The Book Signing

This was the greatest day in Lydia Starling’s life.

As she sat at a table in a corner of the local Barnes & Noble, with a stack of her book “The Seaweed Diet” in front of her, she couldn’t contain her happiness. She was a newly published author holding her first book signing.

Hoping to be the Host with the Most

As far back as he could remember Curtis Dalrymple wanted to be just one thing: a game show host.

He grew up idolizing game show hosts like Bill Cullen and Peter Marshall. He’d write fan mail to Bob Eubanks and Jim Lange. When he tried to run away from home he stood at the corner holding a sign that read “Wink Martindale’s House or Bust.”

He fantasized that maybe his father, Curtis Sr., a genuinely nice but somewhat bland man, was actually his stepfather, and that maybe Gene Rayburn or Art Fleming was his real father. This didn’t please either of his parents to any great extent, although his mother did find Art Fleming to be a rather handsome man.

An Orphan Called Pickaxe

Sometime during junior high school Byron Milanovich acquired a nickname that would stick with him for the rest of his life. The kids all called him Pickaxe.

The name came from the fact that back in those days Byron was very skinny with a longer-than-average and very pointed nose. In other words, he was shaped like a pickaxe.

Emile Gets an In-basket

Emile St. Claire was the kind of person who relished small victories.

Not that he was happy with only small victories. He really wanted big victories. But since he’s never really had any big victories in his life he figured he would look at small victories as the stepping stones to big victories, if and when those big victories actually occurred.

He Could've Been Morley Safer Jr.

Morley Safer

Lou Rossman was one of those people who never took responsibility for where they are in life.

He always saw himself as a victim of circumstances, as a person who never got the same breaks that successful people got. In his mind, he was a bastion of unfulfilled potential.

This may explain why, at age 38, he still lived at home with his parents while working as an overnight grocery stocker in the cereal aisle at the local Walmart.