Story Time: Dr. Pepper Commercial

 Story Time:

It was the early 90's. A young 7 year old Me sat on the hot bus after a long day at school. My stop was the 2nd to get off so my bus time was brief. I never knew how much of a luxury that was in bus riding terms. Every morning, the bus would pick me up from right across the street from my house at 7:30am. It would make one additional stop to pick up the Echols kids, and then off to school we'd go. The same thing when I'd head home; one stop before me, and then my sister and I would be dropped off right outside our home. 

Little did I realize that some kids rode the bus for what seemed like hours. My brain never thought twice about the long bus ride for other kids. 

But I can recall this one day riding home. We were stopped at the stop light outside the 7 Eleven around the corner from home. I used to frequent this 7 Eleven to indulge in their ice cold slurpees. I have this distinct memory of sitting on the bus, imagining myself in a commercial. Kids are laughing, bus driver is yelling, windows are open and the hot august air felt like an open oven blowing all around. At that moment, I imagined opening up a nice cold can of Dr. Pepper. My dad worked for Dr. Pepper at the time so this was very relevant in my life. 

As the sound of the opening can cracked and fizzed, all the chaos around me suddenly turned into a distant background noise. I took a big long sip and leaned back in my seat with a smile. Now, mind you, this is all imaginary. There was no actual Dr. Pepper on the bus that day. This all occurred in my brain. I was dreaming up a Dr. Pepper commercial. I had a lot of imaginary scenarios like this take place throughout my childhood. My mom used to always call me a daydreamer because she'd see me lost in a daze of being somewhere else. Call it dissociating, I don't know, but I'd like to think it is what led me to where I ended up; writing. 

 I was telling a story that day on the bus. I was writing a screenplay in my head for Dr. Pepper. Is that normal? Don't answer that. But the point is, it came naturally to me. It's been my second nature to write or dream up stories with a message or selling point for as long as I can remember. 

People say that children know what they want to do or be when they grow up by the age of 5. I believe it. I think the struggle most people have is they don't know how to connect the dots or translate that 5 year old intuition into their current circumstances. It's not an easy assessment. What about you? What did 5 year old you want to do when you grew up? Did it translate into your current life?