So I want to pick up on this theme of the child prodigy, and without making you, you know,

blush too much, I think it would be fascinating to learn a little bit about your childhood.

Tell us what life in the 80s in New Jersey, you know, was like, and what were those

formative influences on your life?

I'm one of four children.

And I will say that there were two things that my parents did for me and my siblings when I was

growing up that I think made me into a writer.

And I would say that, you know, know if you somebody had children of your own

I don't know that I'd recommend either of these things um so the first first thing was that um my

we traveled a lot when I was growing up um and you know not to not only to places where you might

think to take four children like Disney World but to places where you would of course take four children like Disney World, but to places where you would, of course, take four children, like Cambodia, right? Or Peru. Like, it wasn't a vacation unless you had to go get a shot. So this was like, they're my parents, I'd do have a good time. And, you know, but they very quickly realized that they were going to have to, um, to find some way to, um, you know, to keep us from beating up the flight attendants on these long-haul flights.

And so one strategy they said was that they required each of us to keep a journal of what we, of our trips.

And I took this very, very seriously, and I wrote down all these different things we've seen.

And I will say that I'm very grateful to my parents now that they made me do this

because I feel that you would never think of going to a place like Cambodia without taking a camera with you.

But while pictures can show you what you saw and maybe what you did, they can't show you how you felt.

And I feel very fortunate that my parents forced me to do this because I can sort of look back at these journals and find out not only what it was like to be in China, but what it was like to be 12. And so, you know, and I'm creating characters and I want to know how, you know, someone who's 12 might feel. I can look it up. So this was a handyneck.

So this was sort of like very early training and observation and in recording.

And this was something that, but my parents also, like they ran our home as this like creative

collective where, you know, we would come home from school and they'd be like, you know,

like, why don't you guys write a play and we'll perform it after dinner?

Yeah, and they took this very seriously. And this was like, you know, like, why don't you guys write a play and we'll perform it after dinner? You know, and they took this very seriously, and this was like, you know, and every Passover satyrs were always like, you know, very elaborate shows that we would act out the access from Egypt. But this was something they did all the time, and, you know, every time of someone's birthday, we would write poems for each other and, and, and, and, and, and,. And, you know, but my parents very quickly understood that they always had these management strategies for dealing with the four of us, which is something I think about a lot now that I have my own four children to manage. And one of, you know, this idea of, oh, we can keep people entertained by giving these creative projects. It didn't work as well around the dinner table, right?

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