Wendy K. Laidlaw

And my aunt, who's a notoriously small person, but very open-hearted person, she didn't ask me what I wanted, she asked me what I was interested in.

And I said, history, because I was.

At 13, I was interested in history.

I was trying to figure out what happened that we would wind up with a whole neighborhood full of people that are either depressed or discouraged or somehow lost their dreams.

And it was happening to me.

And so my aunt goes off to the bookstore to get me a book on history.

And like I said, she was very short.

And they point her to a bookshelf and she reaches up and grabs a book.

They wrap it.

She comes and gives it to me.

And I pull the wrapping off and she goes, oh, it's the wrong book.

Give it back.

And I'm holding it and going, no, I'm not giving it back.

Because I can see on the cover, there's a flying horse.

And there's a guy sitting on the horse shooting this arrow that's arcing into the sky.

And I'm going, no, I want.

And she's going, but it's a wrong book.

And then I tear the rest of the paper off.

And it says mythology by Edith Hamilton.

So I read almost the entire book that night.