bought the book directly from them. (Yeah, I routinely buy my books from Doubleday and Random House. Who needs the Barnes & Noble conveniently located in my town?) But how can we trust what the author’s note is going to say? Will it be a reprise of “let the haters hate”?

I’m going back to re-read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I like my fiction to be fiction.